Whether you’re into the business of providing customer care or someone looking at operating a telemarketing hub in Manila, operating your own call center is not an entirely bad idea. Here’s a few insights and a couple of tips when you set up a call center in the Philippines.
Pretty sure at this stage you’ve conducted your initial research and feasibility analysis about call center processes and operations.Now that you’re more inspired to build your own call center office, it pays to give closer focus on your business goals.
One absolute fact about setting up your own call center is the huge investment needed to launch even with an initial five customer care representatives. There’s also a hearty of commitment required and tons of bold risk-taking involved when you open up one.
But even if the idea comes off with a couple of risks, challenges and negative impressions, things have gotten a lot easier now.With more streamlined processes and technology, it’s least expensive to invest in opening a call center.
When you setup a call center in the Philippines, you’ll definitely be in to seize the critical benefits on customer satisfaction, and ultimately too, to your business bottom line. Just take the time to do the things right the first time you embark on your call center journey.
Planning Your Call Center Operation
Is it easy to set up your own call center in the Philippines? We’ll show you why it is in the affirmative and help you gain from the expert level of service often reserved for the more affluent, well-budgeted organizations.
After learning what it takes to open your own call center, you’re on your own to decide whether to push through or simply hire a call center outsourcing firm to handle your calls. A couple of benefits come with employing an outside call center provider.
A typical example of advantage is cost savings in the process of letting some third party service provider handle your telemarketing and sales activities or the customer service responsibilities in your behalf. With more time left for you, you can run your business better and make your customers happier.
Now to help you prepare for your call center endeavor, follow these few steps when you’re at the early stage in setting up your call center:
Start with the End in Mind
Bug yourself with the this question, “Why do I need a call center?”, “What’s my purpose for setting up a call center?”, “Why setup a call center in the Philippines?”
Knowing the answer to these questions is not only essential, but critical to your success. Is it generating sales that you’re after or making customers feel they’re your No. 1 priority? Once set, you can now determine your secondary goal.
Once your goals and objectives – the primary and secondary ones – are set, you’ll have a much clearer path to thread or benchmark to measure your future successes.
Physical vs. Virtual Call Center
Sort of a reality check about which call center setup is feasible for you. If the benefits far outweigh your investments for a physical call center setup in the Philippines, don’t hesitate to push through with this idea.
However, if a virtual call center with remote customer representatives would be fine initially, go for it.
Determine Physical or Operational Limitations
Can you simply integrate existing telephone system with the ones you’re planning to purchase? How about checking first with your client their needs and demands, which can influence your call center choices critically, before making any decision to buy systems.
In short, discover if you really need to buy brand new or upgrade to the latest model if pre owned equipment would do.
Determine Your Budget
The perfect time to set a budget is when you’re about to start with your call center setup planning.
Make it a point to map out possible minimum and maximum expenditures very early into the project. When you get this ready, you can determine how many agents can be hired and what kind of PABX or VOIP solutions can be used.
Assemble the Best Team for Your Goals
Partly, this will be determined by the goals you seat early on. If it’s generating sales that you’re after, then you’ll surely need a solid team of call center agents with strong sales expertise.
Best of all, you will need to establish a team of college educated, fluent in the language your customers speak, polite, and professional agents.
Define your Call Center Business Processes
Get your processes documented or mapped right away. Make sure you get these aspects of your operations factual, accurate and effective.
It’s highly likely you’ll benefit from getting this difficult process right because of the time you’ll be able to save from training and cutting uncertainties.
Have a Future-Proof Plan
While you may be setting up a call center for the now in the Philippines, planning for the future shouldn’t escape you. It’s important that you scale your business for future growth and such need to be seamless whenever changes in the market occur.
Typically, customer demand is a big challenge among call center operators. Hence, make sure you know what to do whether or not adding new call center agents would help or not you achieve success.
Have a Ready Management Information System
While setting up a call center will obviously entail that you make logistics and processes readied before you start, don’t forget that you’ll need to keep track of everything you put or established.
Is your information current, factual and easy to follow? Help yourself by ensuring a lot of your management information, live monitoring and key performance indicators are available. Getting these data available will help you improve your existing processes to achieve maximum potential of your investments and capabilities.
Evaluate Success of Your Call Center Operation
Once you’re operational, it’s likely you’ll need to make sure you’re making a stride in your business. One way to examine whether or not you’re progressing is by looking over your key performance indicators (KPIs).
This way, all possible causes of problems can be analyzed before you can give the right solution and determine the perfect approach to optimize your performance.
Final Thoughts
It may be daunting to start your call center, but if you’ll follow these steps when starting to setup a call center in the Philippines, you’ll gain fair advantage over those who thought the whole process of opening a center is merely a game.
