Opening up a contact center could be a great idea for some businesses. However, if you’re considering opening up a contact center, there are a couple of key points that new owners should keep in mind.
It is advantageous for businesses to run their own contact centers because then they can closely monitor their customer service, since the contact center would be in their own backyard. Many businesses prefer to be more hands-on when it comes to their customer service since they will have more control over it.
The following steps are ones that we share with our customers every day, as they are are essential to setting up a productive and successful contact center.
Set Business Goals and Objectives
Why a contact center now? For what purpose? Determining what you want the contact center operation to achieve for your organization is critical to a successful contact center setup plan. Once you determine the goal, then you will want to see if there are any secondary objectives or business goals. Establishing these goals and objectives is critical to success and to gauging that success in the future.
Determine if the Call Center Will Be Physical or Virtual
Do you have the resources for a physical call center with in-house agents, or would your business benefit more from a Dialer360 setup with remote agents? If you decide to choose a physical contact center, will you need one or multiple locations?
Discover any Operational Parameters or Constraints:
Before you begin to physically set up the contact center, you will want to examine your existing phone system. Can it be integrated with what you are planning to do, or will you need to upgrade your entire system? It is also important to understand the clientele that will be calling the center, as this might influence the contact center choices.
Set a Budget Early On
It is important to establish parameters regarding minimum and maximum expenditures very early in the contact center setup project. This will determine key factors, such as how many agents can be hired and what kind of telephony solutions can be used.
Establish the Best Team for Your Goals
If the goal of your contact center is to generate sales, then the best team for your goals would be a strong sales team, with some backup client service support. All of the decision center representatives ought to be educated, smart, intelligent, polite, and fluent in whichever language your customers speak.
Train Your Team for Anything
Get a team together to work out what types of calls the contact center agents should expect. If you're associate already established business, chances are high that somebody has already responded to these calls and queries. Notice that person, and see what it is that your customers and potential customers are asking.
Select Necessary KPIs
Choose key performance indicators that may enable you to live the success, internal workings, and productivity of the decision center. By choosing these early into the decision center method, agents are often trained around them.
Finalize a Disaster Recovery Plan
A disaster recovery arrangement is essential in case of emergency. Your customers expect you to be indestructible and ready for anything. By expecting the unexpected and having a disaster recovery arrangement in place, your center will have higher odds of bouncing back from any disaster.
Evaluate the Contact Center’s Success
After the contact center has been in operation for a couple of months, make sure to judge it. Those KPIs that were established at the start can come into play now. By evaluating the contact center, you can make sure operations are running well, and figure out which wrinkles ought to be ironed out.
Conclusion
After going through the entire process, there is one final decision you need to make: whether you are going to do all this yourself or outsource it to a vendor with capabilities in that field. If you have time and the resources, you might want to do it yourself. But if time is a factor, you can outsource to a System Integrator well versed in setting up different types of contact centers.
About the Author
Denise F. Swanson is a professional writer, blogger, and SEO social media expert. As a writer, she specializes in several niches, especially in technology, customer service, and telecom. You can follow her on Twitter @Denisfswanson.