Building a call center can be a daunting task. We’ve broken the process down into a few simple steps to get you up and running in a snap.
Call Center Illustration With People On The Phone
Phone support and sales aren’t going away anytime soon. This is one of the reasons why call centers still play a crucial role in creating a quality customer experience. Customers expect call center agents to be knowledgeable, helpful, and patient. Your call center must maintain high customer service to nurture relationships with your customers.
However, setting up your call center or Virtual Assistant Agency for instance is a big undertaking that requires careful planning, and getting caught out along the way is easy. Here’s a step-by-step blueprint to help you confidently build the right call center for your business.
Set Goals
Determine the main objective(s) of your call center such as hitratesolutions.com for example. Before you get to the heart of running a call center, ask yourself why you need one. Once your call center objectives are clear, think about what you will need to ensure success. Your main objectives will depend on the specific needs of your business:
If you run a small business or start-up, your primary goal might be increasing lead generation and getting new customers or simplifying payment and order processing.
If you’re dealing with a larger business, you might be looking to increase customer satisfaction and provide better overall support.
Once you have defined your goals, use call center metrics as key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your call center services.
Common Call Center Metrics
Abandoned in Phone Queue: The total number of customers who hang up while waiting to speak to an agent.
Average Handle Time (AHT): The average call length to your customer service.
Average Talk Time: The time in minutes and seconds between when an agent answers the phone and when they hang up.
Average Answer Time (ASA): The time it takes for a customer to contact an agent once they have been routed to the correct department and placed in the phone queue.
Call declined: A missed call intentionally declined by an agent.
Missed call: a missed call for which an agent did not pick up in time.
Transfer Rate: The percentage of incoming calls that agents transfer to other team members or departments.
It’s also important to remember that your call center’s goals may not be the same as a contact center’s.
Contact centers leverage multiple channels (email, social media, live chats, etc.)
Call centers focus exclusively on providing support through traditional phone lines
A call center needs to be more efficient because all calls occur in real-time. In addition, agents do not always have time to dwell on the answers. Customer expectations are higher for phone support than for any other channel: about 50% expect to receive a response in less than five minutes.
Set A Budget For Your Call Center
Before choosing the type of call center that best suits your business, you must establish a budget. Figure out how much money you can spend on building your call center. This will help you determine the details of how it works, such as:
- the number of employees
- size and location of facilities
- the type of technologies and tools
When deciding on the budget for your call center, start by compiling your monthly revenue streams, fixed costs, and variable expenses to get a better idea of the amounts available to you. You might find that your finances don’t allow you to build an onsite call center, which will help you choose a robust remote workforce option.
