Call center businesses have always been in demand. It is evolving at a rapid rate because companies need professional customer care executives to take care of their customers and their concerns. For businesses, the more convenient option is to outsource customer care and support tasks to call centers rather than opening a complete call center, recruiting and managing agents, buying call center softwares, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions, drafting policies, SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), quality control etc. This has opened doors of opportunities for many aspiring business owners. Yes, you can be the next successful call center business owner. You can get local and international customer care contracts.

Thinking about the budget? Steps to setup? And other similar questions?

Worry not! Here is a step-wise guide to start a call center.

If you are starting with a good budget, then you should buy the best tools and hire the most skilled and experienced agents. But, if you want to start with a low budget, then the plan should be more strategic and cost effective.

1. Complete legal formalities first

A call center is not a freelancing business; it is a full-fledged business. Thus, according to your country’s law you should get a license and complete required legal formalities including entity registrations, tax registrations etc.

2. Hire limited staff

You will need agents to handle calls and they must be well trained and skilled. However, until you get a handful of projects you must start slow. Hire limited agents. Once you get one or two projects, you can go ahead and hire more agents and supervisors. Make sure you have adequate staff to handle the work load.

3. Start with open source software

To open a call center, you will require more than one solution like a few call center operation dedicated software, CRM solution, helpdesk ticketing solution, etc. based on your service area. The custom solution can be heavy on the pocket. Thus, you can use open source solutions. The open source solutions are free to use, and you will get almost all required features to support your startup. All you need to pay is a setup fee to the developers who will install it for you.

4. Customise the open source solution

It is really beneficial to invest some money in customisation. The open source solution will not have all required features. With customisation, you can get those missing features. For example, a few softwares don’t come with a sticky agent feature. Sticky-Agent feature allows you to ensure your callers are always connected to the agent he/she last spoke to, provided that agent is available to answer the calls. Your investment in customisation will help you in,

• Providing better service
• Increasing productivity
• Increasing business
  
  

Thus, you must customise your open source solutions.

That’s it! You have a pathway to start your own business of a call center within a limited budget.

Good luck and do share your success stories!

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