• How-to

Call centers seem to have become an important phenomenon for most businesses in India, especially when the customer base expands. As a professional cus-tomer-care partner you can provide multiple clients with services that are superior in terms of cost, control and quality. One does not need to be a highly skilled individual in India to set up a domestic call center, be it outbound or inbound calling.

FUNDING AND CAPITAL INVESTMENT

You will need to have initial capital to invest in CRM software, dialers, calling workstations and basic infrastructure. You will also need a working capital for at least three months, as typically required by any business in its initial months. The capital to be invested can also come from a client who wants invest in your call center (by having direct shareholdings) or by a 100 percent Foreign Direct Investment (which is permitted in call centers). Similarly, for operations, you could have a client who wants to sell his product or service through your call center.

REGISTRATION

This is probably the most important stage. Register your business under the Other Service Provider (OSP) category. The validity for this registration is for a period of 20 years. Also, register with NDNC (National Do Not Call Registry) and with DoT (Department of Telecommunications). Interconnectivity of two domestic call centers, within same city or in any part of the country, is also permissible— subject to further approvals.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Typically, the size of a workstation should be between 30 to 60 square feet (super buildup area), connected with LAN, your chosen dialer, CRM, and centrally air-conditioned. Also, a small pantry area for recreational activities can be added.

Deploy a Dialer

You can choose from four different dialers:

• Predictive Dialer: Dials automatically, but requires large amounts of data or good, contactable data-points

•Progressive Dialer: Dials automatically with defined timelines to dial, good for response based dialing

• Preview Dialer: Dials at the discretion of the Telecaller

• Manual Dialer: Dials through a hard phone.Once that’s done, you will have to develop and  integrate the CRM with the dialer.

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS

It is important to define a set of service level agreements necessary for business efficacy, profitability, renewal of agreements from clients and scalability. You could also try and sell or cross-sell various products/services.

Outbound call centers are categorized further, based on the nature of operations being carried out in the facility:

• Telesales

• Telemarketing

• Tele-renewals and response telesales

Of these, telesales and telemarketing are the most popular. However, the most profitable outbound domestic call center business line is telemarketing. If the customer is interested, the telecallers will generate an appointment for the field executive with the customer. In this model, the revenue targets per workstation can be fixed, variable or a combination of both.

  ©Entrepreneur September 2009

Tags:
BPO, funding, infrastructure, service level agreement