Have you ever wanted to launch a call center, but don’t know how to build one? Owning your own call center is very rewarding and it takes a lot of hard work to get into. This guide will provide you a beginners guide on everything about running a call center and what tools and resources you would need to run it.
I been running a call center since the beginning of 2019. I was going through a lot of odd jobs in my career. Trying to get a sales and marketing position in New York City but I keep getting rejected. I was currently in $40,000 in debt during my time and my relationship with my parents were not well. I then remember having a business card from an elderly lady that this company in my hometown Wayne, NJ was hiring call center agents. I decided to go for an interview, and just like that I was easily hired.
I remember I was being paid at $8.25/hour at 21 years old, which is worst than my retail sales associate job, but I needed something. In less than 4 weeks, I was promoted from being a telemarketer to verifier. So the telemarketer is the out cold calling and reaching out to consumer, while the verifier intakes the consumer’s credit card and address.
In 2 months, I was promoted to assistant call center manager, overseeing 17 agents and handling the reporting. I became from being the most disrespected person because I was a kid and these people were making fun of me, to now call center agents begging me to run their favorite campaigns. Due to my experience, I was later then hired at a marketing company in August 2019 (You guys know who), with a low but good starting based salary + commission, and using my call center experience in the pay per call industry.
Now lets get started, shall we.
Define Your Goals
Define your WHY. Why do you want to run a call center? Is it because there is an opportunity to make money? Is it to build experience or want to launch a sales team that can close deals, policies, insurance or even intake calls. Your WHY is going to be the biggest driver when you launch a call center. If you don’t have a WHY, then you won’t have the motivation to do anything or even build one. It takes hard work, a lot of time and effort as well as money to get into it.
There are 3 ways on how your can run this call center. “Inbound” and “Outbound”
Inbound - You receive calls from traffic sources, ad platforms, billboards. Anything where the consumer saw the phone number and made the decision to make the call.
Example: Consumer sees ad → Makes a phone call → Connects to your call center team
Outbound - Your call center team does cold calling, outreach on a list of phone numbers and pitches the script that strikes their interest. This involves using an autodialer, buying load about of data. Once the call is connected, your call center agents start pitching the consumer, it can take 10 NOs to get 1 YES.
Example: Autodialer dials consumer → Consumer picks up the phone → Call center agent talks about their product/service
How to Hire Call Center Agents
The first step is where do you want to hire your call center agents, there are 2 types. On-shore and Off-shore.
Onshore - Call center agents who live in United States and Canada.
Advantages
Advantages
Advantages
I hope this Part 1 Guide shows you what goals you need to build a call center as well as what call center agents to choose.
In Part 2, I will be going over over the following
I been running a call center since the beginning of 2019. I was going through a lot of odd jobs in my career. Trying to get a sales and marketing position in New York City but I keep getting rejected. I was currently in $40,000 in debt during my time and my relationship with my parents were not well. I then remember having a business card from an elderly lady that this company in my hometown Wayne, NJ was hiring call center agents. I decided to go for an interview, and just like that I was easily hired.
I remember I was being paid at $8.25/hour at 21 years old, which is worst than my retail sales associate job, but I needed something. In less than 4 weeks, I was promoted from being a telemarketer to verifier. So the telemarketer is the out cold calling and reaching out to consumer, while the verifier intakes the consumer’s credit card and address.
In 2 months, I was promoted to assistant call center manager, overseeing 17 agents and handling the reporting. I became from being the most disrespected person because I was a kid and these people were making fun of me, to now call center agents begging me to run their favorite campaigns. Due to my experience, I was later then hired at a marketing company in August 2019 (You guys know who), with a low but good starting based salary + commission, and using my call center experience in the pay per call industry.
Now lets get started, shall we.
Define Your Goals
Define your WHY. Why do you want to run a call center? Is it because there is an opportunity to make money? Is it to build experience or want to launch a sales team that can close deals, policies, insurance or even intake calls. Your WHY is going to be the biggest driver when you launch a call center. If you don’t have a WHY, then you won’t have the motivation to do anything or even build one. It takes hard work, a lot of time and effort as well as money to get into it.
There are 3 ways on how your can run this call center. “Inbound” and “Outbound”
Inbound - You receive calls from traffic sources, ad platforms, billboards. Anything where the consumer saw the phone number and made the decision to make the call.
Example: Consumer sees ad → Makes a phone call → Connects to your call center team
Outbound - Your call center team does cold calling, outreach on a list of phone numbers and pitches the script that strikes their interest. This involves using an autodialer, buying load about of data. Once the call is connected, your call center agents start pitching the consumer, it can take 10 NOs to get 1 YES.
Example: Autodialer dials consumer → Consumer picks up the phone → Call center agent talks about their product/service
How to Hire Call Center Agents
The first step is where do you want to hire your call center agents, there are 2 types. On-shore and Off-shore.
Onshore - Call center agents who live in United States and Canada.
Advantages
- Have amazing American accent
- Understand the U.S Culture
- Most people are sales-oriented and confident
- Understand basic technology. Ex: Using a computer, wearing a headphone, typing.
- Great communication and soft skills, is able to personalize with the consumer and go off-script without any mistakes
- Expensive to hire. The starting salary in majority of states is at $15/hour, some states are even at $20/hour
- You have to find people who are hungry.
Advantages
- Inexpensive to hire. You can hire agents for as low as $2/hour
- Easy to replace, if one agent isn’t performing, there are plenty of other agents who are needing a job.
- It can take a while to train them. Especially since they are remote.
- Internet connection may be unstable.
- Accent isn’t great or similar to American accent.
- More prone to make mistakes, also prone to using more filler words that makes them sound unprofessional
- A ton of holidays, there are going to be weeks where call center agents are off due to Holi, or other religious holidays
Advantages
- Still affordable and not too expensive
- Internet connection is on par and stable. The latency is going to be quick with low delays.
- Accent is close to American accent. But will sound hispanic.
- Intelligence and less prone to making mistakes.
- Hungry to learn
- Not easy to replace, it can take a few days to find another call center agent
- Internet connection outages
- The amount of Holidays, depending on what country you hire, they may have a lot of holidays that you may not expect.
I hope this Part 1 Guide shows you what goals you need to build a call center as well as what call center agents to choose.
In Part 2, I will be going over over the following
- Launching your outbound call center
- What offers and verticals to run
- Choosing your call center software
- Building out your call center script