Negosentro|Wanting to open your own call center? Here are a few important things you should know about the choice of legal form, business registration, qualifications and prerequisites as well as costs, marketing, and customers.
More and more call centers are opening and you can’t deny the fact that it is booming! If you want to set up your own call center here in the United States, you have to decide if you wish to have an inbound or an outbound service type. Also, you have to choose VoIP service like Hottelecom. What is the difference between inbound and outbound call centers?
Inbound call center
Inbound call centers take phone calls inwardly and mainly about customer service. Complaints, problems and other concerns with regard to the service or bills land into inbound type of service and is primarily known to help the customer.
Another important term in the Inbound Call Center area is Digital Customer Service wherein you provide customer support through different platforms on the internet such as chat, social media, emails, forums, and apps.
Outbound call center
Outbound call centers are companies that call out of the center, have purchased phone numbers for a specific target group and now want to sell certain products to them. Outbound call centers generally have a bad reputation as no one likes to receive calls randomly, and often these are even at the limit of illegality due to the newly enacted protection laws. If you want to open an outbound call center, it is important to affirm the legality of your business through an expressive business plan.
Equipped with this knowledge and, at best, encouraged in your project, you should now think about the qualifications required of you.
Things you should know!
Before you start to set up your call center, you should first get an overview of the requirements and required qualifications. These appear low at first because you can also start your own business as a newcomer with a call center. Unfortunately, there are many unprofessional or illegal call centers that a previous education or even a study before the self-employment is recommended especially if you want to start an outbound call center. With training in the call center field, you will be able to prove your competence and open a legal and professional business.
- Businessman / saleswoman for dialogue marketing
- Service force for dialogue marketing
The path to self-employment can be a success through studying or continuing education as a state-certified call center manager. Professional experience is definitely an advantage in this industry as you have already gained insight into the workflow of a call center. If you have experienced being a call center agent or a team leader in a call center your knowledge deems important and ideal as you know the workaround already.
Open Call Center as a GmbH, UG, GbR or a limited company: Choose Legal Form
When starting a business, legal form choices are crucial. Legal forms GmbH, UG or GbR are chosen in most cases in opening new call centers. It is also important to note that legal forms differ in tax depending on your choice of form. Furthermore, you should make sure that the chosen legal form fits your start-up situation.
Commercial registrations for your call center
Commercial register entry of your call center
The commercial register documents as a public directory entries about the registered merchants in the area of a competent registry court. The company form of the GmbH requires an entry in the commercial register.
Open Call Center: Registration with the Trade Licensing Office
Regardless of the legal form you have chosen, you must register with the local trade office responsible for your company. If you open your call center as a sole proprietorship, a simple business registration is sufficient.
After registering with the commercial office, the tax office will automatically contact you for tax purposes. As soon as your documents have been inspected and checked by the tax office, you will receive your tax number and may issue invoices.
Chamber of Commerce and Industry for your call center
The Chamber of Commerce and Industry, like the tax office, is informed by the trade office about its founding. The contact is recorded by the IHK. When registering for a trade, membership in the IHK responsible for you is obligatory.
Create Call Center: Trade associations
Trade associations are the bearers of statutory accident insurance for companies and their employees. Please register independently with the professional association. Even as a small business without staff, you are required to register with your relevant BG. For example, CCall, a label of the administrative professional association, is especially responsible for call centers.
Federal Associations for your Call Center
Voluntary membership in a relevant federal association is recommended. Associations take over the representation of interests of the members and the branch opposite public, politics, etc. For call centers, in particular, the call center federation (CCV) or the German dialogue marketing federation (DDV) is responsible.
Create a Call Center: These costs come to you
Prepare a specific financial plan before you spend. Consider, among other things, the following cost items:
- Capital requirements for the start-up phase and for securing your livelihood
- Consulting and bureaucracy costs in the start-up phase
- Financial reserves for unforeseen events
In addition, you must apply for a special phone number for your call center and, if you are not starting your own home office, set up a network of multiple computers and telephones, including several separate desks so that each employee can work undisturbed and understand the customer properly
Customers, products, and industry for your call center
Now you have to decide between opening an inbound or outbound call center. Do you want to help customers with problems, for example in the computer sector? Or do you want to call customers yourself and convey these products or services? Call centers are a booming industry and even telemarketing is not extinct despite its bad reputation. After a successful start, various companies can buy capacities from their call center.
- If you choose an outbound call center, it is now important to win clients who want to market their products. Once this is done, you need to get the phone numbers of potential customers. These are usually sold optimized for the target group. Random ones are dialed and called from these virtual numbers.
- However, if you want to start your own business with an inbound call center, you will also need to find one or more principals who would like to outsource customer care and become familiar with their products. Now just wait for calls from customers.
Now that you’ve decided which direction your call center is heading for, you can also specialize in the industry. Do you want to commit and accept a variety of assignments or are you particularly interested in a specific industry? You should think about that because your industry also decides on marketing.
Open Outbound Call Center: Do not forget address qualification
An address qualification ensures that old or incorrect information is removed from the database and is properly updated. In address qualification, the persons are contacted by telephone, whereby the master data (addresses and telephone numbers) are brought up to date. The address qualification also corrects outdated company names and guarantees that you can also reach all persons from your data record. Furthermore, responsibilities and the hierarchy level are determined and, if necessary, corrected by means of address qualification. This enriches the dataset with information that is relevant to your marketing.
Location and staff for your call center establishment
The location of a call center is different than in the gastronomy or retail of no concern. Since you are not allowed to expect any patronage with new orders, here you have the free choice of your location. If you open a call center on your own, you can even work from home. Thus, you save on costs such as the rent of the business premises, access, maintenance, etc. However, if you want to employ staff and not in the home office, it is important to find a suitable location.
Staff should hire you as soon as you can not handle your requests on your own. Here you can contact employees for dialogue marketing, but also unskilled can bring passion and enthusiasm and support you.
Marketing and Sales
Not only are outbound call centers connected to a sales department but in the meantime also the inbound call centers, which specialize in customer service. Nowadays, you also carry out product consultations for your client in inbound. The close connection with the sales department of the company you are calling on enables you to increase profitability even further, as the Outbound Call Center is the first step in the sales process. Inbound call centers are usually responsible for the further steps of the sales department, but with the above-mentioned product consultations, inbound call centers are moving further and further up the sales process chain.
