Busting The Myths In The Call Center Business

The Philippines is currently the next hottest destination for business process outsourcing after India. There are several call centers and other business process outsourcing ventures operating in the country right now. A proof of this is when you look at the classified ads section of every Philippine newspaper, you can notice that more than half of the available jobs pertain to business process outsourcing. Another proof of this is the growth of our export sector despite the dwindling dollar. With these in mind, it looks like getting into the call center business will be very lucrative.

We thought of putting up a call center because of these developments. However as we closely studied the call center business, there were several things that we learned that helped dispel our misconceptions about call centers. They are as follows:

1.)Traditional business processes is still applied in the call center business - Operating a call center does not spell instant money in a short period of time contrary to what others think. It does not necessarily mean that you get instant profts just because the demand is so big or that you are earning dollars.

According to the study presented to us, it is only in the second year that the call center starts to profit. In the first year, losses or a break even has to be incurred first. This is similar to any kind of business. You can't expect to profit immediately. There is a window of time where sacrifices have to be made. Just like any traditional business you have to have a good management team. A lot of small time call center operations have been shutdown due to bad management. Most importantly your Human resource has to be very good as this is one of the most important departments of the call center operations.

2.) Intensive Capitalization is required in call center operations - Some people think that putting up a call center requires only a little amount of capitalization. After all you just rent a small space and hook up a bunch of computers together and to the internet. This is grave misconception. Contrary to what most people think, starting call center operations require you to burn money. For example, the dialing software alone cost more than a million pesos. Aside from buying the computers, you have to buy licensed copies of Windows XP. You also need to setup other stuff like your server, ensure a good and stable internet connection and buy the i.p telephones.

3.) Call center operations requires intensive marketing - Some people think that because there is so much demand for call centers they can just build a call center and expect clients to come. This kind of thinking is very erroneous. Clients are not just looking for "call centers" per se. They are looking for reputable call centers. Call centers that can deliver services that their clients wants them to deliver. As a new player, you will have to establish yourself as somebody who is reputable.

Big players in the industry have no problem with that. Clients immediately sign up to them because the have already established a name. But what about small players ? They usually only get the outbound. (Outbound refers to call center agents calling persons abroad trying to sell something or offering a service while inbound refers to catering to the needs of already existing clients of big companies who are outsourcing their services) There is money to be made in outbound but the problem is most outbound agreements are usually performance basis. So if your agents are good at selling or convincing people to buy your client's products or services than you make money. If not, then you loose. It may take some time for small players to establish themselves as reputable and trustworthy with the outbound before clients entrust them with the inbound.

It is therefore wise to consider all of these before you decide to join the bandwagon of the business process outsourcing industry in particular setting up a call center.