I am in the course of starting a call center for IT support that is
about 5 or 6 seats.
and i dont know that much about call center technicalities. After
conducting a preliminary budget, some people told me that there are
call center Hardware and software that has to be in place before
anything, and that this Hardware is about $20,000 (being lucent or
Cisco or something like it). and i saw on the internet a lot of
software and a lot of prices for it. And then some other people told
me that i dont need sophisticated expensive equipments to begin and
that it can be much less. i read a story about a call center that
bought cisco, but they had 25 seats. so if you can please help
Then from the other side of the business. and from a point of view of
premium services that deals with support or the like. if we can do a
good (not big) marketing plan, that involves presences in major
events, print ads, flyers, newspaper and magazine ads. and maybe some
E and mobile marketing. but no TV commercials. In your view, what is
the respond rate that we could be talking about; we made calculations
with 1 to 3 % for the first year; but we cant decide for now what can
be the one that most accurate.
And please tell me if you think i am missing something important
Thanks

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Request for Question Clarification by shivreddy-ga on 10 Dec 2002 12:33 PST

Hi,

Please let us know your target countries and which country this call
center is going to be set up in.

Regards,
Shiv Reddy

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Clarification of Question by netmoud-ga on 10 Dec 2002 13:15 PST

My target market is an Arabic Speaking country with about a million or
more pcs in both home and business ( and i am sorry if i cant say
more), my target market for now is my country and can expand if
everything goes well to other arab countries with VOIP and then maybe
in a year or so to other non arab countries
i dont want to specialize in one area, i want to beginn by covering
the basics, windows, office, internet and connectivity and then go on
to security, applications and other..
hardware and sofware support
i didnt quiet get the question of the telecom cost but i think they
told (didnt confirm yet) that the operator (national exclusive) takes
about 35 to 40 % of the total revenu
 charging clients can begin by minute and then services agrements can
be put in place for professional clients to move into per incident or
yearly contancts

As someone who has been involved in call center/telemarketing/inside
sales for my entire career, I can tell you that you are getting into a
very, very competitive market, even with your niche of providing IT
support.  I don't want to say this to dampen your spirits, however,
while you are looking at a key stumbling block, infrastructure costs,
there are others that are going to be even more important such as
training, salaries, etc.  One issue you are going to run into is
getting qualified people to work on the phones for a wage that will
still allow you to make money.  The marketing, etc, is not that
difficult as there are brokers and others resources to find clients. 
Who is your target market?  Are you going to specialize in one are of
IT such as networking, hardware or software support, etc?  What will
your telcom costs be?  How will you charge clients, hourly, per
incident, etc.

I am posting this as a comment as it appears you are looking for
tangible information such as hard costs, etc, and I want to get you
thinking of the long term costs and benefits and determine if you see
it as a feasible business model.  There are a lot of companies making
alot of money doing exactly what you are envisioning.  There are even
more that didn't have the long term costs in mind that didn't make it.

Good luck!

-THV

When considering telephony for a call centre, the most important thing
to decide on is how much management information you require to monitor
the business.  Average handling times, calls per hour etc will be
needed in order to decide your staffing plans.  Without management
information, an inbound operation is sure to fail as invariably you
will either have to many or to few staff to hadle the influx of calls.

You will need to closely monitor your inbound telephony and staff
performance.  There are many swithches available to do this but I
suggest that you spend a great deal of time looking into resource and
capacity planning before you open up shop.  I would even suggest you
speak to your network provider as they will be able to supply thius
information at switch level without you initially spending a huge
ammount for onsite hardware.