How To Choose a New Call Center Location
As a business owner, you’re aware of the importance of delivering excellent customer service. It is a prioritized value that most companies strive to uphold and is a determining factor in their success. Nowadays, businesses will provide additional benefits by answering questions and concerns through contact facilities or call centers.
These sites can manage communication via phone, email, and web chats. Furthermore, call centers are essential to consider when expanding your business and strengthening your brand.
In this article, you’ll learn how to choose a new call center location that aligns with your company.
Staff Demographics
A call center could fail if your labor force does not display current qualities and innovative thinking towards the future. Start by analyzing the demographics of the potential site’s location, such as wage rates, education, and income levels.
Specifically, many contact facilities are within the parameters of military bases and community colleges due to the increased demand for part-time and full-time employment. Often, these types of work do not require college degrees or extensive training.
Labor Costs
Labor costs are a significant expense for most call centers and can account for 80% of the facility’s overhead. It’s a requirement for facilities to offer competitive wages to attract and retain staff since you would be competing with other call centers and traditional minimum-wage careers like fast food and retail businesses. In a constantly changing marketplace, your location should stay competitive by either raising wages or relocating to where wages are lower.
Location
When seeking the ideal call center location, you notice some terms that could impact its placement and convenience with your business.
Nearshore
Nearshore facilities sit just outside the United States, often in South America. These locations are convenient for business owners planning to travel back and forth periodically.
Offshore
Offshore facilities are those locations in countries sitting on different hemispheres.
Onshore
Onshore call centers are within the boundaries of the United States or Canada. Many of these facilities can locate within the same state as the business or elsewhere in the country.
Industry Saturation
Industry saturation rates are another factor when deciding on a contact facility’s new location. Ideal markets would benefit from low saturation rates; oversaturated environments are prone to employee retention drops, resulting in more workplace incentives and increased labor costs.
Time Zone Differences
Time zone differences are essential to consider when choosing your call center’s location so you can establish appropriate hours of operation. If your company conducts business on an international level, you’ll want to select a site with a compatible time zone.
For instance, if you plan on receiving calls from Singapore, it would be wise to avoid selecting a location in the United States, given the significant time difference. To prevent your employees from working at all hours, you want to decide on a site with a similar time zone.
Language Barriers
Often, the most efficient call centers have a diversity of employees that are fluent in multiple languages. Depending on your company’s market, you may need a multilingual team to handle calls from different countries.
To prevent language barriers, consider a location that has access to individuals with multilingual skills and abilities. You’ll also want to assess your target market to determine the countries your business serves the most and adequately accommodate your customers. Doing so will significantly impact which languages your staff will need to have fluent knowledge in.
Services
During your site selection process, it would be wise to ensure the location you choose can conduct inbound and outbound services. Call centers operate to answer customer questions and concerns about your company’s products or services. Facilities should also be able to provide technical assistance and process payments.
Infrastructure
A contact center’s infrastructure is the framework of physical and virtual resources that a potential site needs to operate effectively.
Setup Type
The dimensions of your facility may depend on the size of your staff and whether you wish to have in-house agents present. A physical call center operates on-site from a central location with the help of employees. Unlike the virtual call center alternative, these physical sites will also have infrastructure and software on the premises.
Call Center Software
Your potential site may not be able to host-specific software, so identify the most suitable type of software before searching for providers. Call facility software branches into four solutions that may differ in costs, deployment model, robustness, and scalability.
Software Provider
There are many software providers available, so it would be wise to select the option that benefits your location and business. To focus your search, take into account the software’s use, scalability, security, integration options, tech support, and ease of deployment.
Call Center Equipment
Most answering services use specific hardware such as phone systems and servers to operate. When selecting a call center location, consider a facility that can accommodate phone systems, computers, headsets, desks, and ergonomic furniture to support employee comfortability.
Amenities
As mentioned previously, your staff is essential to your center’s functionality. While you don’t need to offer daily catered breakfast and extravagant events, your location should highlight a few perks to set your business apart from the competition.
Consider sites with convenient amenities like fitness centers and on-site child care to support contact center productivity and stability when looking for a location. An ideal place would also have access to cafeterias, shopping, and nature trails.
While deciding on a site is a business move that can benefit your company, placing yourself in the shoes of your future agents and clients can help you identify the facility features that matter above all, making staff proud to represent your brand.
Choosing a call center location aligned with your business isn’t always a straightforward process. It would help if you considered high costs, company and client needs, time zone differences, and language barriers.
However, our team at WDG Consulting is glad to help. Our consultants demonstrate professionalism and expertise in the corporate site selection process. We work closely with our clients to ensure site selection aligns with objectives and expectations. To learn more about our services, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us through our webpage.
