business plan example call centre

Call Center Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Call Center Business Plan

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their call centers. On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning. We will then go through a call center business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

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What is a Call Center Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your call center as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategy for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan for a Call Center

If you’re looking to start a call center, or grow your existing call center, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your call center in order to improve your chances of success. Your business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Sources of Funding for Call Centers

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a call center are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans and angel investors. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business. Personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for call centers.

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How to write a business plan for a call center agency.

If you want to start a call center or expand your current one, you need a business plan. Below we detail what should be included in each section of your own plan:

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of call center you are operating and the status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a call center that you would like to grow, or are you operating call centers in multiple markets?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the telemarketing industry. Discuss the type of call center you are operating. Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Provide a snapshot of your marketing plan. Identify the key members of your team. And offer an overview of your financial plan.  

Company Overview

In your company overview, you will detail the type of call center you are operating.

For example, you might operate one of the following types of call centers:

• Inbound Call Center : this type of call center focuses on answering inbound phone calls usually from new and existing consumers.
• Outbound Call Center: this type of call center specializes in calling customers and consumers on a company’s behalf and are responsible for selling a product/service and expanding a company’s reach in their phone calls.
• Automated Call Centers: this type of call center has a computer-based system that is interactive and allows the callers to handle some of the responsibilities of directing their call.

In addition to explaining the type of call center you will operate, the Company Overview section of your business plan needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to question such as:

• When and why did you start the business?
• What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of customers served, number of positive reviews, reaching X amount of clients served, etc.
• Your legal structure. Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry analysis, you need to provide an overview of the telemarketing industry.

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.

Secondly, market research can improve your strategy, particularly if your research identifies market trends.

The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting this market research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section:

• How big is the industry (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential market for your call center? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments: telemarketing companies, large organizations, charities, and help desks/customer support teams.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of call center you operate. Clearly, charities would respond to different marketing promotions than help desks, for example.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, include a discussion of the ages, genders, locations and income levels of the customers you seek to serve.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

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Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other call centers.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t direct competitors. This includes in-house customer support departments and online support websites. You need to mention such competition as well.

With regards to direct competition, you want to describe the other call centers with which you compete. Most likely, your direct competitors will be call centers located very close to your location.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:

• What types of customers do they serve?
• What type of call center are they?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Will you provide shorter call times and higher call volume?
• Will you provide call center services that your competitors don’t offer?
• Will you provide better customer service?
• Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.  

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a call center agency, your marketing plan should include the following:

Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of call center company that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific products you will be offering. For example, in addition to a call center, will you provide call forwarding, market research, lead generation, and any other services?

Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your marketing plan, you are presenting the call center services you offer and their prices.

Place : Place refers to the location of your call center company. Document your location and mention how the location will impact your success. For example, is your call center located in a busy retail district, a business district, a standalone office, etc. Discuss how your location might be the ideal location for your customers.

Promotions : The final part of your call center marketing plan is the promotions section. Here you will document how you will drive customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

• Advertising in local papers and magazines
• Reaching out to websites
• Social media marketing
• Local radio advertising

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your call center, including answering inbound calls, making outbound calls, finding solutions to customers’ issues, track statistics of your call length and volume, and expand the reach of your client.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to land your Xth client, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to expand your call center to a new city.

Management Team

To demonstrate your call center’ ability to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.

Ideally you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing call centers. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act like mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in managing a call center or successfully running a sales or customer support team .  

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you take on one new client at a time or multiple new clients ? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets : Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your call center, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a bank writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a call center:

• Cost of computer software.
• Cost of equipment and supplies
• Payroll or salaries paid to staff
• Business insurance
• Taxes and permits
• Legal expenses

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your office location lease or invoices of client projects you are working on.  

Putting together a business plan for your call center is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will really understand the call center industry, your competition, and your customers. You will have developed a marketing plan and will really understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful call center.  

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Call Center Business Plan

If you are planning to start a new call center business, the first thing you will need is a business plan. Use our sample call center business plan created using Upmetrics business plan software to start writing your business plan in no time.

Before you start writing your business plan for your new call center business, spend as much time as you can reading through some examples of services-related business plans.

Reading sample business plans will give you a good idea of what you’re aiming for, and also it will show you the different sections that different entrepreneurs include and the language they use to write about themselves and their business plans.

We have created this sample Call Center Business Plan for you to get a good idea about what a perfect business plan should look like and what details you will need to include in your stunning business plan.

Call Center Business Plan Outline

This is the standard call center business plan outline, which will cover all important sections that you should include in your business plan.

• Mission Statement
• Vision Statement
• Customer Focus
• 3 Year profit forecast
• Business Structure
• Startup cost
• Products and Services
• Market Trends
• Corporate Organizations
• Advertising and Marketing Agencies
• Political Parties
• Religious Organizations
• SWOT Analysis
• Sales Strategy
• Advertising Strategy
• Sales Forecast
• Important Assumptions
• Brake-even Analysis
• Profit Yearly
• Gross Margin Yearly
• Projected Cash Flow
• Projected Balance Sheet
• Business Ratios

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After  getting started with Upmetrics , you can copy this sample business plan into your business plan and modify the required information and download your call center business plan pdf and doc file. It’s the fastest and easiest way to start writing your business plan.

Download a sample call center business plan

Need help writing your business plan from scratch? Here you go;  download our free call center business plan pdf  to start.

It’s a modern business plan template specifically designed for your call center business. Use the example business plan as a guide for writing your own.

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Call Center Business Plan

Start your own call center business plan

Vashon Solicitation Services

Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">.

Introduction It is the mission of Vashon Solicitation Services to provide clients with top quality call center services 24 hours-a-day. A service that provides our clients with the greatest chance of communicating with their end customers. We do B2B and B2C services including both inbound and outbound calls. We have a dedicated and well trained cadre of customer support specialists who are able to consistently provide excellent services delivered in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Whatever a client’s customer relations goals are: quantifying sales leads, taking orders, responding to ad inquiries, market research, or general information requests, VSS has the people with the expertise to professionally service those needs.

The Company VSS will be a limited liability partnership registered in the state of Delaware for tax purposes. Its founder is Mr. Martin Gibbs, a former telemarketing head with Medfone, Inc. Mr. Gibbs has brought together a highly respected group of telemarketing and customer relations specialists who have a total of 35 years of combined experience with this industry.

The company has a limited number of private investors and does not plan to go public. The company has its main offices in Gig Harbor, Washington. The facilities include office spaces, conference rooms, and a phone center. The company expects to begin offering services in June of Year 1.

The Services Vashon offers a wide range of call center service including both inbound and outbound calls. We provide bilingual services in both english and spanish. The most common needs that we can fulfill are:

• Generate sales leads
• Set appointments
• Market research
• Surveys (including statistical analysis and political surveys)
• First level help desk
• Database or mailing list information
• Business development
• Point-of-sale product promotion
• Seminar and conference invitations

VSS is not a telemarketing company, we do not create the marketing campaigns for our clients. Experience has shown that many companies desire to create their own marketing campaign since they already have marketing personnel with extensive contact and experience in the industry.

The Market The telemarketing industry is a growing industry with most companies having an annual growth between 6.5% and 8%. This is due to businesses that are becoming increasingly aware of the need for market information and the desire to reduce customer turnover rates in a hard hit economy. A significant trend in this industry is the growing number of clients who wish to outsource telemarketing functions to client companies instead of developing such infrastructure in-house. This makes for an excellent opportunity for VSS. However, long-term analysis of growth rates in this industry show a cyclical pattern and VSS does not expect this high growth rate to continue.

VSS plans to enter into two market segments. First, we will work in the medical services industry since they have a high need to maintain contact with their patients at all times. We will also be working as a first level help desk for a number of small high-tech companies, and be taking on short-term projects such as surveys from small clients.

Financial Considerations Start-up assets required are shown in the tables accompanying the Start-up Summary topic. This includes expenses and the cash needed to support operations until revenues reach an acceptable level. Most of the company’s liabilities will come from outside private investors and management investment, however, we have obtained current borrowing from Bank of America Commercial Investments, the principal to be paid off in two years. A long-term loan through Charter Bank of Tillamook will be paid off in ten years. We also have a line of credit from Viking Bank that we can draw upon if need be.

The company expects to reach profitability in year two and does not anticipate any serious cash flow problems. We conservatively believe that during the first three years that about three ongoing contracts per month will guarantee a break-even point.

1.1 Keys to Success

Vashon’s keys to long-term survivability and profitability are:

• Create long-term contracts that demand constant monitoring or on-call services.
• Keeping close contact with clients and establishing a well functioning long-term relationship with them to generate repeat business and obtain a top notch reputation.
• Establish a comprehensive service experience for our clients that includes consultation, progress reports and post-program feedback.

1.2 Mission

It is the mission of VSS to provide our clients with top quality call center services 24 hours-a-day that provide the greatest chance of communicating with end customers. We do B2B and B2C services including both inbound and outbound calls. We have a dedicated and well trained cadre of customer support specialists who are able to consistently provide excellent services delivered in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Whatever a client’s customer relations goals are: quantifying sales leads, taking orders, responding to ad inquiries, market research, or general information requests, VSS has the people with the expertise to professionally service your needs.

1.3 Objectives

The three year goals for Vashon Solicitation Services LLC (VSS) are:

• Achieve break-even by year two.
• Establish long-term contracts with at least four clients.
• Establish minimum 95% customer satisfaction rate to form long-term relationships with our clients and create word of mouth marketing.

Company Summary company overview ) is an overview of the most important points about your company—your history, management team, location, mission statement and legal structure.">

VSS will be a limited liability partnership registered in the state of Delaware for tax purposes. Its founder is Mr. Martin Gibbs, a former telemarketing head with Medfone, Inc. Mr. Gibbs has brought together a highly respected group of telemarketing and customer relations specialists who have a total of 35 years of combined experience with this industry.

The company has a limited number of private investors and does not plan to go public. The company has its main offices in Gig Harbor, Washington. The facilities include office spaces, conference rooms, and a phone center. The company expects to begin offering its services in June of Year 1.

The company’s main clients will be companies that require high amounts of communication between themselves and their clients. This includes medical services, and companies that wish to outsource first-level help desk support. By focusing on institutions such as these that have special needs, we believe we will be able to better serve our clients and produce a superior service that is more effective that other call center firms.

2.1 Start-up Summary

Start-up assets required are shown in the tables below. This includes expenses and the cash needed to support operations until revenues reach an acceptable level. Most of the company’s liabilities will come from outside private investors and management investment, however, we have obtained current borrowing from Bank of America Commercial Investments, the principal to be paid off in two years. A long-term loan through Charter Bank of Tillamook will be paid off in ten years.We also have a line of credit from Viking Bank that we can draw upon if need be.

2.2 Company Ownership

The company will have a number of outside private investors who will own 27% of the company’s shares. The rest will be owned by the senior management including Mr. Martin Gibbs, (25%), Ms. Mary Stuart (20%), Mr. Henry Hannover, (20%), and Mr. Nicholas Caput (8%). All other financing will come from loans.

Vashon offers a wide range of call center service including both inbound and outbound calls. We provide bilingual services in both english and spanish. The most common needs for call centers are:

• Database or mailing list information

VSS is not a telemarketing company we do not create the marketing campaigns for our clients. Experience has shown that many companies desire to create their own marketing campaign since they already have marketing personnel with extensive contact and experience in the industry. However, the costs of carrying out such a telemarketing campaign can be prohibitive and often the firm does not wish to develop the infrastructure to do so. This requires developing different skills and core competencies that divert management and resources from their primary duties. This is where VSS comes in. We either connect a prospective client with a telemarketing company (we have arrangements and contacts with three such consulting firms) or once such a campaign is designed we implement it for our clients. We work closely with our clients in the creation of the campaign’s goals, scope, length, and costs so has to create as close a fit between the client needs and our capabilities.

Market Analysis Summary how to do a market analysis for your business plan.">

The telemarketing industry is a growing industry with most companies having an annual growth between 6.5% and 8%. This is due to businesses that are becoming increasingly aware of the need for market information and the desire to reduce customer turnover rates in a hard hit economy. A significant trend in this industry is the growing number of clients who wish to outsource telemarketing functions to client companies instead of developing such infrastructure in-house. This makes for an excellent opportunity for VSS. However, long-term analysis of growth rates in this industry show a cyclical pattern and VSS does not expect this high growth rate to continue.

The telemarketing industry is quite fragmented with companies that vary greatly in size, scope, services offered, and market share. Many companies are general advertising agencies that offer telemarketing services along with a wide range of other consulting services. In addition, many companies, still not realizing the potential advantages of outsourcing, choose to develop their own telemarketing services.

VSS plans to enter into two market segments. First, we will work in the medical services industry since they have a high need to maintain contact with their patients at all times. We also will be working as a first level help desk for a number of small high-tech companies. Mr. Gibbs and Ms. Stuart have already signed contracts with Evergreen Medical and Sno-net, Inc. to serve in these capacities. We will also be taking on short-term projects, such as surveys, from small clients.

4.1 Market Segmentation

Virtually every company, both large and small require some form of telemarketing at some point. Often it is a survey to determine customer satisfaction or awareness. Sometimes it is effectively communicating an upcoming event such as a conference.

Other companies wish to know if telemarketing is a feasible method of sales generation. One of the new uses for call centers is in first level help desk services. About 75-80% of all technical problems faced by end customers can be solved by non-technical customer service representatives who are familiar with a computer or technical system and who have a scripted set of procedures to solve most common occuring problems. This is where an outsourced call center can save a client a large amount of money and allow a reduction in personnel needed on call 24 hours-a-day.

VSS plans to enter into two market segments. First, we will work in the medical services industry since they have a high need to maintain contact with their patients at all times. We also will be working as a first level help desk for a number of small high-tech companies.

Mr. Gibbs and Ms. Stuart have already signed contracts with Evergreen Medical and Sno-net, Inc. to serve in these capacities. Our customer service representatives are already in the process of receiving hands-on training from these two companies to meet their needs. We will also be taking on short-term projects such as surveys from small clients.

Once we have established a good working relationship with these initial clients, we will leverage our reputation and profitability into new contacts and contracts with other local companies. Our ultimate goal is to service the entire west coast region and become the company with a dominant market share.

The market analysis table and graph which follows shows the number of businesses within the state of Washington. This will be our initial geographical focus for the first four to five years of our company’s existance. Later, as we expand to a west coast scope, our future business plans will include all of our potential clients in this area.

4.2 Service Business Analysis

The telemarketing industry is a growing industry with most companies having an annual growth between 6.5% and 8%. This is due to businesses that are becoming increasingly aware of the need for market information and the desire to reduce customer turnover rates in a hard hit economy. However, long-term analysis of growth rates in this industry show a cyclical pattern and VSS does not expect this high growth rate to continue.

The telemarketing industry is quite fragmented with companies that vary greatly in size, scope, services offered, and market share. Many companies are general advertising agencies that offer telemarketing services along with a wide range of other consulting services. In addition, many companies, not realizing the potential advantages of outsourcing, choose to develop their own telemarketing services.

VSS believes that the greatest threat at the moment is in new entrants to the market who perceive an opportunity in a “high” growth industry. The most likely entrants will be pre-existing advertising agencies wishing to horizontally integrate and enter new sub-markets.

The one major disadvantage to new entrants is that all firms engaged in contracting to telemarketing agencies face significant switching costs when bringing on a new partner. Furthermore, VSS understands that in this industry there is a significant learning curve that creates declining “unit” costs as a firm gains more cumulative experience in the field itself and with long-term clients specifically. Finally there are significant start-up costs associated with creating a call center.

Rivalry among different call center agencies is quite intense. The telemarketing industry as a whole is mature with long-term moderate growth. Most of the largest agencies are mutually dependent when it comes to jockeying for position and market share. The fact that there are so many diverse and seemingly “generic” or general telemarketing agencies makes this a cutthroat industry.

4.2.1 Competition and Buying Patterns

Competition Competition includes all potential call centers and telemarketing agencies across the country. In addition we have indirect competition from organizations that handle all their telemarketing in-house. Practically speaking, this means we have the greatest threat from the largest telemarketing agencies such as Crouch & Weasley, Berman Telemarketing, and other big, nationwide call center companies that hold significant market share. The call center industry is highly fragmented, with a large number of small companies that mainly cater to small firms and a few large companies that seek the largest contracts from companies such as Sprint, GM, etc. This makes competition within the industry very intense. Through our focused strategy of serving niche markets such as help desk services, we intend to avoid such a debilitating environment and avoid its drawbacks such as price wars, and etc.

Buying patterns and needs Companies usually enter into contracts with call center firms based on their reputation of professionalism and effective campaigns in the past. This reputation is difficult to obtain by new firms unless its personnel bring it with them from previous companies such as ours. Price and scope are also important reasons for accepting contracts, especially if the company is small.

Strategy and Implementation Summary

Vashon Solicitation Services’ business strategy is to enter into a focused approach to its services rather than being everything to its clients. Our company does not intend to be a telemarketing consultation firm, nor will it ever become so. We are a call center firm that simply implements telemarketing campaigns or help desk functions for its clients. These services are where we can offer a higher standard of quality to our clients. This will allow us to charge a higher profit margin for these differentiated and more focused services.

5.1 Marketing Strategy

Vashon has already concluded two contracts with local companies requiring 24 hour call center services. These will provide us with initial revenue and the chance to build our reputation. Our company intends to use testimonials from such clients to build further contracts. We have begun to establish our presence using various marketing methods such as flyers, cold calls, B2B contacts, and we will be attending conventions and other events as well.

5.2 Sales Strategy

Vashon’s management will be focusing on leveraging its employee’s established reputations and contacts in the telemarketing industry to generate contracts. Both Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Hannover have been in the industry for many years and experience shows that many of their existing clients will still wish to work with them despite having to establish a new contract with VSS. We also understand that we may need to lower costs in our first couple of years in order to attract new customers and close deals.

In addition to our first contracts with Evergreen Medical and Sno-net, Inc. Mr. Hannover has been actively seeking to acquire a large contract with National Conventions & Events over the past seven months. This company is the largest event organizing firm on the West coast and has been seeking a call center firm for a customer survey project to be launched in the near future. VSS believes that its chances for acquiring this contract are excellent.

5.2.1 Sales Forecast

Sales are based on the various contract projects we anticipate acquiring in the various market segments. Revenues are based on average costs per project/contract based on estimated time and complexity of contract plus and undisclosed profit margin. The company does not have any significant direct costs of sales.

We anticipate that our most attractive target markets, medical services and help desk clients will provide us with significant early revenue. As time goes on, and we acquire more customers, the percentage of short-term and other projects will increase.

Management Summary management summary will include information about who's on your team and why they're the right people for the job, as well as your future hiring plans.">

The company will have four officers including our president, Mr. Martin Gibbs. Our head of operations will be Mr. Nicholas Caput, plus 12 customer service representatives. Finances and general admin will be handled by Ms. Stuart.

The company plans to hire additional service representatives, and administrative personnel as we begin to get large numbers of contracts.

6.1 Personnel

Vashon’s management brings to the company strong capabilities in contract negotiation, project management, telemarketing, and a unique combination of skills drawn from other businesses.

Key Personnel

Mr. Martin Gibbs is a graduate of the University of Missouri where he obtained his business degree degree in 1971. Since then, Mr. Gibbs has had extensive experience in marketing, telemarketing, and project management. This includes experience in budgeting, project oversight, etc. In 1996 he obtained a graduate degree in marketing from University of Washington. Mr. Gibbs spent the last four years as the telemarketing department head with Medfone, Inc.

Mr. Nicholas Caput graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelors degree in marketing in 1975. From 1978-1988 Mr. Caput worked for Nelson Marketing Consultants. In 1989 he went to work for Anderson Consulting in their marketing division, where he worked as a project manager.

Financial Plan investor-ready personnel plan .">

Our financial plan anticipates two years of negative profits as we gain sales volume. We have budgeted enough investment to cover these losses and have an additional credit line available if sales do not match predictions.

7.1 Important Assumptions

We are assuming approximately 75% sales on credit and average interest rates of 10%. These are considered to be conservative in case our predictions are erroneous.

7.2 Break-even Analysis

Our break-even analysis is based on the assumptions that our gross margin is approximately 100%. In other words, we will have insignificant direct cost of sales. Since each contract will be of different scope, length, and complexity, it is difficult to assign and average per unit revenue figure. However, it is conservatively believed that during the first three years, average profitability per month per segment will be moderate. This is because we will be dealing with smaller companies at first that have smaller contracts. We expect that about three ongoing contracts per month will guarantee a break-even point.

7.3 Projected Profit and Loss

The following table itemizes our revenues and associated costs. We expect to be paying higher costs in marketing and advertising than other companies as we attempt to build sales volume. As shown in the table in the Appendix, we expect monthly profits to begin in December 2003.

7.4 Projected Cash Flow

The following is our cash flow chart and diagram. We do not expect to have any short-term cash flow problems even though we will be operating at a loss for the first nine months. Our short-term loan will be repaid in two equal payments in 2004-2005. Our long-term loan will be paid off in ten years.

7.5 Projected Balance Sheet

The following table shows the projected balance sheet for VSS.

7.6 Business Ratios

We have included industry standard ratios from the telemarketing solicitation services industry to compare with ours. These ratios are as closely matched to our industry as management could find, however there are some significant differences, especially in sales growth, financing ratios, long-term asset investments and net worth. However, our projections indicate a healthy company that will be able to obtain and retain long-term profitability.

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Call Center Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Call Center Business Plan

You’ve come to the right place to create your Call Center business plan.

We have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans and many have used them to start or grow their Call Center businesses.

Below is a template to help you create each section of your Call Center business plan.

Executive Summary

Business overview.

TalkCentral is a new inbound call center located in San Antonio, Texas. Our call center will provide customer service and help desk support for customers of tech, software, and telecommunications companies. We can provide customers support through phone call or text and will always help customers with the utmost patience, compassion, and respect. Clients who work with us will experience a significant improvement in customer satisfaction and retention.

TalkCentral is founded by Dave Harper. Dave was previously a senior manager at one of the leading telecommunications companies in the country. However, his company had a horrible reputation for untimely and unhelpful customer service. Therefore, he was inspired to create a call center that would improve the support experience for customers of similar companies.

Product Offering

TalkCentral will provide customer support for the customers of our clients. Since we will work with clients in the tech, software, and telecommunications industries, we will primarily help their customers with billing services, questions regarding products and services, and technical issues. Customers can call or text our service lines for support. They will quickly be matched with an appropriate agent by answering the prompts from our automated system.

Customer Focus

TalkCentral will primarily serve tech, software, and telecommunications companies that are in need of a good customer support team. Though TalkCentral is located in San Antonio, we will assist any companies in these industries that are located in the United States.

Management Team

TalkCentral is founded by Dave Harper. Dave was previously a senior manager at one of the leading telecommunications companies in the country. Unfortunately, his company had a horrible reputation for untimely and unhelpful customer service. He found that the customer service team was inadequately trained and had a high turnover rate. This led to low customer satisfaction and retention scores. Since the company was slow to resolve these issues, Dave was inspired to create an inbound call center that would help provide quality customer support to similar companies.

Success Factors

TalkCentral is primed for success by offering the following competitive advantages:

• TalkCentral will provide quality customer service for a more affordable price than clients would pay hiring their own customer service team.
• The company will offer high-quality customer service that increases customer retention.
• TalkCentral has a management team with extensive experience running a multi-billion dollar telecommunications company.

Financial Highlights

TalkCentral is currently seeking $700,000 to launch. The funding will be dedicated to the office build out, equipment and supplies, overhead, marketing expenses, and working capital. The breakout of the funding is below:

• Office design/build: $250,000
• Equipment, technology, and supplies: $100,000
• Three months of overhead (rent, utilities, salaries): $200,000
• Marketing expenses: $100,000
• Working capital: $50,000

The following graph below outlines the pro forma financial projections for TalkCentral.

Company Overview

Who is talkcentral.

  When our clients’ customers call our number, their call will be answered quickly and efficiently. Customers can call in for questions regarding billing, services, or products as well as get answers and help to technical problems they are experiencing. We will have an easy phone system that will guide them to the perfect agent who can help them.

While working as a senior manager, Dave was inspired to create a call center that would provide quality customer support for tech, software, and telecommunications companies. He conducted a market analysis and surveyed his previous employer’s customers to see if there was demand for these services. The results from the analysis and survey were overwhelmingly positive, which inspired Dave to immediately start planning his new business.

TalkCentral’s History

After conducting his market analysis and survey, Dave Harper incorporated TalkCentral as an S-Corporation on May 1st, 2023. Since incorporation, Dave has achieved the following milestones for TalkCentral:

• Developed the company’s name, logo and website
• Finished the list of services the company will provide
• Determined equipment and inventory requirements
• Found a potential office location

TalkCentral’s Services

TalkCentral will primarily offer customer service and help desk support for customers of tech, software, and telecommunications companies. Customers can either call or text our support lines and will be guided to an appropriate agent to help them with their problem. We expect most customers will call to discuss billing or technical problems they are experiencing.

Industry Analysis

Revenue for the inbound call centers is expected to grow over the next five years. This growth is due to the increasing demand for quality customer support teams and the need to outsource these services. Poor customer support results in low customer retention. However, hiring and training a quality customer support team is expensive so many companies outsource these services to call centers to save money. Therefore, there is significant demand for these services and that demand is not expected to slow down anytime soon.

According to Research And Markets, the global call center outsourcing market was valued at $249 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.93% until 2027. This is significant growth for any industry and shows just how much companies will continue to depend on these services. Therefore, this is a great time to launch a new inbound call center as we are sure to be successful and profitable.

Customer Analysis

Demographic profile of target market, customer segmentation.

TalkCentral will primarily target the following customer profiles:

• Tech companies
• Software companies
• Telecommunications companies

Competitive Analysis

Direct and indirect competitors.

TalkCentral will face competition from other companies with similar business profiles. A description of each competitor company is below.

Fusion Support Services

Fusion Support Services has been a popular business process outsourcing company in San Antonio for 20 years. They offer numerous services for local companies, including inbound customer service, human resources, and marketing. Since they can offer a whole package of services, they have created several long-lasting relationships with medium and large sized businesses in the area. However, Fusion Support Services does not specialize in inbound customer support. Therefore, companies looking for professionals in this field will prefer our services.

Texas Tech Support

Texas Tech Support is an inbound call center that specifically helps tech companies with customer service and tech support services. Tech companies are usually more invested in the development of their products than providing customer support, so they need a partner company that can provide these services to their customers. Texas Tech provides a fully trained staff of professionals that can help customers with basic questions regarding billing, products, or technical difficulties. Every call is answered with compassion, patience, and incredible expertise that helps improve customer satisfaction and retention.

Genesis Support Services

Genesis Support Services is a highly fast-paced call center environment located in the heart of San Antonio. They offer a wide variety of outsourced inbound call center services and cater to numerous industries and businesses located in the San Antonio area. They have been in the business for 30 years and are often the first call center businesses think of when they need customer service support. However, their reputation has suffered in recent years, which gives TalkCentral an advantage as we enter the market.

Competitive Advantage

TalkCentral will be able to offer the following advantages over the competition:

• Management : Our management team has extensive experience leading and managing telecommunications companies and providing customer support services.
• Affordability : We will provide quality services at a more affordable rate than the competition.
• Quality Service : TalkCentral is committed to providing quality customer service and support. We guarantee our services will help improve customer satisfaction and retention.

Marketing Plan

Brand & value proposition.

TalkCentral will offer the unique value proposition to its clientele:

• High-quality customer support and help desk services
• Affordable rate
• Highly trained staff
• Guarantee of improved customer retention

Promotions Strategy

The promotions strategy for TalkCentral is as follows:

Website/SEO Marketing

TalkCentral will design an efficient and appealing website to attract clients. The website will be well organized, informative, and list the services that we provide. We will also invest in SEO so that we will appear at the top of search engine results when clients are searching for call centers to partner with.

Social Media

The company will have several social media accounts and invest in ads on all social media platforms. The company will also use targeted marketing to appeal to our target demographics.

Targeted Cold Calls

TalkCentral will initially invest significant time and energy into contacting potential clients via telephone. In order to improve the effectiveness of this phase of the marketing strategy, a highly-focused call list will be used, targeting startups and small businesses. As this is a very time-consuming process, it will primarily be used during the startup phase to build an initial client base.

Advertisement

Advertisements in print publications like newspapers, magazines, etc., are an excellent way for businesses to connect with their audience. TalkCentral will advertise its services in popular magazines and news dailies. Obtaining relevant placements in industry magazines and journals will also help in increasing brand visibility.

The pricing of TalkCentral will be moderate and on par with competitors so clients feel they receive value when hiring our services.

Operations Plan

TalkCentral will utilize the following operations plan. Operation Functions:

• Dave Harper will be the President of TalkCentral and will oversee the general operations of the company. To launch, he will need to hire the following staff:
• An Administrative Assistant to help with administrative functions.
• An Accountant who will manage all client invoicing, billing, and payables.
• A Human Resources Manager who will oversee all employee hiring, onboarding, payroll, retention, and benefits programs.
• A Marketing Manager to oversee all the marketing and promotional campaigns.
• Training Managers who will train the customer support staff.
• 50 customer support staff to provide our customer support and help desk services.

Milestones:

TalkCentral will have the following milestones complete in the next six months:

• 6/1/202X – Finalize lease agreement for office space
• 7/1/202X – Office build out
• 8/1/202X – Hire and train essential staff
• 9/1/202X – Begin marketing campaign
• 10/1/202X – Launch TalkCentral
• 11/1/202X – Reach break even

As a former senior manager, Dave has extensive experience in the management and operations aspects of running a large, successful business. He will hire several staff to help him manage the administrative, marketing, accounting, and customer service functions of the company.

Financial Plan

Key revenue & costs.

The key revenues for TalkCentral will come from charging our clients for our services.

The major cost drivers will include salaries, overhead, equipment purchasing and maintenance, and marketing expenses.

Funding Requirements and Use of Funds

Key assumptions.

The following outlines the key assumptions required in order to achieve the revenue and cost numbers in the financials and pay off the startup business loan.

• Number of clients:
• Annual lease: $100,000

Financial Projections

Income statement.

Balance Sheet

Cash Flow Statement

Call Center Business Plan FAQs

What is a call center business plan.

A call center business plan is a plan to start and/or grow your call center business. Among other things, it outlines your business concept, identifies your target customers, presents your marketing plan and details your financial projections.

You can easily complete your Call Center business plan using our Call Center Business Plan Template here .

What are the Main Types of Call Center Businesses? 

There are a number of different kinds of call center businesses , some examples include: Inbound Call Center, Outbound Call Center, and Automated Call Centers.

How Do You Get Funding for Your Call Center Business Plan?

Call Center businesses are often funded through small business loans. Personal savings, credit card financing and angel investors are also popular forms of funding.

What are the Steps To Start a Call Center Business?

Starting a call center business can be an exciting endeavor. Having a clear roadmap of the steps to start a business will help you stay focused on your goals and get started faster.

1. Develop A Call Center Business Plan - The first step in starting a business is to create a detailed call center business plan that outlines all aspects of the venture. This should include potential market size and target customers, the services or products you will offer, pricing strategies and a detailed financial forecast. 

2. Choose Your Legal Structure - It's important to select an appropriate legal entity for your call center business. This could be a limited liability company (LLC), corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship. Each type has its own benefits and drawbacks so it’s important to do research and choose wisely so that your call center business is in compliance with local laws.

3. Register Your Call Center Business - Once you have chosen a legal structure, the next step is to register your call center business with the government or state where you’re operating from. This includes obtaining licenses and permits as required by federal, state, and local laws.

4. Identify Financing Options - It’s likely that you’ll need some capital to start your call center business, so take some time to identify what financing options are available such as bank loans, investor funding, grants, or crowdfunding platforms.

5. Choose a Location - Whether you plan on operating out of a physical location or not, you should always have an idea of where you’ll be based should it become necessary in the future as well as what kind of space would be suitable for your operations.

6. Hire Employees - There are several ways to find qualified employees including job boards like LinkedIn or Indeed as well as hiring agencies if needed – depending on what type of employees you need it might also be more effective to reach out directly through networking events.

7. Acquire Necessary Call Center Equipment & Supplies - In order to start your call center business, you'll need to purchase all of the necessary equipment and supplies to run a successful operation.

8. Market & Promote Your Business - Once you have all the necessary pieces in place, it’s time to start promoting and marketing your call center business. This includes creating a website, utilizing social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, and having an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. You should also consider traditional marketing techniques such as radio or print advertising. 

Learn more about how to start a successful call center business:

• How to Start a Call Center

How to Write a Call Centre Business Plan

We investigate what should be included in a call centre plan and highlight some of the key fundamentals.

What Is the Aim of a Call Centre Business Plan?

A call centre business plan is a high-level document that is the first stage of setting up a call centre. It describes the purpose of the call centre and outlines the objectives, benefits and costs together with an indication of some of the components.

If you are bidding to create a contact centre within your own organization – whether that’s for service, sales or both – your call center business model will be aimed at internal stakeholders.

However, if you’re looking to create a new outsourced contact centre, your business plan may instead be aimed at investors, who you will need to help fund your operation – through the early days at least!

“In the plan, you will set out a number of options – around things like location, recruiters and technology suppliers. You are looking for approval to dig deeper into these options,” adds Martin Jukes, Managing Director at Mpathy Plus.

A Business Plan Will Cover a Number of Areas, Including:

• Customer Experience
• People and Technology
• Return on Investment (ROI)

Risk Assessment

It is important to keep in mind that your business plan will have three main audiences:

• Those stakeholders or potential sponsors (as already discussed)
• Those already tasked with building
• Those tasked with justifying

Start Your Plan With a Purpose – Set Around Key Objectives

Start off your business proposal by highlighting the purpose and objectives of the call centre.

Highlight your key arguments, using simple language, which will capture the attention of your investors early. Bullet points that set out your thoughts in a logical manner may be all that you need here.

The key is to make straightforward statements like:

“We’re spending £2 million every year in serving customers, in a disparate manner, across the organization. If we spend £1 million setting this up and £1 million a year on resourcing the call centre, then we’re going to get a return on investment fairly quickly, while providing a better customer experience.”

You are setting up the rest of the business plan, which will highlight how you plan to deliver a call centre to meet your objectives.

You then expand upon these arguments later, as you are setting up the rest of the business plan, which will highlight how you plan to deliver a call centre to meet your objectives.

Some other simple objectives that you might want to build a business plan for a call centre around – for a service operation – could be:

Possible Objectives for a Call Centre Business Plan:

• Furthering Revenue
• Improving Customer Experience
• Generating Campaigns
• Increasing Technical Support for New Products
• Enabling Growth

These are some quick examples, which could be expanded into solid objectives. However, these could be quite different from those used in a sales or outsourced contact centre.

What Else Needs to Be Included in a Contact Centre Business Plan?

While you may wish to add other elements into your business plan, here are some of the absolute must-haves, which need their own sections within your proposal.

How will a new contact centre benefit your organization? List all of the benefits in this section to underline the value of your new call centre.

In this section, start by reiterating your “headline” objectives, but also talk about some of the other benefits that call centre could bring – which may also help to swing your stakeholders.

Some of the benefits that are easy to overlook when creating a business plan include:

• Call analysis and more data that will tell you more about your customers
• Continuous improvement of customer service (with the right team)
• Extended service hours
• Improvement of your organization’s image
• Saving time of others in the business, who currently take calls as part of their job

Before you get into agent recruitment, locations and technology considerations you need to specify who will oversee the implementation of the contact centre, provide advice and troubleshoot. Who will be in the project’s steering group?

Plans are often built in project mode – i.e. to get to a defined result in a defined time at a defined budget.

It’s the wrong mindset.

Once you’ve come up with your key objectives, you need to start with “who?”, according to Peter Massey, Managing Director at Budd.

The people you are building for need to be involved right along.

“You need to be clear how it will run, not how it will get built. So how do you get customers’ and operations’ needs to drive scope and acceptability of your plan? The people you are building for need to be involved right along,” says Peter.

“So many new call centre plans don’t survive their first owner – the person who comes in to run a business in it. That disconnect is a real risk.”

This is especially true in fast-growing businesses where the team is being recruited right the way through.

Customer Experience Considerations

An important consideration when planning for a new contact centre is: what will our service look like from a customer’s perspective?

If one of your objectives is to increase revenue through great service, this is particularly important, as you need to highlight the actions that you want to take which will enable you to achieve that.

The idea here is to create a vision of the customer experience that the call centre will deliver. This vision will help to stitch together your technology, location and recruitment options that you present to your stakeholders later in the business plan.

Create a vision of the customer experience that the call centre will deliver.

You may also want to consider: why do customers contact us? Do you plan to automate, simplify or even eliminate some of those contacts in the call centre? If so, how will that impact customer experience for the better?

In this section of your call centre business plan, another important consideration is: how will we measure success? 

If your key objective is to save money, revenue statistics may be all you need. However, if you’re looking to further revenue via improved service and sales, you might need to introduce and explain how you will use measures like:

• Customer Effort
• Customer Emotion
• First Contact Resolution
• Customer Satisfaction
• Net Promoter Score
• Sales Volumes

The metrics that you track, and how you do so, should align with your vision for customer experience.

Location – Along With Branding and Furnishing

If you are looking to run a traditional brick-and-mortar call centre, you will likely present three or four different options for location and note that they will cost x, y and z.

The options that you put forward will depend on things like the availability of suitable resource. Do you want to go near competing organizations where you can potentially poach good staff? Or do you want to stay away from organizations that may want to poach members of your team?

Other factors in your decision may include grant availability, cost of accommodation, office space and, of course, availability.

Factors in your decision may include grant availability, cost of accommodation, office space and, of course, availability.

There is also the matter of the location fitting your brand, and branding in itself is a key thought to have, according to Martin.

“Your contact centre is a representation of your brand, and for many customers it is what they see and experience more than anything else. So you need your call centre to demonstrate what you are about as an organization,” says Martin.

With this in mind, when you are looking at possible locations, you will need to look for costs to furnish, brand and maintain the place, so it not only reflects your company, but also becomes a nice place to work.

A Quick Point on Remote Working

If you are wanting to put together a remote contact centre, furnishing, branding etc. will be less of a consideration – but there will be other costs that you need to consider, such as:

• Liability /employee
• IT and internet
• Workstations

On top of that, with remote working you will have to think more about setting the right working practices and maintaining kit, as well as any safety and security matters that need to be addressed.

These considerations will also apply to hybrid contact centre models, which most contact centres are set to turn into in the post-COVID world.

This poll is made up of data sourced in the Call Centre Helper Webinar: Contact Centre of the Future

The decision on whether you plan for an office-based, hybrid or fully remote contact centre can be a tricky one, but it’s good to think about who you plan to recruit – remembering that:

Office-based working tends to suit:

• Young, sociable workers
• People new to the company and in need of training
• High-paced telesales contact centres
• Environments where team work is important

Home-based working tends to suit:

• Older workers with home responsibilities
• Disabled workers
• Contact centres looking for specialist talent (because of wider talent pool)
• Areas in which contact volumes fluctuate

People and Technology Resources

In terms of resources, there are lots of things to consider. Firstly, forecast your demand and how that will change over time. This will enable you to calculate how many agents you need .

Then, you need to think about the internal structure of your call centre. This will include asking yourself questions such as:

• How many team leaders do we need per x number of agents?
• Who will be in charge of Quality Assurance and coaching?
• Who will be in charge of Resource Planning?
• Who will be in charge of HR for the new team?

Only by asking yourself questions like these and quantifying the duties in each role will you be able to come up with a staffing requirement.

From this, you will put forward suggestions for staff salaries and be able to calculate your potential people costs.

Then focus on your technology . You can opt for cloud-based solutions or on-premise technology.

The plus with cloud is that there are pay-as-you go types of models, which make it much easier to set up a new call centre, while technology integration is also much easier.

Once you have made this decision, it’s time to consider which vendor you’d like to work with. To do this, it’s good to consider which technologies you would like to invest in.

Consider how you might want to simplify, automate or eliminate some of your most common contact reasons…

While there may be some must-haves – like a CRM and an IVR/Call Routing – go back to your top contact reasons and consider how you might want to simplify, automate or eliminate some of your most common contact reasons and consider what technology will help you do that.

A good tool for helping do this is the Value-Irritant Grid. You can find out more about this in our article: A Simple Technique to Improve Your Contact Centre Strategy

For those contact reasons to which none of those options apply, look at the technologies that can support agents in answering those queries effectively – i.e. knowledge bases, visual scripting, etc.

Approach technology vendors with your proposal for technologies and then present options to your stakeholders in your business plan.

For more on putting together a technology plan for your contact centre, read our article: How to Set Up a Call Centre From Scratch – The Checklist

Quick Tip – Make Sure You Put Psychology Before Technology

It’s easy to start totting up the cost of systems and technology required in a contact centre. But not every project team looks at the cost of constantly optimizing the experience of staff and customers in and beyond the contact centre.

If your website and apps drive contacts, it’s not enough to optimize your contact centre. If your marketing and sales propositions drive expectations, it’s not enough to do well in handling contacts, as Peter Massey tells us.

You need a model which fits your company’s values and your customers’ expectations.

“You need to look at the psychology of a contact centre, not just the technology. You need a model which fits your company’s values and your customers’ expectations. That takes thinking time, collaboration from other functions, deep user design and continual optimization,” adds Peter.

Return on Investment

When you put together a set of options for things like location, technology and people, you become much more aware of the costs of your potential operation.

So, this section should include a summary of where the costs lie, in comparison to projections for how much money you are going to save and/or how providing better service will generate further income.

With all of the profit and cost figures, you should be able to calculate when your stakeholders or investors will start to see a return on investment (ROI).

Martin Jukes

When embarking on a project as ambitious as setting up a new call centre, there are a lot of risks that you need to mitigate for.

“Understanding scale is critical and one risk that I would expect to be included in a call centre business plan is sizing, whether that’s over- or under-sizing – which may be due to the volatility of forecasts,” adds Martin..

Another risk may include your technology not working – or that it does not deliver what you were hoping it would deliver – either from a timescale or functionality perspective.

A further example of a risk that you may need to provide some contingency measures for is recruitment problems, in case you fail to hire the required calibre of people in the area in which you are targeting. These are the sorts of risks to plan for, and there may well be others.

Mistakes to Avoid With Your Plan

There are many potential pitfalls that you can slip into when creating a call centre business plan. The two most common – as identified by Martin Jukes – are as follows.

1. Failing to Structure the Business Plan Around the Customer

By positioning your call centre as your organization’s “hub for customer experience”, not only are you highlighting its strategic value, but you can also ensure that it is not going to be viewed – from now and in the future – as a “cost centre”.

When your call centre is viewed as a cost centre, you will find it very difficult to put together a business case in the future for new technologies, staff and other customer innovations.

If you also create your business plan around a vision for how you will serve your customers, you will naturally align your choices – in terms of location, recruitment, technology etc.

2. Putting Technology Ahead of Customer Experience and Psychology

Technology is your enabler, once you’ve decided what it is that you’re trying to do.

For example, if you are looking to set up an outbound sales call centre, you would use technology differently from if you were planning for an inbound support centre.

You need to understand what you need from your technology, before setting up your system.

A lot of people buy a contact centre platform and then work out how to do it. But that approach is wrong. You need to understand what you need from your technology, before setting up your system.

As Peter says: “What goes into a call centre business plan is as much psychology as technology.”

Other Mistakes…

While these two are common mistakes, there are lots more in terms of the implementation of the call centre, in terms of:

• Getting the right people
• Putting training together and getting the right support material in place
• Branding and aligning people behind a company culture

Getting this right depends on lots of market research and, of course, having a vision for how you plan to service customers. This will help you to secure the necessary funds.

8 Key Questions You Need to Answer in Your Business Plan

While we’ve covered the fundamental components of a call centre business plan, there are many questions that you’ll need to answer as you put together your proposal.

Here are some important examples that Peter Massey put forward:

Peter Massey

• What shall I focus the budget into to make the biggest impact / best operation?
• What does it cost to build a contact centre?
• How much should we justify investing for best impact?
• What should the project team look like?
• How do we make sure the operational team get handed over what they need?
• How do we get the right subject-matter experts involved?
• How do we avoid scope creep or scope reduction whilst hitting a deadline?
• If we’re building afresh, how do we make sure we don’t just build a shinier version of what we did before?

Get Some External Advice

While this is no doubt a long and thorough guide to creating a call centre business plan, it is a big task and one that most organizations do once in a blue moon.

With this in mind, it is good to get in contact with experts like Martin and Peter, who have worked alongside many organizations in putting together a call centre business plan.

They know all the potential pitfalls and issues that you are likely to come across, as well as other key trends regarding what’s going on in the industry – so engaging with a third party is a key final tip.

If you would like to reach out to Martin or Peter, you can check out their websites here:

• Martin Jukes: mpathyplus.co.uk
• Peter Massey: budd.uk.com

For more advice on setting up a contact centre, read our articles:

• How to Set up a Call Centre
• What Is a Call Centre? – 10 Things to Know
• 23 Considerations to Make Before Implementing a New Digital Channel

Author: Robyn Coppell

Published On: 4th Jan 2021 - Last modified: 9th Nov 2023 Read more about - Customer Service Strategy , Martin Jukes , Peter Massey , Setup

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How to Start a Call Center Business in 2024

Despite the recent rapid rise of digital communication channels and an increased demand for self-service support, phone still continues to dominate as the most preferred support channel. In fact, according to a Salesforce study , 59% of consumers favor traditional phone calls to reach a customer support representative. Phone sales are also here to stay as one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways for businesses to promote and sell their products or services.

If you’re looking to set up a call center business in 2024 and beyond, you’ve landed on the right page. While building your own call center – whether inbound, outbound, or blended – might seem too challenging to start, knowing exactly what to do will instantly blow your fears away.

Looking for a Contact Center Solution?

Powerful AI dialer, bulk SMS, and more tools for running an omnichannel contact center.

Based on VoiceSpin’s 15-year experience in the call center industry, we’ve decided to come up with a step-by-step guide on how to start a call center and walk you through every phase of the process.

• How to Start a Call Center Business in 10 Steps
• 1. Set Your Call Center Goals and Write a Business plan

Just like with any other business, building a call center requires careful planning. Before you actually start setting up your own call center, have a clear understanding of wh y you want to start a call center and outline the goals you are looking to achieve. Make sure, however, that these goals are specific, realistic, achievable given your current budget and resources, and align with your broader business objectives.

On top of that, setting goals will help you establish clear criteria for measuring performance (we’ll talk about call center metrics and KPIs in more detail below) and the overall success of your call center.  

Based on your goals, write out a detailed business plan. The steps we discuss below will guide you in your business plan creation. Overall, your call center business plan should outline the following key points:

• Company description, your short-term and long-term goals, and objectives
• Market analysis, industry overview, and your major competitors
• Your organizational structure, management team, and hiring plan
• A comprehensive description of the services your call center will provide
• Your marketing plan and a sales strategy for promoting your services
• Operations plan describing your daily operations and facility and technology requirements
• Financial plan outlining your setup costs, ongoing operational expenses, and profit and loss statement
• Risk analysis with potential risks and strategies to mitigate them
• 2. Decide on Call Center Type

Inbound vs. outbound vs. blended call center

Inbound call center

Inbound call centers primarily deal with incoming calls from existing customers, clients, or prospects. Businesses set up inbound call centers for general customer service, technical support, processing orders, payments, returns, and exchanges, handling upgrades and renewal requests, appointment scheduling, and inbound sales. The most typical industries to benefit from inbound call centers are e-commerce and retail, travel and hospitality, healthcare, finance, and insurance.

Outbound call center

In outbound call centers, agents are placing outbound phone calls to prospects or customers. Outbound call centers are commonly used for lead generation, telemarketing, sales campaigns, appointment setting and reminders, debt collection, market research and CSAT surveys, etc. For providing outbound call center services, you need call center software with auto dialing capabilities that will enable you to automate the dialing process, so that agents don’t have to dial each number manually.

Blended call center

Blended call centers (also known as hybrid call centers) combine both inbound and outbound calling capabilities and are best suited for businesses that have relatively equal volumes of incoming and outgoing calls. Luckily, many call center software providers offer a fair share of features to support both inbound and outbound calling activities. E.g., VoiceSpin call center solutions are perfectly suited for inbound customer support and outbound sales teams alike.

On-site vs. remote vs. virtual call center

On-site call center

In a traditional on-site call center, agents are going to work from a physical location, which might be the best option for fixed-location businesses and those with large teams. Improved team collaboration, direct supervision, and increased data security are some of the advantages that will follow. However, there are also certain downsides to selecting on-site deployment, such as higher operational costs, a rather limited talent pool, and a lack of flexibility of remote working.

Remote call center

Remote call centers are entirely offsite call centers, typically powered by outsourcing. This might be an ideal option for small businesses and startups that would like to avoid paying for physical office space, office equipment, and hardware, making remote call centers much more cost-efficient compared to on-premises solutions. That also provides you with access to a broader talent pool while allowing greater flexibility for agents.

Virtual call center

Similarly to remote call centers, virtual call centers aren’t tied to one geographical location, with agents often being distributed across multiple regions, working from various remote locations. Virtual call centers run on cloud-based VoIP call center software , allowing agents to access the system and work from nearly everywhere, as long as there’s a stable internet connection. That offers businesses access to an even broader talent pool, easy scalability, and cost-efficiency.

Call center vs. omnichannel contact center

Call center

If you’re looking to set up a traditional call center where agents will only handle voice communications, you would basically need to purchase a business phone system with call-handling features like IVR, call routing, call forwarding, call transfer, call queueing, call recording, call reporting and analytics, click-to-call, auto dialing, etc.  

Omnichannel contact center

If you’re planning to handle customer interactions across multiple communication channels, you may want to set up an omnichannel contact center that integrates both voice and digital communication channels like email, live chat, SMS, social media, and Instant Messaging apps. With an integrated solution, agents will be able to manage all interactions from one platform, with no need to switch between the apps, eliminating the risk of communication silos.

Related article: A Complete Guide to Omnichannel Contact Center

• 3. Establish a Budget

The total cost of setting up a call center will ultimately depend on a range of factors, such as the setup type, software and hardware, required features, the number of employees, etc.

Here’s what you should consider when putting together your budget:

• Office space and hardware : In addition to office space and office equipment expenses, running an on-site call center will also require you to pay for the hardware and infrastructure, not to mention ongoing maintenance fees and updates. However, you can eliminate office and hardware expenses by setting up a remote call center.
• Call center software: Take into account software licenses and set-up costs for on-premises tools and monthly subscription fees for cloud-based solutions. Pricing plans of cloud-based providers may differ based on the features offered in a specific pricing tier, the billing structure (fixed monthly fee, monthly fee per user, per-minute fee), and the number of users.
• Employee salaries: Agent salaries may significantly vary based on location and experience level. Besides, you may also encounter additional expenses that may come up later, such as rewards and incentives for top-performing agents, ongoing training costs, or expenses for holding team-building events, to name a few.  
• Training and customer support: While most call center software providers include basic employee training and some level of customer support in their subscription plans, custom in-person training and 24/7 dedicated omnichannel customer support may require extra expenses, adding up to your overall costs.
• 4. Select Call Center Software Provider

On-premises vs. hosted vs. cloud-based

Once you’re clear on what type of call center you are going to run, it’s finally time to choose a call center software provider that will align with your business goals, IT resources, budget, and scalability needs.

Despite the popularity and increased adoption of cloud-based call center solutions, on-premises tools are still a large part of the industry. So, if you’re looking to own and manage the entire call center infrastructure, including hardware and servers, choose one of the on-premises call center software providers. With hosted call center tools or cloud-based solutions, the provider will manage all of that for you. These solutions are also easier scalable, more flexible, and can be quickly adapted to your evolving business needs.

Next, depending on whether you need to manage inbound calls or make outbound calls , you will need to evaluate potential providers based on the range of inbound/ outbound call center features they are offering.

These are some of the fundamental features to pay attention to when evaluating call center software vendors:

Inbound call center features

• Inbound call handling: Automatic Call Distribution ( ACD ), Interactive Voice Response ( IVR ), and advanced call routing options are some of the most basic features to look for when choosing an inbound call center software. E.g., with skill-based routing, you can ensure that inbound calls will be routed to the most appropriate agents based on their skill set, allowing for faster issue resolutions and improving your FCR scores.
• Call queue management: Call queue management capabilities are essential for call centers with typically high inbound call volumes. E.g., VoiceSpin’s queue callback feature enables callers to request a callback from an agent instead of having to wait on hold until an agent becomes available to handle their request. That helps reduce the number of dropped calls and improves customer service experience.
• Call recording and monitoring: The ability to record customer calls for compliance, quality assurance, and agent training purposes is a must-have feature for inbound call center solutions. Managers and supervisors should also be able to monitor calls in real time to evaluate call quality, assess agent performance, and identify agent training and coaching opportunities. In addition, features like call whispering and call barging are also valuable for supervisors.
• Integrations with CRM systems: The software’s ability to integrate with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems and other business apps is critical, as it provides agents with a 360-degree customer view, including the history of previous interactions, enabling agents to deliver more contextual and personalized interactions. That will also reduce manual work for agents, eliminate the need to switch between apps, and improve team performance.

Outbound call center features

• Auto dialing capabilities: For sales-oriented outbound call centers, auto dialing capabilities are key. E.g., VoiceSpin’s outbound call center software provides auto dialing as part of its call center package. The AI auto dialer enables agents to place hundreds or even thousands of outbound calls with minimal human input and minimizes agent idle time between calls thanks to predictive dialing, improving the efficiency of your outbound calling efforts.
• Lead and campaign management: Lead and campaign management features are also essential for outbound call center teams. Agents should be able to easily manage lead lists and outbound calling campaigns. VoiceSpin’s call center software can also automatically score and prioritize leads and connect them to the best-fitting agents based on the probability of making a successful sale, improving conversion rates of outbound calling campaigns.
• Local caller ID: Local presence dialing and local Caller ID are must-have features for running outbound calling campaigns in multiple, geographically distributed locations. Since people aren’t likely to answer calls from unknown numbers, being able to display a local number on the Caller ID will instantly increase your Call Answer Rates , meaning your sales agents can engage in more conversations and convert more leads.
• Reporting and analytics: Reporting and analytics features are equally important for both inbound and outbound call centers. By leveraging reporting tools, call center managers can monitor critical call center metrics and KPIs, evaluate the effectiveness of calling campaigns, keep tabs on agent performance, uncover inefficiencies in the process and operations, and make more data-driven decisions on the necessary improvements.

Advanced AI-powered features and omnichannel capabilities

• AI speech analytics: In addition to the core call center features listed above, you may want to look for innovative AI-driven capabilities such as speech analytics. AI speech analytics solutions can help you automate and optimize your entire call center quality assurance process, ensure compliance, and identify improvement opportunities. E.g., VoiceSpin’s AI Speech Analyzer allows you to monitor the quality of customer interactions based on your custom rules and metrics and prevent non-compliance issues through keyword spotting and real-time alerts. 
• AI call summaries: AI call summaries is an advanced feature you may want to pay attention to when evaluating potential call center software platforms. Call summaries are brief AI-generated recaps of the conversations between your agents and customers or prospects that include important insights extracted from each call. With access to AI call summaries, you don’t have to listen to call recordings or read the entire transcription of each call to evaluate the quality of interactions and your team’s performance.
• AI chatbots: Self-service chatbots are becoming increasingly popular among businesses and consumers. Based on Gartner’s research , chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for nearly a quarter of organizations by 2027 . If you’re looking to enhance your customer support with self-service options, consider call center solutions offering chatbots. AI chatbots will empower your customers to get support 24/7, find answers to their questions, and resolve issues independently without having to talk to your support reps. 
• Omnichannel readiness: If you want to be able to scale your support offerings as your business grows, omnichannel capabilities are critical. By integrating multiple communication channels, including voice, email, live chat, social media, and instant messaging apps in one platform, you’ll be able to support your customers across all these channels using a single solution. That also means your agents will have the full context of previous interactions, enabling them to deliver omnichannel experiences regardless of the channels customers use.
• 5. Get Call Center Hardware and Equipment

If you opt for setting up an on-premises call center , you will need to invest in call center hardware and equipment. That may include a physical PBX (Private Branch Exchange) system, dedicated servers and data centers, telephony hardware, networking equipment, power supply systems and backup generators, desktop computers, headsets and VoIP phones, desks, office chairs, and other office equipment. All of that might require significant upfront investment that should be considered in your budget.

When setting up a cloud-based call center , you can eliminate the need for expensive hardware, making it an attractive option for smaller businesses. Thus, to set up and run a cloud-based call center, you would only need a high-speed internet connection with sufficient bandwidth for uninterrupted connection, computers, laptops, or other devices agents will use to access the call center software system, headsets, hardware VoIP phones, or softphones, and office equipment. The rest is managed and maintained by a cloud-based call center provider.  

• 6. Determine Your Staffing Needs

To run a successful call center, you need the right number of employees to handle inbound/ outbound calls and meet your performance goals. If you hire too few employees, your call center is going to be understaffed, resulting in long wait times for callers, an increased number of abandoned calls, and lower customer satisfaction scores. Hire too many – and agents are going to be underutilized, adding up to your overhead costs.

To estimate the number of required employees, you may need to take into account call volume, the average wait times and call handle times, the average number of missed/ abandoned calls, and other metrics and factors. You’ll also need to clearly define positions to be filled. While roles and titles may differ, the basic ones are:

• Call Center Agent: Call center agents are at the frontline of your call center, representing your business, directly communicating with prospects and customers, providing the necessary information, resolving requests, handling customer complaints, or selling your products or services. Agents report to supervisors.
• Call Center Supervisor: Supervisors are responsible for managing and supporting agents, arranging and providing training and call coaching sessions, measuring agent performance and ensuring they adhere to call center quality standards, giving regular feedback to agents, etc. Supervisors report to the call center manager.
• Call Center Manager : Call center managers set goals, performance expectations for agents and supervisors, and SLAs for a call center, plan and manage call center staffing levels (including recruitment, onboarding, and scheduling), conduct quality monitoring and call center Quality Assurance , analyze call center metrics and KPIs, etc. Managers report to the business owner.
• 7. Hire a Call Center Team

Call center jobs aren’t for everyone. Most of the time call center agents have to spend interacting with people (who may be frustrated or even abusive), answering their questions, helping them resolve issues, or selling products and services. When searching for, selecting, and interviewing potential candidates, hiring managers shouldn’t only focus on a person’s industry experience and familiarity with call center software systems and CRM tools. On top of that, it’s important to look for those who possess a variety of soft skills that are much-needed to succeed in the role, such as:

• Excellent communication skills: Along with active listening, clear verbal and written communication skills are fundamental for call center employees. Agents should be able to convey information in a clear and concise way that is easy for others to understand and act on.
• Empathy and emotional intelligence: An ability to demonstrate empathy and emotional intelligence when interacting with customers helps build rapport and trust with customers, which is why empathy and EI are vital skills to take into account when evaluating potential hires.
• Conflict-resolution: Challenging interactions and conflicts with dissatisfied customers or even colleagues are bound to happen. A candidate’s problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills and an ability to address customer complaints and de-escalate tense situations are a must-have.
• Ability to multitask: As agents may need to quickly switch between inbound and outbound calls or manage multiple communication channels (in the case of omnichannel contact centers), an ability to efficiently multitask and transition between various tasks is an essential skill to look for.
• Stress management: Agents would often need to work in high-pressure environments where they must handle challenging customer interactions, deal with irritated customers, and meet their performance metrics, making an ability to effectively manage job-related stress crucial.
• 8. Build Your Onboarding and Training Processes

In call centers, employee onboarding is often a lengthy and complicated process. But when done right, it results in many long-term benefits for call centers, such as improved engagement, increased agent efficiency, and reduced turnover rate. A Glassdoor survey found that organizations with a strong onboarding process are able to improve new hire productivity by over 70% and retention by 82%.

However, building a highly efficient call center team doesn’t end with proper onboarding. You should create a consistent process of ongoing learning through regular training and coaching initiatives. These are some of the examples of what your agent training materials, resources, and activities may include:

• A comprehensive internal knowledge base with FAQs
• Live or pre-recorded agent training webinars
• A library of successful customer interactions pulled from call recordings
• A library of scripts and canned responses for handling different types of calls
• Call-handling procedures, call flow, and call escalation protocols
• On-the-job training through live call whispering during customer interactions, etc.
• 9. Know How You Will Measure Call Center Performance

Based on your call center type (inbound/ outbound), your specific goals and objectives, and analytics capabilities of your call center software, you may track a different set of metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that will allow you to measure the overall efficiency of your call center operations and performance of individual agents. These are some of the most common and most critical metrics and KPIs you may want to keep close tabs on:

The Average Handle Time (AHA): The Average Handle Time represents the average time it takes for an agent to handle a customer call, including hold time, talk time, and after-call work time. Along with other metrics, it’s a key indicator of how efficiently agents are able to handle customer inquiries. A high AHT may mean inefficient call routing or poor agent training.

The Average Speed of Answer (ASA): The Average Speed of Answer shows the average time callers have to wait in the queue before their call gets connected to an agent. A high ASA indicates that a call center may need to work on improving its operational efficiency and call management process, adjust staffing levels, or implement self-service options.

First Call Resolution (FCR): First Call Resolution Rate measures the percentage of customer issues resolved during the first interaction and shows how efficient your agents are in handling customer requests. A low FCR rate suggests that agents need more training or that they simply lack access to the necessary information and tools to resolve issues on the first call.

Call Abandonment Rate: Call Abandonment Rate is the percentage of calls terminated by customers before being connected to a customer support representative. A high abandonment rate is commonly caused by insufficient staffing levels, forcing callers to wait on hold for a considerably long time, poor call routing, and lack of callback options.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score: Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score measures the overall customer satisfaction with your product, service, or customer service and shows whether your call center is meeting customer expectations. A low CSAT score related to your service quality might mean that you need to work on improving your ASA, AHT, and FCR rates.

Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is an essential metric for sales-focused outbound call centers, which shows the percentage of outbound calls that resulted in a successful outcome (a closed deal, a booked appointment, etc.). A low conversion rate might be an indicator of low lead list quality or that the agents require more training.

Related article: Top 10 Outbound Call Center Metrics Your Call Center Should Measure

• 10. Build a Supportive Call Center Environment

Call centers are known to have traditionally high employee turnover rates due to the intense and stressful nature of the job, which is a huge problem for businesses. Not only is it because hiring, successfully onboarding, and training new agents takes time, much effort, and financial resources, but also because when agents leave – that may disrupt your call center operations and negatively impact the morale of the remaining team members. That is why it’s essential to build and consistently maintain a positive and supportive workplace environment within your call center. Here’s what you can do:

• Allow for flexible scheduling and remote work options to help agents achieve a better work-life balance.
• Maintain a psychologically safe environment where agents are encouraged to share their opinions and suggestions.
• Regularly provide and collect feedback from agents through one-on-one meetings.
• Hold team-building events in and out of the office to boost employee morale and engagement.
• Develop and implement an employee recognition program and reward top-performing agents.

Related article: How to Build an Efficient Call Center Environment to Drive Agent Performance

• Bonus: Be Aware of the Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Legal and regulatory compliance

Maintaining legal and regulatory compliance is critical in the call center industry, as it ensures your call center adheres to laws, relevant regulations, standards, and ethical practices. More importantly, failing to do so may lead to penalties, hefty fines, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust. Research all the relevant rules, regulations, and applicable laws related to your industry in your particular area and create a clear compliance policy and guidelines for your agents to follow. Here are some of the most common call center compliance regulations to adhere to:

• TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act): TCPA is a U.S. federal law that regulates telemarketing calls and the use of auto dialers, pre-recorded messages, and SMS and is aimed to protect consumers from unwanted sales calls. It also maintains a Do Not Call (DNC) list.
• GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): Requires call centers to obtain consent from consumers before recording calls. GDPR is designed to protect the privacy and personal data of individuals within the European Union.
• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): HIPAA is a U.S. federal law designed to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge. 

High employee turnover rates 

We’ve already mentioned this earlier, the call center industry is known for having typically high turnover rates. While the industry standard for call center turnover is 30-40%, some call centers have agent turnover as high as over 200% , based on research by SQM Group . With the average cost to replace a call center agent being around $10,000 to $20,000, according to Harvard Business Review researcher Keith Ferrazzi, failing to retain employees might significantly add to your operational costs. To avoid being affected by high agent turnover rates, you should have a clear strategy in place to address this challenge.

Expected or unexpected call volume spikes

Managing expected or unexpected call volume spikes effectively without compromising service quality is a common challenge call centers face. When call volumes are higher than anticipated, wait times for callers increase, more calls are abandoned before being connected to an agent, and customer satisfaction ultimately drops. Moreover, that increases workload and creates additional pressure for agents, resulting in increased burnout, reduced workplace satisfaction, and higher turnover rates. 

To handle this challenge, make sure to build an  effective workforce management strategy with flexible schedules that can adjust to predicted call volumes, ensuring that there are always enough reps during peak call times. Additionally, leverage historical data and predictive analytics to forecast call volumes more accurately.

• Set up Your Omnichannel Contact Center with VoiceSpin

That all being said, why should you start your journey with VoiceSpin? Whether you’re just looking to set up your call center from scratch or researching alternative options to upgrade your current call center tech stack, VoiceSpin’s AI-powered contact center solutions might be the right fit for both customer support and sales-oriented teams, empowering them with the tools they need to support clients across multiple communication channels or sell faster and more efficiently. What’s more, you can seamlessly integrate your contact center with your CRM or other business tools to keep all data in sync and enable your teams to be even more productive.

Book a demo call now to get a tailored walkthrough of the features and how to get started.

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