establishing a new call center

[Laura Beth]

I am establishing a call center for our company, we currently do not have one. We will have approx 7,000 incoming calls per week. What would you say is the most important feature in choosing a phone system? What is the best advice you could give someone in my situation?

[banderson]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Laura Beth
[B]I am establishing a call center for our company, we currently do not have one. We will have approx 7,000 incoming calls per week. What would you say is the most important feature in choosing a phone system? What is the best advice you could give someone in my situation?

The most important step is for you to first determine what you want to see out of your rep's performance. Determine your reporting requirements and what performance metrics you need to effectively measure your team's performance and then select a suitable system from there.

[Frank A. Engle]

Hello Laura!

In the many call centers I have worked with and helped set up, the first step I took was to try and identify

-The types of customers that would be calling
-The types of calls we would be receiving
-The length, quantity, timing and frequency of the calls

and then establish the level and type of support we wanted to provide to each.

As banderson stated, tracking and reporting of agent, system and customer traffic is very important...but it will vary widely depending on the vertical market you are serving and the expectations of same.

Once those items are identified, you will have a good outline to go to phone system vendors with. The hard part will be in sorting out the features benefits and cost/value relationships between the many resources out there. It is a team effort and I would suggest that you form a task force with marketing, sales, IT and finance to be sure that the system you decide to purchase meet as many of the needs as possible.

I hope this helps...Good Luck!!