Business Articles

When setting up a call centre for a company, there are several important things to consider, which include the location, the size and equipment. A lot of companies choose to locate call centres in foreign countries to take advantage of the lower labour and set-up costs. However there seems to be a growing discontent with this form of customer service amongst the general public leading companies to consider their own country as the location.

Many companies have chosen to move their operations to countries such as India, where there is a lot of cheap labour. Telemarketing centres are normally highly labour-intensive, which is why companies choose to relocate in order to lower costs. Foreign countries tend to have many people that are able to speak English and can therefore operate as a call centre employee dealing with English customers. There are also call centre providers who have everything already set up including the premises, equipment and ready and willing employees. Therefore all that is needed is the relevant information, which employees must study to be able to offer good customer service. This is clearly very attractive for a company who is looking to lower costs, especially in the current economic recession where it is important to stay afloat.

However a growing amount of people are becoming frustrated with experiences of poor customer service from foreign telemarketing centres. The main problem tends to lie in the employee's language skills, occasionally an employee can be hired that lacks the fluency to communicate well with a customer. This can lead to a very frustrating experience on the phone and in some cases has led to a customer cancelling their account with the company. This has led to some companies even choosing to highlight the fact that their call centre is based in England as a selling point. These companies are hoping that despite the higher labour costs, they will attract more customers through having a customer service provided by people from England.

There are advantages and disadvantages of having a telemarketing centre in England and given the current economic climate, a company must choose wisely. Customer service and support is vital for any successful company, people must be able to call up and ask for help whenever it is needed, without encountering any difficulties. No matter where the call centre is based, it is important that the employees have a strong command of the language and speak clearly and fluently

Do you pay yourself or do you work for free?

You may decide to work for free as you start a new business, spending time and energy without any compensation because the revenue is not there yet to support paying you a salary.  This is an important consideration of the business, because it cannot go on indefinitely, and resolving when and how to start getting paid from a newly created venture can be more complicated than it may first appear.

At this juncture, I jovially advise that (You) the business owner get to develop a case of Professional schizophrenia: You become two people with two different personalities and two different incentive models. First, you are the business owner that owns the business asset and is responsible for the business results, and you are the employee, the person who gets the work done.

For me, the best experiences have been where, in the beginning, if my partners and I were working for free, we allocated (and usually accrued) some meaningful percentage of the business revenue for a fair salary for the tasks that we were performing but not receiving compensation.

For example, if you work 10 hours this week in a job that is worth $15 an hour to your business; the business owes you $150 as an employee. The philosophy here is that you accrue the value that you bring to the company. When the business actually starts making a profit, the business will be able to reimburse you for your past work.

There is another very important reason to approach compensation this way. When the business becomes more profitable, you can choose to do the work or hire someone else. When you determine that it is time for you to delegate that task, you would have already made the allocation to pay a fair salary for that job.

I cannot tell you how many businesses I have seen stay small and do not grow because the owner never paid himself, so he has no clue how to pay somebody else to do his job. They bypass incredible opportunities in their lives because they cannot give up doing the bookkeeping in their business because they "have been doing it since the beginning," when they could be spending those four or five hours a month going in and engaging in other things that would utilize their talents and passions more effectively.

There is nothing wrong with true self-sufficient self-employment, but if you ever want to go on vacation for a month, or if you ever want to go to Columbia to learn Spanish for two or three months, that business model will not work. If you have to always be in your business, then you do not have a business, you own a job. There is nothing wrong with owning a job, it just has the potential to rob you of freedom.

The idea here is for you to make sure that you allocate the appropriate value for what a job is worth in your business, so as your business grows, you can begin to remove yourself from the operations and get paid from your profits.  You will also be able to readily reallocate the wage to the new person who is responsible for doing the job.

So this week we are asking ourselves the crazy question "If money were a man would he date me?" I know it is crazy but hang with me here. It is a really confronting observation of how you speak, think and interact with money.

Today we are going to talk about the guy that breaks plans at the last minute. Has that ever happened to you, he calls you up at the last minute to say something "someone better" came up? Arggghhh, you have planned all week, bought a new outfit, told all your friends and at the last minute he stood you up. That has happened to me and oh my gosh it made me hopping mad. You know the feeling, you are so excited and then the crushing disappointment. You feel hurt, disappointed, embarrassed, a little used and abused. Now that you have a good picture of that and remember how you felt when that happened to you, let me ask you a question…

Do you treat your money like that? Do you make plans for money but at the last minute do you break your plans and go do whatever fancy you see? Does something "better" come along? Do you secretly think, "Oh they will still be there when I call again"? Have you ever treat your money that way?

You know the truth is money doesn't like that feeling either. No one likes feeling that something better than them has caught your eye. You know I am not beating you up; I have been that girl who knew she needed to save more, made plans to save more or pay additional on debt but found a "better" way to spend the money. I mean good grief that purse was half off; there will never be a deal like that again! But on the other end of that spectrum I have experienced being the girl that at the last minute was stood up. I didn't' like that feeling very much and now realize my money didn't like it very much either!  You know money is just like us, it expects others to keep their word and follow through on plans.

So have you treated your money like a dirty dog guy standing you up at the last minute? Is your money thinking you're a dirty dog because you have not kept your commitment to it? Is money sick and tired of you making plans with it and for it but changing your mind at the last minute? Has it dumped you because it is sick of being treated that way? Has the "good" money started dating somebody else because it refused to be treated badly?

Look I know money isn't a person and doesn't have thoughts or feelings.  But the truth is your opinion of money matters. If you aren't keeping your "dates/plans" with money it will find other places to hang out. I am just using this analogy to wake you up to how you are treating yourself through how you treat your assets. Just for today ask yourself…

If money were a man would it date me? Am I keeping my plans with him?

In case you haven't heard I will be leading a FR*EE Teleseminar called "Spring Cleaning – Clear Your Money Clutter". To learn more and register GO HERE!

Tammy Hardin is Creator and CEO of Game Changer International, she is speaker, author and Game Changing Coach. She is dedicated to empowering women to overcome their stumbling blocks, provide tools to stand in their power, and release the champion within.