Designing the Best Call Center for Your Business: A Complete Guide for Location, Services, Staffing, and Outsourcing

"Designing the Best Call Center for your Business" examines all key aspects of opening and expanding a live agent call center, with in-depth coverage on facilities and workstation design, site selection, including communications and power backups, finding the right property and staff recruiting, training and retention. It covers domestic and international call centers and those that handle online as well as voice interactions. In addition, the book looks at technology-only, outsourcing and teleworking call center alternatives and call demand managing adjuncts.

The book also explores what functions and value call centers can offer businesses, including outbound and inbound sales and customer service and help desk. It examines and suggests how to cope with hot issues that could affect the center such as the CRM trend and growing customer hostility to outbound cold-calling and unsolicited e-mail.

Brendan B. Read is a business editor, writer and consultant who writes about site selection, real estate, facilities, staffing, training, outsourcing and home working. Brendan served for many years as services editor of Call Center magazine. A frequent speaker at at industry conferences, he is the author of Home Workplace and co-author of The Complete Guide to Customer Support.