Attracting Contact Centres to Rural Areas

1
Attracting Contact Centresto Rural Areas

• Does your community want a contact centre?
• WHY?
• October 2007

2
Attracting a Company to a Greenfield Site

• Community Profile
• Team / Partners
• Labour Assessment
• Technical Assessment
• Facilities Assessment
• Business Case Development
• Lessons Learned

3
Community Profile

• Community Asset Mapping
• Population / Demographics
• Community Economy
• Sector Profiles (generally)
• Business Profiles (generally)

4
Team / Partners

• Community Champion
• RDA
• NSBI
• NS Economic Development
• Service Canada
• ACOA / ECBC
• NS Dept of Community Services
• Training or Educational Institutions (i.e. NSCC,
  universities, etc)
• Chamber of Commerce

• Consultant (s)
• Operator (s)

5
Labour Assessment

• Size of call centre ( seats / employees)
• Type of work / client account
• Inbound vs outbound
• Unionization (85 non unionized)
• Hours of operation / shifts
• Language requirements

• Full vs part time
• Type of jobs
• Agents, IT support, Management
• Seasonality / historical patterns of employees
• Skills assessments
• Analyzing training requirements

6
Technical Assessment

• High speed availability
• Design a Network / Technical Solution

• Electronic Mail Response
• Client Relationship Management Software
• Digital Voice Recording (quality assurance /
  training)
• Voice over IP

• Automatic Call Distribution
• Computer Telephony Integration
• Skills Based Routing
• Predictive Dialing
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

7
Facilities Assessment

• New or existing building
• Available buildings
• Most rural contact centres locate in existing
  buildings
• Sufficient size, design, layout
• Building condition - cost to upgrade
• Power / backup power
• Air quality / lighting

• Expansion capacity for operations
• Land availability for building expansion and
  parking
• Relative operating cost
• Proximity to services
• Existing telecom and network infrastructure

8
Business Case Development

• Draft your business case consultant
• Search for potential operator
• Finalize business case by operator
• Broker financing of the project
• Assist with recruitment in first 2 years
• Ad campaign, job fairs, special events

9
Lessons Learned

• Conduct a thorough assessment of the target area,
  and surrounding communities
• What does your community look like today?
• Usually, the operator will ramp up more quickly
  than planned, needing more agents sooner
  innovative recruiting is key.
• The team/partners must be kept informed and be
  engaged throughout the process
• Balance confidentiality and information exchange.
• Hire a consultant for network and building
  assessment needs (must investigate technical
  solutions to provide cost efficiencies).
• Plan on continuing the partnership with the
  operator for at least a 2 year period.

10
Attracting Contact Centresto Rural Areas

• Questions?