How to Start a Call Center Business In Philippines

Starting a call center business in the Philippines is not an unexplored adventure, as many have done so for many years. We recommend you research in-depth before initiating your call center business if you are new in this business niche.

Opening a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or a call center business in the Philippines may become a stressful and erroneous task if you do not investigate the legal and financial aspects of initiating a business operation. It becomes uncomplicated if you know the dos and don’ts of business initiation in the Philippines.

We have compiled this article for researchers with the curiosity to learn about starting a call center business in the Philippines.

Stick to the end & let’s get started:

What is a call center business? 

A call center business is a streamlined administrative branch or an entire company dedicated to handling inbound and outbound calls. These divisions address inbound calls and other forms of inquiries from existing customers, leads, and other prospects, along with necessary outbound calls.  

Call center businesses can be in-house as part of a bigger organization or a completely different firm that handles multiple companies’ outsourced call center business. In-house 🏠 call centers require extra investment and workforce but keep your company’s data confidential. 

Outsourcing is suitable for SMBs that cannot afford to invest in an additional workforce and infrastructure. It works perfectly fine, but there are chances of unauthorized data exposure in case of conflicts between collaborating companies.  

How do call centers make revenue? 

As we discussed, there are two types of call center businesses – in-house and outsourced (third-party company). They generate revenues through different methods.

As part of the central business, in-house call centers generate (make) revenues through sales, customer retention, prospect engagement with their brand, and overall by creating a seamless customer experience to cultivate customer loyalty towards the business.  

In contrast, outsourced or third-party call center businesses make revenues with a fairly simple procedure. These companies take care of the communication aspect of other companies and charge them on a call basis or hourly basis.  

The other way is to sum up their project expenditure at the end of a month and add a certain percentage to the initial spending, which (in total) is charged to the outsourcing companies. Here, the extra percentage is the earned revenue of the third-party company.  

How to Start a Call Center Business in the Philippines?

Starting a call center business in the Philippines may become a daunting challenge if you don’t have adequate experience (in the matter) or initiate the call center project without proper planning and execution.  

As an entrepreneur or a business person, you should follow pre-scripted plans and procedures, including several steps from planning to setting up call centers and everything in between.  

We have compiled a simple manual to help you start a Call Center Business in the Philippines. These pointers will guide you in establishing a well-planned, lawfully registered, and legitimately compliant call center business anywhere in the world 🗺.  

12 steps to start a Call Center Business in the Philippines:

Step 1: Planning your Call Center

A well-scripted plan is crucial to the success of any business. Unplanned businesses do not stand the test of time and fade away within a few years of establishment.  

Planning helps call center businesses to map out their business model, sector of expenditure, investment scales, target market, customer charge schemes, and other specifics of business operations. Additionally, it aids the discovery of unknown factors relating to your business that requires addressing on time.  

Some important planning aspects include the following:

1. The expenditure involved in setting up a call center (infrastructure and office space)
2. Monthly expenses for business operation (salaries, rents, office supplies, system upgrades, etc.)
3. Target market (SMBs who cannot afford in-house call centers)
4. Customer charger & revenues 
5. Digitization and marketing to reach targeted audiences 

These are some basic planning elements; there are several other discovered and emerging facets to consider while planning for a business setup.  

Step 2: Establish a legal entity for your call center

This is a must-do step for all businesses, and it involves actions regarding the structuring of business models/ structure types. There are four basic business structures: sole proprietorship, corporation, partnership, and limited liability company (LLC). 

It is important to establish a legal business entity for your call center to secure 🔐 or protect yourself from legal actions against your business. Legal business entities such as corporations and LLCs safeguard you from being held personally responsible if your company (call center) is sued.  

You can either form a legal entity – LLC and pay for LLC costs or hire the best LLC Service provider near you for a small fee.  

Step 3: Get your Call Center registered for taxes

It is mandatory to register your call center for taxes before initiating the establishment processes. You need to address various federal and state taxes and register for your company (call center). 

These taxes vary from one place to another depending upon the type and size of your company. It is up to you to choose your business structure (mentioned above). For instance, a few LLCs can benefit from being taxed as S corp (S Corporation).  

PS: Applying for EIN is mandatory to register for taxes. 

Step 4: Set up a dedicated bank account and a credit card

Setting up a dedicated bank account and credit card for the call center (business) is crucial. It separates personal and business assets and protects personal assets in case of unfavorable legal actions. 

If you use a personal account for business purposes, your personal and business account gets mixed. It holds a high possibility that your private assets (home, vehicles, valuable items, etc.) will be dissolved if your business is sued.  

This action is called piercing the corporate veil in business law. Hence, setting up a separate business account is important.  

On the other hand, a business credit card helps you segregate professional/business from private expenses and place them under a single file for easy access and analysis. The other aspect is that it enables you to construct a solid company’s credit score history, allowing you to raise funds easily (in the future).  

Step 5: Create a call center accounting system

Accounting is an important aspect of any business; call centers should also maintain proper accounting of income and expenses in detail. An accurate and detailed accounting system simplifies the taxiing procedures.  

You can hire a full-time accountant or outsource the accounting project depending on your company’s budget and model. Either way, try to maintain solid company accounts to avoid any financial disputes in the future.  

More importantly, financial stability and transparency among investors are the keys to a company’s solid foundation.  

Step 6: Licensing and Permits for a Call Center

Licenses and permits are important to set up a call center and run business operations. You may have to face the consequences resulting in hefty fine payments, and even company shit down in case of license and permit failures.  

These permits and licenses completely depend on states’ laws, so it is wise to research before taking any action. You can check out your local and city administrative offices to learn about those requirements.   

If required, obtain them legally to avoid further hindrances; if not, proceed accordingly.  

Step 7: Set up your call center workspace

After the legal and financial activities, you are now good to set up a physical call center workspace for your on-premise agents/employees. A physical workspace is a must for any business as it delivers a sense of trust among the customers.

A physical workspace for agents with adequate infrastructure to run call center business operations is a priority. Your company should provide agents with the best tools and software to work with; only then can you demand better productivity from them. 

Whether the main office or an operational base, you should consider setting up a physical office space for your call center. Physical workspace is the face of your company, and many customers do not want to engage with your business if you don’t have one to show. 

Step 8: Insure your call center

Just like licenses and permits, the insurance of your company (call center) and your employees is equally important. Insurance policies help you cover up losses and protect the company’s monetary well-being. 

Different companies have diverse insurance policies based on their types and business models. It is better to predetermine the actual losses your company can face and insure against them accordingly.  

General Liability Insurance is the most common one for SMBs, a great one to start with. A professional can help you figure out your possible business aspects that require insurance for a small, additional fee.  

Step 9: Create a brand for your call center

A brand for your call center is created by offering exceptional client services, surpassing their business (call center) goals, establishing a class of trust, standing out from the rest, and delivering a seamless customer experience to your customers’ targeted audiences.  

If your call center stands out and performs better than others, you definitely will attract more clients (from small businesses to giant enterprises). This automatically builds your brand levitating above everyone else.  

Creating online presence, logos, QR, and other factors are secondary to quality service and supreme customer experience.  

Step 10: Build a website for your call center

Establishing an online presence is another important aspect of your call center business. Prospects want easily accessible information about the companies (call centers) for research and analysis.  

In this stage of innovation and technology, customers do not trust companies that do not have an online presence. Every successful business has an online presence – a website. 

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Additionally, these businesses have social media accounts where customers can interact with them and even conduct commercial activities. Keeping up with the market fluidity and customer demand is very important to stay on the customer’s radar. 

A call center without an online presence – a website and other socials cannot compete against its competitors; that is a fact.  

Step 11: Get your business phone system up and running

The final step is to get yourself a business phone system, which allows you to segregate your professional/business communications from private communications.  

It is never a good idea to use the same phone for (both) private and business communications. It creates an imbalance between those two aspects of your life and doesn’t represent professionalism in your business portfolio.  

There are several business phone system providers in the market that help you set up your business phone within a few minutes to get right away into the business.  

This approach requires some upfront investment but keeps every business operation smooth and checked later.

The advanced features of business phone systems help you automate your communications and maintain the database updated for business legitimacy and exceptional customer experience.  

Step 12: Hire a team of qualified agents

The future of your call center business rests upon the shoulders of agents and the management team. Experience and a qualified team of agents can easily drive your company’s success within a short time.

Always get involved in the agent hiring procedures so that you can assess them personally and see if they have the potential to make it as professional call center agents. Never hesitate to run agent training programs whenever you scale up and hire new ones.

👍 Don’t Miss: 12 Important Call Center Skills Every Agent Should Have

Try your best to build teams of well-trained and qualified agents that are better in the business sense as it lowers salary expenses (on headcount) and increases effectiveness and agent productivity.

Qualities of agents make or break your company as they are your company’s wheels and the customer touchpoints with your brand. 

Hopefully, these 12 steps will help you get going in no time with no further obstructions.

Call Center Company in the Philippines: How to Start One From Outside Philippines?

Starting a physical call center company with 100% solo ownership in the Philippines from outside the Philippines is not legally possible. It requires a majority of Phillipino citizens to shareholding in the company. So by the Philippines law, foreign ownership is a minority.  

Despite those laws, you can see a lot of Chinese call center companies operating in the Philippines. We can only assume that those companies are registered in China and use the Philippines as their operation base.  

➡️ Must Read: How to Set up a Virtual Call Center from Home Professionally

So, you can start a call center company in the Philippines by collaborating with Filipino business people, giving them the majority of the company share, or legally establishing an operational base there with the main registration in your own country.  

Marrying a native citizen and establishing a call center company or any other company in their name is possible in the Philippines. Is it legal? Maybe not, but there are several such cases.  

Some steps to follow to set up your Philippines call center from outside are:

1. Plan with a long-term goal
2. Research Philippines Regulations & Restrictions
3. Decide business model: Physical Or Virtual Call Center
4. Hire the best team based on the business model
5. Prepare a sturdy budget to fund business operations
6. Move forward with a goal and (future) plan.

How much does it cost to open a call center company in the Philippines?

There is no specific cap on how much it costs to open a call center company in the Philippines; it completely depends on your company’s planned business model, company structure, type of infrastructure, quality and quantity of agents, marketing models, and more.  

The cost is relative to the size and type of the call center company. We recommend you start a small company with a few qualified agents and basic infrastructure to limit your investments and see for yourself if it makes sense.  

You can grow and scale up accordingly if your call center performs well. In general, to answer the question, 500,000 to 800,000 pesos are a minimal monetary requirement to open a call center in the Philippines.

You can find several cases where many call centers in the Philippines have started with 100,000 to 200,000 pesos. 

Times have changed, and so have the requirements; you cannot expect to get going with the same amount forever. Can you? Of course not.  

Bonus Tips to start your BPO business in the Philippines

Some bonus tips to start your BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) business in the Philippines are:

1. Backup funding

You should consider backup funding exclusive to your initial project funds whenever you start any business. You never know if your business picks up with its initiation, it may take some time to get going.  

In such cases, you require backup funding to support your organization, agent salaries, office supplies, rents, and more. Backup funds help your establishment sustain difficult times and not go out of business. You get some spare time to get things in order. 

2. Hire locals to give something back to the community

The inclusion of a local and qualified workforce is extremely important for the sustainability of any business. The locals involved in your call center business know a lot more than you do about the community and even their country.  

They play a major role in establishing your call center business as a local business, enhancing trustability and customer engagement: this approach benefits (both) employers and employees.  

Your business gets local recognition; locals get employment opportunities. In this way, you can give something back to the community. Companies caring about communities’ well-being have a massive future ahead. 

3. Start small and scale up if required

It is always to start a company with limited infrastructure and a small team of a qualified workforce. It saves you money and lowers the risk of a financial loss if it doesn’t work out according to the plan.  

A small yet smart business model generally makes it in the market. Small units require lower expenses and, more importantly, get dedicated monitoring and maintenance (driving it) destined for success.  

Starting small makes it easy for a business to function perfectly, become cost-effective, and speed up its revenues.  

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Conclusion: Level up your Philippines call center business with KrispCall Today! 

KrispCall is a one-stop solution/platform to start winning call center businesses in the Philippines. KrispCall provides you with the most advanced call center software (you can imagine) to run a physical or a cloud-based (virtual) call center.  

You can customize your local Philippines virtual numbers to suit your call center needs. Focus on the local areas of the Philippines and set up local virtual numbers and vanity numbers accordingly to win over the local audiences/prospects. 

KrispCall’s advanced telephony features automate your call center’s tedious tasks letting your agents focus on more important tasks. Lead conversion to generate bigger sales funnel, retain customers, and, more importantly, become more productive and (at the same time) deliver a seamless customer experience.  

KrispCall guarantees your call center’s success with the following features:

1. Unified Callbox: dedicated all-in-one dashboard.
2. Simultaneous Calls: ring multiple agents at once.
3. Developer API: embed widgets on your websites.
4. Sequential Calls: route calls immediately to available agents.
5. Phone Trees (IVR): a virtual receptionist handles high volumes of inbound calls.
6. Shared Number: receive calls across multiple devices.
7. Contact Tags: tag contacts for better navigation.
8. Power Dialer: speed up sales calls.
9. Intelligent call routing: automate call handling processes.
10. SMS and Admin features and lots more…

Get a KripsCall free demo right now and know how it helps to set up your call center business.

FAQs

What are the legal requirements for setting up a call center in the Philippines?

Call centers in the Philippines must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). They must also obtain a permit from the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) if they are located in a SEZ.

What are the data privacy regulations in the Philippines?

The Philippines has a data privacy law called the Data Privacy Act of 2012. This law protects the personal information of individuals and requires businesses to implement appropriate data security measures.

What are the labor laws in the Philippines?

The Philippines has a number of labor laws that protect the rights of workers. These laws include laws on minimum wage, overtime pay, and termination of employment.

What is the future of the call center industry in the Philippines?

The call center industry in the Philippines is expected to continue to grow in the coming years. This is due to the country’s strong pool of talent, favorable business environment, and increasing demand for call center services from around the world.

Arun Chaudhary

Arun is SEO Analyst at KrispCall. He has written in extensively in the field of cloud telephony and call center solutions.