Offshore Call Center
What is an offshore call center?
An offshore call center is a service provider from abroad that provides your business with 24/7 customer service. Usually, they offer customer support in multiple languages and at an inexpensive price. Some popular offshore call center have a lot of spaces include developing countries like India, China, the Philippines and Eastern Europe. To be remembered that an offshore call center is not like from an onshore call center — it is located in the same country as your company. At the same time, nearshore outsourcing involves delegating work to call centers located in countries near you to minimize time zone differences. Before exploring how to choose the right foreign call center, let’s understand the key differences between inbound and offshore call centers.
Offshore and domestic call centers have seperate characteristics due to different areas. Let’s compare them on four key aspects and see which model will be the best fit for your business:
1. Operating costs
For example, let’s say your business is in the United States. You can now outsource customer support to an external partner in the US (onshoring) or an offshore service provider like India (offshoring). When you outsource call centers in India, labor and other costs associated with call center services are much lower than if you were in the US. With offshore outsourcing, you can profitably invest in your business infrastructure and resources. So, if you are an SME (small and medium-sized business) owner, you should consider outsourcing customer support services abroad to save costs.
Foreign call centers may have agents who speak more than one language. This skill can help your business meet the needs of non-English speaking customers. How ?
If your offshore call center agents are bilingual, they may be able to communicate in a customer-appropriate language, especially if you have clients abroad. This can help increase customer satisfaction. However, onshore call centers may have only English-speaking staff who are not fluent in other languages. This may prevent you from offering your customers the convenience offered by offshore call centers.
Due to the cost difference between offshore and inbound call centers, you can get more offshore outsourcing services for the same cost. You can use the money you save to improve your service or invest in basic skills and grow your business. For example, US companies might pay $100 for 5 hours of onshore call center service, while they can get 24/7 customer service with outsourced services for the same rate. price. Likewise, you can hire more agents to work during peak hours. This way you can improve your answering service rates as you will be equipped to answer more incoming calls from your customers.
4. Maintenance of technology
When you have an onshore call center, you may need to invest in its infrastructure and update the technology regularly. Also, you may have to spend more money on maintenance as you have to hire a team just to take care of its performance.
For example, you may have to pay for a subscription to software that streamlines communication with customers. Likewise, you may need to repair your laptop or other devices when they stop working. By outsourcing customer service to an offshore company, you can eliminate the cost and effort required for technical maintenance and other related costs. Moreover, you can also gain a competitive advantage in business if your foreign partner uses modern technology.
Let’s look at some of the factors you need to consider:
1. Language blankets
2. Cultural differences
3. Resources to ensure business continuity
4. Quality of customer experience
5. List of customers
6. Requires monitoring of offshore call center
Track total hours worked on your projects. Monitor the websites and apps they use during business hours. Pay service providers through reliable payroll solutions. Gain insight into agent performance with accurate productivity reports.
