Outsourcing non-core customer communication operations ranging from customer care to collection services is a best practice for brands looking to enhance the customer experience and build efficiencies with the help of customer experience management experts. Some of the most common reasons brands opt to outsource customer communication operations are to reduce the cost of operation, gain access to the latest CX tools and technologies, free up their internal resources to focus on core business operations, and augment business or customer focus.
There are several ways to outsource your customer communications. Various options work best for various environments, scenarios, and customers. Here you will find descriptions, benefits, and limitations of different outsourcing options that will help you decide what type of outsourcing or what combination of outsourcing is right for your business and your customers.
Types of Call Center Outsourcing
Offshore
Offshore outsourcing refers to outsourcing to a call center that has delivery centers overseas, in countries where they can hire agents who can produce similar quality of interaction with significant cost savings.
Pros: Moving your entire customer operations offshore to a low-cost country like the Philippines is a good way to reduce costs and tap into their already established customer experience management engine. In this type of call center outsourcing, operations are leaner and meaner, and the labor pool is bigger.
Cons: Quality of operations may become a big concern in this case compared to more expensive options. However, quality is on the rise and consumers today are more aware and understanding of offshore operations if it keeps prices on the lower side.
Which operations can be outsourced to offshore locations?
Simple or transactional interactions can easily be moved offshore, where the quality of CX is based on the performance of the task. You can quickly identify communication services that should be moved offshore. However, please consider the value of the transactions, the impact on your customer relationship, and sensitivity of consumers.
Onshore
Onshore outsourcing refers to outsourcing customer communication to contact centers in the brand’s home country with the help of third-party staff.
Pros: Due to geological and cultural proximity, agents can relate to consumers, which leads to more personalized customer-brand communication and better CX. Economically, onshore outsourcing keeps jobs local. In addition, privacy, sensitivity, and security of information are also ensured the operations are contained within the company’s home country.
Cons: Onshore outsourcing can get up to three times more expensive to operate from a company’s home country, such as the US or Australia, than it is to manage those operations offshore. Besides, the local labor force can’t always meet the need that brands may have in terms of skill or volume.
Operations can be outsourced Onshore locations?
While outsourcing onshore, your outsourcing partner takes over the everyday operation and employee management, which reduces cost easily while running your customer operations without disrupting your customers or businesses. For example – due to their strategic nature and bottom line impact, many companies outsource their sales operations.
Nearshore
Nearshoring brings you the best of both worlds and is considered the next best thing to onshore. In outsourcing, your brand hires contact centers in neighboring countries. As a result, it can offer the home brand’s cultural proximities and the cost efficiencies of a nearby country.
Pros: It offers a similar customer experience at a lower cost. Jamaica, for example, has a very similar culture to the United States, but its currency goes further than the US dollar. The same can be said for Canada and the US in terms of proximity, cultural alignment, and the cost of doing business.
Cons: There is a perception that these international customer service outsourcing operations aren’t as high quality as vendors onshore. In addition, many industries or operations that deal with sensitive information must stay onshore. Scaling and resources can also become a challenge.
Operations can be outsourced Nearshore locations?
Nearshoring is a great way to move toward offshoring. You can use a phased approach to move some operations to a nearshore provider. It provides the best of both worlds while not completely committing to an offshore outsourcing model. Monitor operational efficiency and customer satisfaction to gauge success.
In addition to different “shore” options, there are opportunities to go beyond the typical shore and opt for right shoring. Here, you can outsource a part of your operation to different offshore, onshore, or nearshore delivery locations of a global call center that offers right shoring solution.