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Offshore Call Centers

Guest post by: Nicolas DAlleva

Article Overview: Offshore call centers are often a more affordable option than United States based call center service companies.

Offshore Call Centers

Offshore call centers are quite common in today's outsourced business environment. Centers stationed in India, the Philippines, Central America and Eastern Europe, have grown in numbers and popularity. Offshore call centers are a polarizing issue. While most end users do not enjoy the experience, some find the use of these centers to be cost effective. The United States is home to many quality call centers. To properly run a call center is a major undertaking. There is a lot of training and cost involved in the process of operating a call center properly. As a result of the high cost of running a labor intensive business, United States call centers need to charge their rates accordingly. While these rates may be considered high, using a call center usually more than pays for itself. Yet, in an effort to combat the high cost of running a call center in a way that most would find acceptable, many opt to set up or utilize an offshore call center.

Indian Call Centers

When most people think of an offshore call center, they are referring to India based operations. India is the home to thousands of call center operations. Many large corporations, credit card companies and outbound contact centers are located in India. While Mumbai is considered to be the call center capital of the universe, Indian call centers can be found in almost any province or region of India. While an educated labor pool in India is available, there are many cultural differences that make using an India based call center a challenge.

Philippine Call Centers

In the Philippines, the Call Center industry is booming. There are over 800 call centers in operation in the country. The industry has been labeled as the "Sunshine Industry" by the Philippine government. This is due to the explosion of the industry over the last 10 years. Call center services is the fastest growing industry in the Philippine economy.

Central American Call Centers

Many companies Outsource to a Central or American call center. While most of these centers are in Costa Rica, there are also centers located in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Argentina, and Mexico. These Latin American centers have experienced great growth in recent years. Companies have been able to thrive in this environment due to the internet, reduction in telephony costs, and the need for educated, bilingual operators. While these call centers have their limitations, they can be a solution for companies needing Spanish, or Bilingual agents. Offshore Call centers located in Central America generally cost a third less than their US counterparts.

Eastern European Call Centers

Offshore Outsourcing to Eastern European call center centers has been a recent phenomenon. Contact centers are popping up in Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic. In these countries there is a large pool of multilingual employees. These centers have seen an emergence. Sophisticated internet applications have opened the doors for these companies to enter the worldwide call center business. These call centers may be a good fit for companies whose applications European languages such as Italian French, or German. These centers handle most European and Slavic languages. Outsourced Call centers in Eastern Europe are a very popular choice for UK businesses but are growing in popularity in the United States as well. These centers are less expensive than United States call centers by about forty percent.

While there are many offshore call center options, there are drawbacks to using these operations. What a company saves in dollars and cents is often negated by lost business, frustration and increased in house customer service that comes from dealing with these call centers. United States based call centers still are the best bet, and ultimately the most cost effective services available.

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Article Tags: answering service, offshore call center



Related Forum Posts
Work from Home - It all depends on the level of your business that you are involved in. Offshore business sounds as "The cool thing" but its not all that cool when managing infrastructure is concern. It’s a huge investment involved. I am talking about serious business.
Seek Venture Capital & Funding - Hello, Greetings from India. I am Seeking Venture Capital for Offshore Software Company Start-up. Need advise along with Business Model Sample. I have a basic outline for an offshore company. 1. Technology - like Microsoft Dot Net, Java, LAMP 2. Talent Team - Found Good Technology Developers. 3. Where I can get the leads/potential customers - Leads have been identified who are willing to move forward offshore projects. 4. I do not have resources like funding. It is a very critical factor to me Industries: Manufacturing, Real Estate, Retail, Insurance, Distribution & Logistics, Healthcare, Industry Associations and Software Product Development, Agricultural Industries and Etc. Services: Offshore Software Development Company. Offices to be located: Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India and USA. Products/Services/Applications in areas like POS & Billing, Sales & Distribution, Production Planning, Material Management, Inventory Control, Plant Maintenance, Purchasing, Accounting and Logistics. Dynamic Web Programming with Database Driven Content Management Systems, Online Stores for E-Commerce, B2B Solutions, Community Portals, Website Redesign and Development, Custom ERP with Enterprise Wide Functional Modules such as Marketing, CRM, Accounting, Inventory Control, Sales & Distribution, Production Planning, Purchase & Stores, Logistics and Supply Chain. Seek your further questions and help. Thank you, Best Regards, Jayapratap.
I answer my phone - when I worked in the Call Center we had to say "Good XXXXXX, Andy speaking, How may I help you?" imagine saying that over and over again. It kind of sticks with you. It's been a few years now but I've kicked off "How may I help you?" part.
Money I made while in School - While in university I did have a Student Loan (still paying that bugger off) and had a part-time job as a Call Center agent (inbound). *Canada* I also designed websites (outsourced all the work). I just worked on getting new customers, managed the projects to completion and helped create Marketing Plans for my clients (Online and Offline). *Canada* When I was studying the in the States I also made some money as a Part-time Flight instructor. *USA*
hiring an employee - You may want to consider contracting out instead of actually hiring. Some factors to think about if you hire someone as an employee and you put them on payroll you will be required to pay CPP and EI, as well as deducting CPP, EI and Taxes from their paycheck and remitting them to Revenue Canada. So you will need to 1. Register with Revenue Canada so you can make the remittenances 2. make sure you keep really good track of these deductions 3. it you don't have the time to do payroll you may need to hire a bookkeeper. or you could contract out the hours that you would need an assistant. The would be able to work from their space or your office. There is another option that you might want to consider some of the community centers offers training programs for new immigrants or anyone wish to change professions some of these programs require that they offer their services for 6 or 8 weeks (no charge to the employer). If you need someone short term this may help you and provide extra training for someone else. Microskills is one of the Community Centers that offer such programs. they train customer service personal, bookkeepers.


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