Service providers from around the world are trying to capture a piece of the growing outsourcing market in the US.  Offshore outsourcers in countries such as Ireland, the Philippines, and India are making efforts to persuade American companies that not only would their customer interactions be better handled by outsourcers, but that they would also get more for their money when using an offshore outsourcer.

One of the major arguments made by offshore outsourcers is that they can provide a better-educated pool of agents than their American counterparts.  Contrary to the US, in some countries being a call center agent is seen as a career. Moreover, because of the high value placed on call center agents in other countries, offshore outsourcers are able to recruit agents with degrees in various disciplines from law to medicine.  In fact, in some offshore outsourcing call centers, 100% of their agents have college degrees.  Therefore, when offshore agents make a pitch to a company such as Citigroup, they can tell them that Citigroup’s customers who call in can be ensured that they will be routed to an agent educated in financial services products.  In addition, the offshore outsourcer can often provide these highly educated agents at a significantly lower labor cost compared to a less-educated agent with a US-based outsourcer.  Labor costs in India, for example, can be up to 80-90% lower than in the US. 

One current trend in the overall call center market is also driving offshore outsourcing.  In order to cut costs while continuing to offer 24-hour service, several larger corporations are looking to implement a “follow the sun” approach with their call centers.  Several Fortune 500 companies, such as IBM, have consolidated their network of smaller disconnected call centers into a few mega call centers to handle customer interactions on an application and geographic basis.  These call centers typically are open 24 hours, running in shifts.  Today, with advancements in networking and workforce management applications, these companies are considering spreading out their call volumes to their call centers around the world.  Therefore, a call center would only be open while the sun was up at its location.  So for example, if a call center in Tampa, Florida receives an after hours call from a customer in Atlanta, that inquiry could be routed to a call center in Australia.  Therefore, the corporation saves money in labor and operation costs by only employing one shift in each location.  Western businesses can take advantage of this trend by partnering with outsourced call centers in regions of the world where they do not have presence. 

The growth of offshore outsourcing depends heavily on the uptake of IP architecture.  One of the obstacles that offshore outsourcers will face is the cost of telephony.  Routing calls to an international call center incurs international toll charges, which drives up the cost of outsourcing.  However, as more call centers move to IP-based communications, telephony costs are dramatically reduced and the telephony cost advantage enjoyed by local outsourcers is erased.   

Another obstacle to offshore outsourcing is the hesitance of Americans to deal with agents with accents.  Currently many offshore outsourcers have not run into this problem because they only handle web interactions (mostly emails); however, as they gain the ability to handle all customer touch points, they will be forced to deal with this issue.  Some Indian outsourcers have implemented a creative strategy to deal with this problem.  They have training classes that teach their agents to affect American accents.  In fact some go as far as to teach them how to affect accents from different regions within the US.  So, if a customer calls from Atlanta, the agent will affect a Southern accent and if a customer calls from New York city, the agent he or she deals with will sound as if he or she were born and raised in the Bronx.  

Source:  DATAMONITOR