Offshore call centers provide cost-effective 24/7 support to customers, but can lead to frustration due to language barriers and lack of product knowledge. Brand loyalty can suffer if customer service is ineffective. Some countries providing offshore call centers include Panama, the Philippines, and India.
An offshore call center is a type of outsourcing where a company employs people in another country to handle customer support or service calls. In the United States, many companies that sell computer products or services offshore these services. The benefit to the business is the savings: it’s less expensive to hire a company outside the US to handle the calls than it is to hire technical staff in the US. However, many customers find that it can be a frustrating experience when trying to troubleshoot technical issues.
Sometimes referred to as “follow the sun services”, using offshore outsourcing is a cost effective way for a business to have 24/7 support available to customers in a highly competitive market. Overhead cost savings can be as high as 40% compared to providing the same services nationwide. An offshore call center also has the advantage of being able to provide multilingual support to many non-English speaking customers.
One potential downside is that the business has to rely on a third party to handle its customers. Employees of an offshore call center probably have less interest in customer satisfaction than the company they work for. Brand loyalty is built on product marketing and satisfaction, and ineffective customer service, outsourced or in-house, can easily destroy that investment. Some call center providers point out that, for this reason and others, the best countries for outsourcing are those that align with the company’s base country.
From a customer perspective, at least in the tech world, offshore call centers are generally viewed as unfavorable. Too often, it means trying to communicate with someone the customer can’t understand easily. Worse, it also usually means getting valid answers from a “cue card” type troubleshooting system. If this is the case, go to A. If not, go to B… It’s not uncommon for the person providing technical support to know next to nothing about the product or system the customer is calling on and is simply following the steps in a guide. While this approach may answer basic questions, it typically lacks advanced support through personal experience with the product or service.
Some countries that provide offshore call centers in the US include Panama, the Philippines, and India. Many US industries benefit from these call centers, with some industries finding it more suitable than others. If you are interested in looking for this business solution for your company, many successful service providers can be found online.
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