A Better Answer Blog

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times announced that The Philippines had overtaken India as the call center of the world. Filipinos are the go-to for outsourcing calls due to apparent cheap labor and specialized skills. With many American companies in the process of deciding which outsourcing option works for them, we wanted to make the case for domestic call centers.

Changes in Technology

As more and more customer service related issues are moving to social media, a call center representative should be familiar with the continually changing networks. Technology companies are also the largest users of call centers, which means the person answering the phone should have the latest professional training. In many cases, training an overseas operator simply isn't as cost-effective as training someone in the U.S. First line calls or calls that require the least amount of technical experience may still initially be handled by foreign operators, but as more experience is needed, could be escalated to a domestic call center.

Rising Overseas Labor Costs

Call centers were initially sent overseas to reduce labor costs. Foreign labor costs have dramatically risen as American median incomes have fallen, leading many companies to bring their outsourcing demand back to the United States. Meanwhile, domestically, with current technology and social media use, some call center operations can be automated and workers can work remotely. This leads to lower costs, comparatively, and higher customer satisfaction.

Customer Demand

When businesses outsourced calls to foreign call centers, customer satisfaction decreased. Many businesses also grew frustrated with the lack of collaboration between foreign operators and their American counterparts. A missed call or disgruntled customer can lead to missed opportunities and income for a company. Instead of escalating calls and frustrating the customer even more with the length of resolution time, a viable solution was to pull call center operations back to the United States and resolve a customer complaint quickly and on one call.

Companies like General Motors, Whirlpool and AT&T are pulling back call center operations from foreign countries. Companies are looking at their bottom line and recognizing that their customer base wants an empathetic, patient and educated agent on the phone when there is a problem. Calls answered quickly and with quick resolution mean a happier customer. And a happier customer is good for any business.