Call Center Outsourcing Pricing Around the World

1
3210

Share on LinkedIn

Have you ever wondered how much outsourcing costs in another country? Perhaps you’d like to outsource to another country to expand your operation or simply save money. Maybe you’ve heard it’s cheaper, but is it really? Let’s go over outsourcing pricing around the world.

Types of Pricing Structures

There are a few different types of operations in an inbound environment. In one, an agent may field calls for 2-4 different clients. A shared environment typically has a lower volume, but higher per minute charges such as 75-85 cents a minute.

There is also the dedicated call center environment. This includes higher-end programs, longer training periods. This is because of the increased difficulty and the need to be focused on one program. This is billed on a per minute or per hour basis.

Some foreign call centers will do a monthly charge, based on a subset of dedicated agents. That’s not something you’d find here in the States.

Some customers are also looking for outbound call centers. These can usually be summed up into outbound hourly rates. Others are pay for performance or commission-based. There are also hourly + commission-based call centers.

United States and Canada

In a dedicated call center, $26 an hour is about the average on the low end. This is anywhere from 52 to 62 cents a minute. If you need agents who are very specialized, like who are also insurance agents or nurses, this can go up to anywhere from $35 to $55 an hour. As an example, most of Expivia’s clients are $26 – $28 an hour. For our specialized clients, it’s in the $30 to $32 range.

Keep in mind that this is an all-in cost. It’s not just paying for the agent. It’s charges for the agent, Telephony, the supervisor, the QA, client service support, reporting, and IT. Everything is rolled into one cost. An outsourcer may have access to advanced analytics and reporting that would help make the cost worthwhile, and if the overhead costs of your own operation are included, outsourcing in this scenario would likely save you money.

Near Shore

This includes Mexico, Belize, Colombia, and those types of places in Latin America. Here, you’d look at anywhere from $10 to $18 an hour. Mexico is more $16 to $19, especially if you want bilingual agents who understand the culture of the United States.

Western Europe

Western Europe is typically expensive. There’s a lot of countries with higher taxes there, and higher regulated minimum wages. You’d be looking at paying anywhere from $30 to $40 an hour. Generally, you can find centers in the United States for cheaper that are just as good. Unless you need the locale specifically, you’d be best served looking elsewhere in my opinion.

Eastern Europe

Here, rates go significantly down. It’s more around the $10 to $22 per hour range. The interesting thing about Eastern European call centers is the diversity of languages and dialects. If you have many international customers who speak many different languages, Eastern Europe may be the place for you. The United States are generally not as multilingual and if you find a center that is you will pay a premium.

Asia, the Philippines, India

These prices keep going down here, but the savings aren’t as good as they used to be. For the Philippines, it would likely be $8 to $14 an hour. Though it’s cheaper, it may not necessarily mesh well with customers who are based primarily in the USA. Is your customer willing to deal with a language issue? There are some very well-spoken call center associates in the Philippines, but the opposite is also true.

India and Pakistan are similar. You can find some high-end centers, with rates of $5 to $11 an hour. The agents are highly skilled, but the language barrier may be too much of a hassle for customers based in the US.

In my opinion, I found that agents in the Philippines and India are very black and white. They can follow a script to a T, but they have difficulty being creative and sometimes problem-solving and thinking outside the box to customers issues. They may have difficulty going above and beyond for a customer service issue when it comes to engagement. It seems to be more of a cultural aspect of this part of the world compared to US agents. That is not to say there is not a place for thee agents, some are AWESOME, you just have to really do your homework.

In Closing

In a hierarchy of pricing, Western Europe is most expensive, followed by the United States, then Eastern Europe, Mexico and near shore, with Asia trailing behind. The question to ask yourself when choosing a location is how much your customer base will be able to tolerate when it comes to the intricacy of issues and the language issues that may arise.

Check out our call center operations podcast at podcast.callcentergeek.com for a weekly podcast where we tackle anything and everything that has to do with call center ops, hiring, technology, and associates training and engagement.

Thomas Laird
Founder and CEO of award-winning Expivia Interaction Marketing Group. Expivia is a USA BPO omnichannel contact center located in Pennsylvania. I have 25 years of experience in all facets of contact center operations. I have the honor of being a member of the NICE inContact ICVC Board. The iCVC is a select group of inContact customers selected to join as trusted advisors to help InContact validate ideas for new products and features and plans for future innovations. I am also the author of "Advice from a Call Center Geek" and host of the podcast of the same name. podcast.callcentergeek.com

1 COMMENT

  1. Surprised to see the pricing of the call center agents around the world. Asia seems have a good potential for cheaper but good quality only if they trained the agents way better to meet the US standards at least.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here