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Nearshore Call Center Locations: Trends and Hot Spots

The call center outsourcing industry is constantly evolving and it can be a challenge to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and the best call center outsourcing locations in the world. India was the prime outsourcing location fifteen years ago and the Philippines has evolved into the largest BPO outsourcing region in the world in the last ten years. Diversifying your outsourcing portfolio is crucial to successful outsourcing partnerships, which ultimately means that new locations will take over as outsourcing hot spots. This just begs the question: what’s next? The answer, according to our experience and research, is nearshore call center locations. This article explains some of the current most popular nearshore locations for outsourcing and where the call center outsourcing hot spots will be in the near future.

With Fortune 500 corporations moving their call center outsourcing work to the Philippines over the last decade, many companies now have a very large percentage of their outsourcing labor there without considering other options. Many of these corporations now feel they have too many eggs in the Philippine outsourcing basket and they need to find an additional geographical region to diversify their risk and exposure. Adding fuel to the fire, the Philippines president, Rodrigo Duterte, has recently made concerning comments about policies regarding companies outsourcing to the Philippines and has threatened to potentially break ties with the United States. With this in mind, many corporations are now looking to diversify into other markets with outsourcing contingency plans in case situations escalate in the Philippines.

If you’re finding yourself in a situation where you’re concerned about problems escalating with your offshore call center locations, a logical solution is outsourcing to nearshore markets in Central and Latin America because they have similar benefits to the Philippines, such as proficient English-speaking agents, cultural affinity to the U.S., educated agents and competitive pricing structure. Specific countries that meet these criteria include Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, Jamaica and Mexico. If we focus specifically on a country like El Salvador and a city like Tijuana in Mexico, we’re seeing companies have success with call centers in these regions because many of the agents are college educated and have strong sales conversion capabilities with an ability to make a connection with American customers. The agents in Tijuana and El Salvador can help generate more revenue for companies with these sales conversions and outsourcing to these call centers can help reduce costs by as much as 50% depending on specific location.

In the next five years there is going to be significant nearshore growth in Tijuana, El Salvador, Belize and a variety of neighboring regions because their close geographic proximity to the US translates to reduced travel time, easier communication and a greater cultural influence. The close proximity with similar times zones allows companies to optimally monitor and enhance the performance of their outsourced operations, which aids in closing the cultural gap, reducing training time and providing a greater understanding of customer expectations, which leads to higher customer satisfaction. The nearshore market growth is going to be comparable to the growth the Philippines has had in the last ten years.

If you’re interested in outsourcing with a nearshore call center, we can help at no charge!

Outsource Consultants are call center experts with over 25 years of outsourcing industry experience that have spent thousands of hours vetting and analyzing the strengths and specializations of the industry-leading outsource call center vendors. If you’re considering call center outsourcing, simply call 888-766-4482 or request a free call center cost proposal today and we’ll help you find the solution that best fits your exact requirements.