There are various reasons why a company would decide to outsource their call center, as the cost of office space, training, and workforce can add up.
This article from Customer Think details the costs you can expect with opening an in-house center, and the majority are related to employee expenses (hiring, benefits, productivity management, etc). With all of that investment, it can be disheartening to find that the attrition rate of onshore call centers is upwards of 30%. This burden alone pushes companies to outsource their service business, but why don’t you see that same problem repeated with your outsource partner? An advantage to outsourcing is the established call center culture that you’ll find in nearshore locations. In the US, you see a high agent attrition rate because employees generally think of it as a temporary opportunity until they start a career in their field. PayScale lists a call center agent’s average wage in the US as $13.17 an hour. The hourly rate could be as low as $10/hour when they’re just starting out. With potential bonuses and commission, they’re looking at a yearly earning of $21k-$40k. It would be difficult to live on that wage anywhere in the US, especially without benefits. For this reason, it’s more of a temporary play for most people, and not considered a lucrative career.
In nearshore locations, like Bogotá, Colombia for example, you’ll find a different situation entirely. The call center industry is a prominent source of income for the city, and they invest time and money into transportation and connectivity infrastructure to support these prominent businesses. In Bogotá, it’s common to go into the call center industry with a career plan, hoping to move up within the company in various support fields. Popular career paths at Callzilla include the Training department, Quality Assurance, Operations Management, and Human Resources. As a result, our average attrition in 2020 was just under 10%. To prepare for his future goal of becoming the Manager of our Training Department, our agent Santiago Santamaria said, “I read and learn as much as I can about the program I work for and I propose strategies to improve the processes we use every day.”
As 75% of our agents indicated that they’d like to create a career path with Callzilla, we created an E-Learning program last year to help with just that. Our online platform gives agents the opportunity to plan out their goals, and sign up for training and courses that will prepare them for the next opportunity within our company. Our preference is always to promote from within, because we have plenty of skilled, ambitious workers preparing for these opportunities.
Even if the goal is not to continue on with the call center, it’s considered a great place to gain experience in your field of study. One of our Agents, Camilo Cruz Sanchez said that as a future Flight Attendant, “I am pushed to fully improve my level of English as an Agent and improve my customer service skills which the airlines value here.”
Jorge Sandoval, who works on one of our E-Tech programs as a sales agent, said he considers working for a call center to be a means to learn fundamental life skills. “Deciding to be a part of Callzilla and become a sales rep was something almost mandatory for myself. I needed to be trained and educated on a fundamental life skill, which is learning how to sell. Furthermore, understanding how important communication skills are and knowing how to put self-control and negotiation skills into practice will help me in every day social interactions. This opportunity has definitely given me a new perspective on how to be successful in life.”
For more information on nearshore outsourcing, you can contact us here.
Or click bellow to find out how Callzilla increased revenue by 12% in just one month of lauching a new video chat channel.
About the Author: Neal Topf
