Offshoring is the commonly utilized business practice when a company's processes and services are located in another country. The offshoring approach helps to experience lower labor costs, tax benefits, and various economic incentives from abroad. Offshore can help you reach workers with skills unavailable in the local labor market or delegate part of functionalities to concentrate on the company's main field.
What is offshoring, and what it means to businesses?
Offshore functionalities may include manufacturing, IT services, customer support, etc. Simply Contact, an experienced outsourcing company that provides offshore services worldwide, is glad to share our knowledge about offshoring in the customer support sector. Today, we will tell you more about offshoring and the difference between onshore and nearshore outsourcing, and we will give you a few tips on what to expect.
The offshoring definition states that it is a way to base the entire or only part of business in another country. However, while the processes and services take place overseas, the control and management of the company remain in the original country. The offshore functionality may be provided via an outsourcing partnership, where you conclude contacts on the specific tasks the third-party provider fulfills.
The main reasons for using an offshore strategy are to improve resource and cost relocation and leverage other countries' labor conditions. In simple words, through offshoring, outsourcing companies are looking for better working opportunities to boost their efficiency with lower costs.
As experts in offshore outsourcing, we know the pros and cons of the outsourcing approach firsthand and are ready to share our insights into suitable industries and functions.
The offshore benefits are waiting for you. Contact us to get a customer quote for your customer support services.
Request quote
The possibilities and offshoring meaning for many industries are hard to underestimate, but we will look at each one and define what functionality offshoring can offer.
Offshore organizations can offer software development, application maintenance, IT support, cloud services, and cybersecurity services at lower costs. Also, when a company engages professionals from abroad, it can boost development cycles and get better timelines for order fulfillment.
The highly organized and script-driven nature of customer support, technical support, and sales services allows hiring staff from offshore locations at lower costs. Depending on your requirements, multilingual workers can supplement or replace a local customer support team.
Offshoring manufacturing services can include production, assembling, quality control, and shipment to another destination. Overseas manufacturing allows you to reduce labor and operational costs while maintaining the same high-quality products produced under your company's brand.
Such repetitive and routine services like data entry, analytics, and database management can be performed anywhere in the world. Reliable offshore offers secure connections to keep your data safe and, at the same time, offer a more cost-effective solution.
Social media management, SEO, content creation, graphic design, and video editing can be performed remotely from any region. Reliable communication tools and specified clear guidelines and instructions are a good base for successful offshore operations.
This list represents the areas where offshore strategy works best, but many more industries are practicing such an approach. One of the main reasons for choosing offshoring is the possibility of significantly reducing labor and operations costs. The offshoring examples of locations include Africa (customer support), the Philippines (call centers), Portugal (sales, IT, data entry), Ukraine (software development), and many others.
Outsourcing means the business strategy for hiring a third-party company to perform specific tasks or functionalities. This company can be located in the same country as you or abroad.
Outsourcing has become a popular solution for businesses looking for a way to delegate part of tasks and focus on their main specialization. According to the surveys, companies often choose outsourcing services to cut costs, change business strategy, or during the search for new capabilities. According to the forecasts, the outsourcing market size may reach 904.95 billion USD by 2027. 57% of G2000 companies have a contact for outsourcing services.
The need to rely on different companies to do specific tasks for you can make you wonder if outsourcing is good or bad. We believe that it is a valuable solution and opportunity to find the experts, skilled in the specific field, who can provide you with a higher quality of service than untrained staff could do.
In simple words:
While it's different terms, they are still related, and outsourcing companies can be offshoring simultaneously.
Outsourcing can be performed in three ways: onshore, nearshore, and offshore. Let's examine their differences to better understand their ways of operating.
| Onshore | Nearshore | Offshore |
| The outsourcing company is located in the same country as your own company. | The company you hire for specific tasks is located in a nearby country, often in your time zone. | You delegate the tasks to a company that is located in another place of the world, often in a different time zone. |
| Pros: Same time zone Easier travel Seamless communication | Pros: Cheaper than onshore Easier travel Seamless communication | Pros: Lower costs 24/7 productivity Large choice of talents |
| Cons: The highest costs Limited talent options | Cons: Costs are higher than offshore Smaller choice of talent options than offshore | Cons: Different time zones More difficult control |
Nearshore and offshore give you more choices of skilled professionals compared to those located only in your original country. So, when it comes to nearshoring vs offshoring, you need to consider what you require more: closer cultural points of view, easier travel, lower cost, and bigger opportunities.
Quality and the ability to adapt to different cultures are important in providing outstanding customer support. At Simply Contact, we know how to manage the outsourced call center and customer support services correctly, making it comfortable and efficient for our offshore partners.
Based on our personal experience as an outsourced offshoring customer service provider, we consider the following offshoring benefits the most valuable for your business:
Cost-saving reasons have always been one of the main when you choose your business partner, and offshoring can offer lower spending on wages. Also, you don't need to spend resources and money on training your in-house staff for a new task, which is important but not key for your business. Instead, the work can be done by already-prepared professionals who will match your requirements.
You have a higher chance of finding a multilingual team experienced in working with representatives of different cultures. To improve capabilities, we also augment our customer support teams with AI-powered tools, including translation to build clear and helpful communication. Also, offshore partners can adapt to growing scalability requirements without the need to search for new staff from your side.
Many companies apply a Follow-the-Sun operation model, arranging the teams ' schedules to allow them to provide uninterruptable customer support. With agents located in various time zones, round-the-clock customer support is easily achieved. This approach helps to make services faster, more effective, and productive.
Offshore companies often invest in their professional technologies to improve work quality and efficiency, so such cooperation will give you a fully equipped team. It can include various chatbots based on artificial intelligence, analytics tools, time-proven CRM systems, and, as it was mentioned before, translation apps. It means that you will not need to develop and implement it.
The professional customer support team has more experience in problem-solving areas. The agents are trained specifically for customer support services, and you don't have to provide additional training to your staff. Experts know how to arrange the work productively and reach better results, matching customers' needs and enhancing satisfaction.
So, what is offshoring in business?
It is a reliable source of opportunities to delegate customer support services to specifically trained professionals with the required skills, technology, and knowledge. It gives you a fully prepared team ready to deal with everything from small issues to angry customers, building a good reputation and trust in your brand.
Ready for productive offshore collaboration? Check our services to see how much we can augment your customer support.
Learn more
As you can see above, customer support offshoring can bring many valuable benefits. Still, to organize the work safely and productively, you must be fully prepared for challenges.
Different languages, accents, cultural nuances, or lack of local associations may lead to misunderstandings and frustration from in-house staff and customers.
Solution: You can ensure the company you hired has agents with relevant language knowledge. Develop regional-specific scripts and guidelines to ensure your new team is on the same page as your customer. Pay special attention to the presence of real-time translation tools.
When your customer support services are located abroad, it can be quite a challenge to maintain the required level of quality and agents' performance. So, how can you ensure your brand-new customer support matches the company's standards?
Solution: You can implement real-time monitoring systems that will allow you to track customer interactions and see their satisfaction level. Feedback systems can also help you see how efficiently your agents work and how helpful and positive the customer experience is. Set clear KPIs to let agents know what you expect and check them regularly.
You can be concerned that your in-house staff knows your customer better than strangers from abroad, which could lead to impersonal and ineffective service.
Solution: You can share customer information, including the history of purchases and problems, through various CRM systems. In this case, the offshore team will have the same amount of information and will be able to make communication more personalized and focused on the customer. Also, you can arrange communication tools to ensure your offshore team can contact the in-house one for critical or sensitive cases.
Working with offshore outsourcing means sharing sensitive customer information with a third party in another world. In this case, concerns about data safety and compliance with various regulations, as well as worries about intellectual property rights, are natural.
Solution: You can protect your IP rights with the contract. Ensure your service provider follows global data security standards and applies encryption and secure access protocols. Give access to authorized representatives only.
Offshore is associated with lower costs compared to onshore and nearshore options, but you need to remember that the hidden costs may occur. It doesn't mean the scam, but the costs of setup, preparation, staff training, etc.
Solution: You need to be prepared and find out first how much a customer service or call center costs to evaluate your budget and possibilities. Also, outsourcing partners' expertise can help you arrange the work with lower costs, thanks to their experience in the area. Also, customer support-oriented outsourced companies have pre-trained staff.
When you define offshoring outsourcing as your business strategy, you need to know how to choose the right outsourcing partner. Considering our experience and expertise in the offshore and outsourcing sphere, we advise you to concentrate on the following aspects.
Before choosing a partner, you need to know what you expect from them, what kind of work you want fulfilled, and your desired outcome.
Pay attention to what companies can offer you, where they work, and how much the services can cost. Experienced providers are more prepared and better equipped to perform customer support services. Evaluate candidates' technology and language skills. You need to find companies with good track records in your industry, reputation, relevant expertise level, and high adaptivity to different cultures.
For example, Simply Contact's agents work with companies from Ukraine and Poland. Our main offshore services are provided to clients from Germany, the UK, France, and Hungary. We also plan to cooperate with Bulgary, Turkey, and Romania. This demonstrates our experience in the global customer support sphere and our scalability capabilities. You get dedicated customer support teams working with us with undeniable expertise and skills.
You can also check our guide on how to outsource customer service for a few tips on where to focus your attention during the search.
Interviews can help evaluate your potential partners' suitability and understand if you are on the same page regarding business. You can arrange communication through any comfortable tool, like video conferences, emails, or chats. The most important thing is to discover their capabilities.
You can ask about work samples, case studies, or how they can handle various situations or scenarios. You can share your expectations and work standards you want to apply to this cooperation. Remember that you need to find a partner who will meet your technical and language requirements; it would be even better if they also share your values and vision of work.
Now, when you have chosen your offshore partner, you can start building operation processes.
Simply contact us, and we will reach out to you whenever you need outstanding offshore customer support services.
Contact us
When you choose a business strategy, remember that it is not about outsourcing vs. offshoring; it's about convenience, better possibilities, and your business's success. You can combine both strategies to build a strong collaboration with an outsourced offshore company that will become reliable coverage for your customer support service.
Thanks to the offshore approach, you will access the global talent market, reduce costs, and use cutting-edge customer support technologies. By choosing offshore outsourcing, you will not have to train your in-house teams or spend time, money, and resources on preparation; instead, you will get a team of ready professionals.
At Simply Contact, we specialize in creating personalized customer support solutions that drive business growth and customer satisfaction. Let us help you elevate your customer experience and stand out from the competition.
Get fast answers to any remaining questions
Thank you.
Your request has been sent successfully.
