What Is Offshoring Customer Support?

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.

What Is Offshoring?

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.

The benefits of offshoring: 

• Cost savings due to the lower cost of services
• Access to skilled professionals all over the world
• Increased efficiency due to delegating part of routine functions
• Better team scalability
• Round-the-clock service coverage due to different time zones
• Benefits from local reduced taxes
• Lower reliance on a single marker

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.

Where offshoring strategy is the most valuable?

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.

• IT and software development

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.

• Customer service

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 be an addition or a replacement for a local customer support team.

• Manufacturing

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.

• Data entry and processing services

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.

• Marketing and content creation

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.

Is Outsourcing The Same As Offshoring?

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. 

So, what is the difference between outsourcing and offshoring? 

In simple words:

• A third party performs outsourcing, and it does not matter where exactly this party operates: in the same country or anywhere else.
• Offshoring always means that the work is performed from abroad, and it does not matter who exactly does it: your company or another.

While it's different terms, they are still related, and outsourcing companies can be offshoring simultaneously. 

Offshore vs Onshore vs Nearshore Outsourcing

Outsourcing can be performed in three ways: onshore, nearshore, and offshore. Let's let's have a closer look at their differences to understand their way of operation better.

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 zoneEasier travelSeamless communication	Pros:Cheaper than onshoreEasier travelSeamless communication	Pros:Lower costs24/7 productivityLarge choice of talents
Cons:The highest costsLimited talent options	Cons:Costs are higher than offshoreSmaller choice of talent options than offshore	Cons:Different time zonesMore 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.

Regarding customer support, quality and the ability to adapt to different cultures are important to provide outstanding service to your clients and customers. At Simply Contact, we know how to correctly manage the outsourced call center and customer support services, making it comfortable and efficient for our offshore partners. 

Benefits of Customer Support Offshoring

Based on our personal experience as an outsourced offshoring customer service provider, we consider the following offshoring benefits the most valuable for your business:

Offshoring saves your costs

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.

Global talents

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.

24/7 coverage

Many companies apply a Follow-the-Sun operation model when you arrange the teams ' schedules in a way that allows them to provide uninterruptable customer support. You can easily achieve round-the-clock customer support when you have agents located in various time zones. This approach helps to make services faster, more effective, and productive.

Advanced technology

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.

Enhanced customer satisfaction

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.

Challenges of Customer Support Offshoring

As you can see above, customer support offshoring can bring many valuable benefits. Still, you must be fully prepared for challenges to organize the work safely and productively. 

Communication issues

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 make sure the company you hired has agents with the relevant language knowledge. Develop regional-specific scripts and guidelines to ensure your new team is on the same wave as your customer. Pay special attention to the presence of real-time translation tools.

Quality and performance control

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 interaction with customers and see their satisfaction level. Feedback systems can also help to see how efficient your agents work and how helpful and positive the customer experience is. Set clear KPIs to let agents know what you expect and check it regularly.

Personalization level

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 make sure your offshore team can contact the in-house one for critical or sensitive cases.

Security

Working with offshore outsourcing means sharing sensitive information about your customers with a third party in another world. In this case, concerns about data safety and compliance with various sorts of regulations are natural, as well as worries about intellectual property rights.

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.

Costs

Offshore is associated with lower costs compared to onshore and nearshore options, but you need to keep in mind 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.

How to Pick the Best Offshore Customer Support Partner

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.

Understand your goals

Before choosing a partner, you need to know what you expect from them, what kind of work you want fulfilled, and your desired outcome.

• Evaluate your budget and resources. 
• Choose the communication tools you prefer.
• Define standards you want outsourcer to apply to all future work for your brand. 
• Decide if you need any specific type of support: technical or multilingual, for example.
• Set clear goals that can define progress and level of success.
• Decide what you need from customer support: phone calls, chat, emails, specific hours coverage, and other aspects. 

Research and evaluate your potential partners

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. Also, we have plans to cooperate with Bulgary, Turkey, and Romania. It demonstrates our experience in the customer support sphere of the global market and our scalability capabilities. You get dedicated customer support teams with undeniable expertise and skills working with us.

You can also check our guide on how to outsource customer service to get a few tips on where to pay attention during the search.

Communicate with your potential offshore partners

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 samples of work, case studies, or how they can handle various situations or scenarios. You can share your expectations and standards of work 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.

Create productive and efficient collaboration

Now, when you have chosen your offshore partner, you can start building operation processes. 

• Set regular communication.
• Share your expectations and goals with your partner.
• Set clear metrics to define success. 
• Establish a constructive feedback system to adjust anything that concerns you and reach desirable results.

Conclusions

When you choose a business strategy, remember that it is not about outsourcing vs offshoring; it's about convenience, better possibilities, and the success of your business. You can combine both strategies to build a strong collaboration with an outsourced offshore company that will become a reliable coverage for your customer support service. 

Thanks to the offshore approach, you will access the global talent market, reduced costs, and cut-of-the-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, but you will get a team of ready professionals.