Once a business decides to invest in a contact center, the question becomes where to put that operation.
Offshore locations in India and the Philippines have long been front-runners, but countries in Africa rising in popularity. Legislative momentum to compel onshoring, though currently insignificant, ebbs and flows in Congress.
To Maureen Burns, a partner in Bain & Company’s customer practice, choosing one place over another depends on what aligns strategically.
“An offshore contact center can be just as good as an onshore contact center. It's about how much time, effort and investment you put into it,” Burns said.
Samsung Electronics America chose to open a contact center in Greenville, South Carolina, this October in partnership with Harte Hanks, a global customer experience company. The new Customer Care center supports more than 150 jobs and is now the hub for its customer service arm, Samsung Care. The facility is 14,000 square feet and includes a training lab to carry out ongoing upskilling initiatives and professional development for employees.
Samsung has support teams offshore, too, and they drive key performance indicators, said Marcia Ellis-Green, executive director of customer support at Samsung. Agents in Greenville focus on more complex customer inquiries in tier 2 and tier 3. It’s a strategy backed by a strong business case, Ellis-Green said.
“Greenville is our circle of excellence,” Ellis-Green said.
Proximity breeds synergy
Typically, cost is thought of as a significant factor in deciding whether to look overseas for contact center operations. A COPC survey from 2022 found “cost reduction” is the top reason companies choose to outsource contact center operations.
While labor is still cheaper in many offshore locations today, costs are rising, meaning it plays less of a role in decision-making than it used to, Burns said. Factors such as the types of calls anticipated, call volume, ownership of data from those calls, and training required to handle those calls may now be prioritized.
“When I put that all together, what's the right cost-benefit analysis?” Burns said.
The answer depends on the company. Important to Samsung in its Greenville decision was synergy. Ellis-Green’s team, which handles customer support operations, was already in Greenville. With the new facility, agents and operations support can now meet with each other by walking across the parking lot, she said. In the case of new technologies or other solutions, the support team can bring them directly to the call center. Additionally, the teams can participate in workshops together.
Though unfamiliar with Samsung’s strategy, Burns noted proximity isn’t just beneficial for customers. A “unified experience for employees,” as she called it, is its own advantage.
Indeed, Ellis-Green said it’s easier for both customer service and operations colleagues to walk to meet with each other instead of taking a flight across the country, or even a flight across the world. That’s important for a call center responsible for more complex and technical cases, which Ellis-Green said are moments “that change customer loyalty.”
This concept becomes especially true as an increasing number of general inquiries are handled through digital channels without a human agent. A report this year from AI-powered agent platform Forethought found companies deflected one-third of their tickets with a digital solution, with or without AI. That’s an increase over last year’s finding of about one-quarter.
Though the trend is not currently ubiquitous, it has CX leaders thinking about where human interactions can differentiate them from their peers, Burns said.
“I think it … raises the stakes for those fewer calls,” she added.
A balancing act
Ellis-Green has worked in the contact center space for more than two decades. In her experience, underpinning any strategy for consumer-facing industries is the pursuit of balance. And “balance” looks different for different companies, she said.
Samsung has agents supporting millions of customer calls every day, as well as teams working in the same time zone close to support staff. While outsourcing some aspects of the contact center may make sense, Ellis-Green said she has an entire team in-house, working on escalations, processes and procedures.
And balance can also pertain to the offerings a customer service team provides to its customers. Ellis-Green said her husband prefers to fix things himself, and so prefers self-service resources such as ordering a part online. But customers who would rather have a technician come to their house also have access to that option.
The strategy requires looking ahead to what customers want from customer service and what the company can provide to meet those needs over the next few years, she said.
“Where do we see that there is a gap or a new technology or a new special team that would need to be created to support them?” Ellis-Green said. “And we'll always continue to look at, where is that best located? Does it make sense to be here or does it make sense to be outside of the U.S.?”
