Offshore Telemarketing Can Provide Cost Savings

Every industry has its buzzwords and telemarketing is no exception. In this industry the latest buzzwords are offshore telemarketing, which in effect means moving the call center to an offshore location anywhere in the world. There are many advantages to this, but the main one is cost, since the expense of running a call center or hiring a telemarketing agency to do the telemarketing work is much cheaper in other parts of the world than it is in the US. However, there are some disadvantages to offshore call center outsourcing, and these can include that someone with a foreign accent may have problems or difficulty in communicating with your customers, while it may be difficult for you to communicate with the management at the call center to ensure that your telemarketing campaign is being run properly. This article will look at these points in turn and also discuss some considerations that need to be taken into account when using a call center offshore for your US-based telemarketing operations.

Offshore call centers are much cheaper than call centers based in the US, with savings of up to 30% achievable in some cases. If the telemarketing campaign is a long one or is run on a permanent basis then those cost savings of 30% can translate into a lot of improvement to the bottom line. It is no wonder that that many US-based companies are moving the business away from US-based telemarketing companies and looking seriously at offshore call center outsourcing.

As mentioned above, though, there are disadvantages to using offshore call centers for your telemarketing work, not least of these being that some of your customers simply may not like the fact that you have moved operations outside of the United States, and this could have a negative effect on your corporate image. There is also the more tangible effect of foreign call center staff being unable to communicate effectively with US-based customers. There could also be the difficulty of a US company finding it difficult to communicate effectively with the management of an offshore call center, which can lead to difficulties in running a profitable telemarketing campaign.

One of the ways around the problem of offshore call centers being unable to communicate effectively with US-based customers is to look at places which have a less strong accent when you're looking at offshore call center outsourcing. It is possible to outsource in places such as Canada, where the accent is of course highly acceptable, while the staff of a call center in the Philippines or even an India call center may have stronger accents but ones which are understandable to the American market. Another thing to think of is to use sales scripts which are very simple or alternatively use offshore call centers only for those telemarketing campaigns which are extremely simple to run.

As you can see, there are several advantages to offshore call center outsourcing, the most important one being costs in comparison to using eight US-based telemarketing agency. Of the disadvantages the difficulty in communicating with customers is the biggest, though this can be overcome with proper planning. Using a call center offshore is something which cannot be ignored in today's global marketplace. Take time to do some research of the various offshore call centers and choose one which has a good list of satisfied clients.