Location Becomes Less Important in Outsourcing Decisions
Though there is a strong push by some legislators to bring outsourced contact center jobs shipped overseas back to the United States, the reality is that physical location is less of a concern today.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set its regulatory sights on offshore call centers. At the end of March, the regulator sent out a request for commentary on proposals that would encourage U.S. businesses to repatriate foreign contact center jobs and improve customer service at existing call centers. Among them is a proposal to require call center agents to be proficient in American Standard English.
Nearly 70 percent of U.S. companies outsource at least one department, the FCC said in its notice. “These moves not only took jobs away from communities across the country, they created a range of other problems as well. Today, consumers in the U.S. regularly experience frustration and poor customer service when they connect with a call center located abroad. There can be communication and other barriers that make it difficult, if not impossible, for consumers to get a satisfactory resolution to their problems.”
The FCC is not alone.
“After years of chasing cheaper labor costs, a lot of enterprises are quietly stepping back and asking whether the tradeoffs are actually worth it,” says Mike Keogh, president of Provalus, a professional services provider that focuses on undiscovered talent in small towns and rural communities across the United States. “Data security headaches, the time zone juggling act, customers noticing when service feels inconsistent—these things add up, and they’re pushing more companies to take a hard look at onshore alternatives, especially in parts of the U.S. that don’t typically show up on anyone’s radar.”
Despite those concerns and pending legislation, the number of contact center jobs in the United States has remained relatively flat, while positions in India, the Philippines, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean continue to grow, according to Site Selection Group, which helps companies develop a holistic location strategy based on labor, supply chains, customers, and other factors.
Even with artificial intelligence and other automation handling an increasing number of queries, the interaction growth continues to drive the need for human agents, with many companies balancing U.S., nearshore, and offshore locations.
Offshore and nearshore contact centers provide more scale than U.S. contact centers alone can offer, says Molly Moore, chief operating officer of Liveops, a contact center outsourcer that primarily contracts independent agents for remote call center work. “It’s great for high-volume, repeatable programs with very predictable demand.”
Moore adds that many contact center providers have a proven track record of success in foreign locations and will work with business customers to determine the best location(s) based on a variety of factors.
The location of a contact center is a strategic decision, says Kim Minor, chief marketing officer of Empata, another contact center outsourcer. “One of the advisory services that we offer customers is to outline with them what (cost, etc.) is the most critical. Do they need English support? Do they need bilingual support? Do they already have a footprint in India (or another foreign country)? What skill sets do they need?”
The need for social media support is another consideration, particularly for contact centers serving younger customers.
In its 2026 Outsourcing and Current Trends Report, Site Selection Group uncovered both continued scale in offshore hubs and selective re-investment in onshore markets for complex and regulated functions.
Location decisions remain fluid as contact center operators seek to balance labor availability, scalability, risk, and service quality, the report says. “The weighting of these factors changes each cycle. In 2026, labor availability and workforce sustainability are the dominant constraints shaping global strategy.”
“I don’t think the decision is any longer onshore vs. offshore vs. nearshore; it’s how to orchestrate the right mix of locations, talent, workflows, and AI to deliver the best outcome,” Moore says.
The Impact of AI
Artificial intelligence, which has injected itself into just about every CRM discussion, is also featuring prominently in contact center site selection decisions, Moore adds. “A year ago, most outsourcing conversations started with cost. Onshore was expensive, nearshore sat in the middle, and offshore was primarily where companies went for savings. Cost still matters, but it is no longer the defining factor. AI is changing the mix. Much of the simple, repeatable work can now be automated. What reaches a human agent is more complex, often requiring judgment, context, or carrying higher risk for the brand.”
Site Selection Group notes that automation and AI have reduced the number of low-complexity interactions handled by human agents, though their importance is still on solid footing.
“Human capital remains central to customer experience,” Site Selection Group says.
Moore agrees: “The companies that will navigate this well are not choosing between AI and people. They are designing how the work gets done. Automation should handle repeatable tasks, while human expertise is applied where empathy, decision making, and accountability matter most. Customers are increasingly clear on this.”
Business customers have a variety of views on AI in the contact center, according to Minor. “Some don’t want AI involved in their responses to customers. Others are very comfortable with it.”
One of the big areas for AI investment in contact centers is translation, which will further erode the language barrier that once excluded some locations from serving U.S. customers.
AI-based translation is far more accurate and much faster than it was only a couple of years ago, Minor explains. “But at some level, there is always some human interaction involved.”
Moore adds that as fast as AI is evolving, “in the blink of an eye,” it could be good enough to offer text and voice translations that are nearly indiscernible from interactions with native speakers, further changing the contact center decision location.
Additionally, accent mitigation technologies offered by companies like Sanas and Krisp are lessening the difficulties that come from foreign contact centers.
Krisp, for example, offers AI Accent Conversion that uses real-time inflection changes to help customers understand agents better by dynamically changing agents’ accents into the customer’s natively understood accent. It now supports Spanish, Indian, and Filipino dialects, with new dialects coming this year, such as South African and non-U.S. English accents.
Sanas, meanwhile, recently added support for a range of African and Middle Eastern input accents and a new U.K. English output accent to its Accent Translation solution. The company already offered Indian, Filipino, and Latin American support.
“This expansion continues our mission to use AI to solve one of the toughest challenges in global CX,” said Shawn Zhang, chief technology officer and cofounder of Sanas, in a statement. “Accent barriers have limited access to talent and excluded too many skilled voices from customer-facing roles. Our platform delivers real-time clarity that helps enterprises scale into new markets while giving agents the freedom to succeed without changing who they are.”
Risk Assessment Required
Risk is one of the prime concerns for regulated industries, such as financial services and healthcare. As a result, U.S. contact center employment still dominates other markets with a total of 3 million jobs, according to the Site Selection Group. Most of the jobs are in low-cost Sun Belt states.
Vonage notes that Florida and Texas are popular due to high numbers of bilingual (English/Spanish) agents and lower operating costs. Even so, the wage rate of $18 per hour is by far higher than in other locations around the globe.
Beyond choosing onshore for contact center support for highly regulated industries, some companies will choose to have U.S.-based support (and a dedicated line) for their most valuable U.S.-based customers, according to Minor. “It’s not one-size-fits-all.”
Minor adds that contact centers in multiple locations might be involved in a single interaction. For example, a call might initially be routed to the Philippines, but the caller might need assistance on a technical issue better handled by an agent located in India. The underlying technology has improved to the point that the transfer can usually be made without the lengthy delays of only a few years ago.
Here is a brief look at the contact center trends in some of the most popular nearshore and offshore locations.
India
As it has for years, India has the lowest wage rate—$2 to $3 per hour—but an extremely high attrition rate. India is a mature market with more than 1,000 outsourcer vendors and 1.3 million contact center jobs, and its workers have been improving their skill sets, Minor says.
“One of the advantages that India offered early in the whole concept of outsourcing was some level of English experience, time zone alignment, and scale,” Minor says. “Now India has moved up the value chain.”
India’s outsourcing market now offers skilled workers for cybersecurity, AI, data science and other technical skills, rather than being limited to contact center skills alone, Minor explains.
Site Selection Group notes that this has led to intense competition among outsourcer providers for the skilled labor.
“India is a critical region for outsourcing, though not necessarily for contact centers,” Minor adds. “But contact centers aren’t going away in India; they are still opening and expanding.”
The Philippines
The Philippines has supplanted India as the prime offshore contact center destination, with 1.5 million jobs, despite a slightly higher wage rate of $3 to $4 per hour, and is now the global leader for voice selection support, according to Site Selection Group.
Minor also cited the Philippines as a very attractive outsourcing destination for contact centers, with English proficiency and alignment to U.S. hours as key benefits.
“A lot of countries talk about English proficiency, but having spent time myself in India and the Philippines, [Filipinos] are masters at it,” Minor says. “In our sales process we have [prospects] interact with people in the Philippines so they can see how proficient they are with English.”
Additionally, it is part of the nation’s culture that people are used to working shifts at all different hours, so contact centers there can fulfill any 24x7 needs, according to Minor.
Africa
Africa features very high growth, though it is starting from a smaller base than the more mature offshore markets, and currently has less than 100 outsourcing providers and employs 1 million contact center agents. Its contact center wages of $2 to $5 an hour is competitive with India and the Philippines.
The South African market is expected to grow at a 10.4 percent compound annual growth rate through 2030, according to Grand View Research, which credits the growth to a large, young, English-speaking talent pool, 50 percent to 70 percent lower operational costs than Western hubs, and improved digital infrastructure.
“Significant investments in LTE and fiber-optic networks have enabled the rise of contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) in the region,” the research firm says. “While voice remains the largest segment, chat support is seeing rapid growth, and AI data annotation is becoming a major specialized task.”
Among the challenges for Africa are higher attrition during rapid scaling and an infrastructure that trails other offshore locations.
Eastern Europe
Though its wage rates of $7 to $12 per hour are higher than for other offshore locations, Eastern Europe has more than 250 outsourcing providers and 750,000 to 1 million contact center jobs. The region offers diverse language skills and lower costs than Western Europe.
Key hubs like Hungary, Poland, and Romania are emerging as top outsourcing destinations for IT, AI-driven projects, and multilingual support, according to Fortune Business Insights.
Mexico
Mexican contact center workers make about half as much per hour as their U.S. counterparts, which results in billions in labor cost savings for companies with contact centers in that country, according to Techma: “A contact center in Mexico typically offers the same state-of-the-art infrastructure, technologically advanced systems, and power-grid dependability on par with the U.S.”
Among the country’s advantages:
- A Mexican call center often specializes in a specific function like telemarketing, telesales, or other inbound and outbound call center services.
- Mexico’s typical workweek is 48 hours, enabling contact centers to provide 24x7 customer service, technical support, and sales calls.
- Four-fifths of the country’s contact centers expect continued growth.
Many Mexican employees in Tijuana and other border areas have lived in the U.S. Their near-native English fluency allows companies to provide customers with an enhanced experience for less, Techma says.
Latin America
Like Florida and Texas, Latin America and the Caribbean are popular outsourcing destinations due to a high availability of bilingual agents. However, there are high exchange rates and political risks for both, as well as the tropical storm issues in the Caribbean. Contact center workers here earn $4 to $7 an hour.
Within Latin America, Colombia and the Dominican Republic are particularly attractive for contact centers, Minor says.
“For a lot of companies, markets such as Mexico and Colombia offer a good balance of cost, language skills, and proximity to North American customers. Real-time collaboration and time zone alignment continue to be meaningful advantages, especially for programs that require closer operational coordination,” Moore adds.
Phillip Britt is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. He can be reached at spenterprises1@comcast.net.