The Onshoring & Nearshoring Trend and Organizational Implications

If there has been one constant over the past decade among both contact center vendors and clients in the US, it has been a growing interest in how best end-users can be serviced from locations in Central America (such as Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica) as well as countries in the Caribbean (most notably the Dominican Republic). This interest has been steadily driven by the burgeoning consumer activity within the American Hispanic market (estimated to be in excess of 50 million people). This has proven to be fortuitous, based both on the variety of locations available for contact center facilities within the nearshore and the skills that can be found in a large number of these countries. But it is crucial to incorporate such an approach alongside a broader customer experience strategy that can incorporate multiple business models.

One angle that has been examined in some detail by Ovum of late is to use the nearshore contact center approach alongside an virtualized pool of agents based onshore. By using this strategy, both outsourcers and vendors can simultaneously leverage high-quality, lower cost alternatives that both business models bring to the table, thereby minimizing the pricey alternative of running a domestic brick-and-mortar center. Not only can the important and growing US Hispanic market be serviced seamlessly by nearshore agents, but the broad consumer base will benefit from the skills of home-based agents, who have proven invaluable in driving end-user loyalty.