Exploring the benefits of contact centre offshoring: a study of trends and practices for the Australian business sector

Abstract

A globalised knowledge economy has seen organisations restructure their delivery of customer services to take advantage of an open and competitive labour market. Gains achieved in developed economies such as the USA and UK from offshoring of business processes to developing countries are pressuring Australian businesses to offshore. This paper explores the practices of Australian businesses with offshore contact centres and considers emerging trends in offshoring in terms of potential risks and benefits for Australian organisations with broad customer contact. Findings suggest that Australian organisations are not only cautiously adopting offshore contact centre solutions to a range of onshore challenges including recruitment and retention of local staff and comparatively high local costs, but also achieving gains beyond cost savings in quality of service and enhanced business flexibility.

Keywords::

• Australian customer service
• business process offshoring
• contact centres
• cultural alignment
• customer relationship management

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the support of Sykes Enterprises in completing the research reported in this paper.