Mexico is not the best place to outsource your call center these days

What are you doing in Mexico? I noticed a mention to doing work in Mexico.

My company, Callcenteradvisors.com has done a lot of work here and all over Latin America. I don't feel like Mexico has the draw it used to.

1) prices are too high, comparatively
2) with the infrastructures advancing in many of Mexico's neigbors, the newer infrastructure coupled with cheaper labor makes them much more attractive.

What is your thought? Feel free to email me: mlevine@callcenteradvisors.com to chat further - Max

Nicaragua as a call center option - is it worth outsourcing your call center to Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Here are some hard facts. If you have more questions feel free to email me: mlevine@callcenteradvisors.com.

English-speaking workers are estimated to be around 10% of the country's working-age population.

About two-thirds of the English speaking population are considered "highly proficient" in the language with many having strong familial ties to the US. Other than Dominican Republic no other Latin American country has a higher percentage of its overall population with relatives in the US. This lends this country to having very strong “Americanization” cultural attributes. US companies are showing a new interest in Nicaragua, as labor costs in neighboring Costa Rica and El Salvador rise amid a shortage of qualified English-speakers is starting exist.

Economy

GDP (2008): $6.37 billion.

GDP real growth rate (2008): 3.2%.

Per capita GDP (2008): $1,123.

Inflation rate (2008): 13.8%.

Natural resources: arable land, fresh water, fisheries, gold, timber, hydro and geothermal power potential.

Agriculture and agricultural processing (31% of GDP): Products--coffee, bananas, sugarcane, cotton, rice, corn, tobacco, sesame, soya, beans, beef, veal, pork, poultry, dairy products, shrimp, lobsters.

Manufacturing (10% of GDP): Types--food processing, chemicals, machinery and metal products, textiles, clothing, petroleum refining and distribution, beverages, footwear, wood.

Services (55% of GDP): Types--banking, wholesale and retail distribution, telecommunications, and energy.

Construction (4% of GDP): Types--housing and infrastructure.

Trade (2008): National exports--$1.489 billion (f.o.b.): coffee, shrimp and lobster, beef, sugar, industrial goods, gold, bananas. Free trade zone exports--$1.153 billion: mostly textiles and apparel, automobile wiring harnesses, cigars. Markets--United States, Central American Common Market, European Union (EU), Mexico, Japan. Imports--$4.02 billion (f.o.b.) (2008)--consumer goods, machinery and equipment, raw materials, petroleum products. Free trade zone imports--$830.6 million. Suppliers--U.S. 22.5%, Mexico 13.5%, Costa Rica 8.4%, Venezuela 6.4%, Guatemala 6.2%, El Salvador 4.8% (2007).

Argentina call center overview

Argentina

Argentina is an interesting country to outsource. It definitely has less fluent English than some of its Latin counterparts. It is one of the most disciplined countries I have worked in. Between Costa Rica and Argentina I would say they are the two easiest to manage.

60%Sixty percent of operations in Argentina are dedicated to offshore services to the U.S., Latin American and European markets, providing widespread multilingual support in more than five languages.

Argentina is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. Thanks to migration from Europe, many residents speak more than one language. The most common are Spanish (the official language), English, Italian, German and French.

I run a call center referral and consulting business based in Latin America (CallCenterAdvisors.com). I have been working in the BPO space for over 10 years and can definitely help you to make the right call center outsourcing decision. We have over 100 call centers in our network in Latin America in the Sales, Customer Support, Direct Response and Inbound space.  We have helped 100s of companies make educated decisions before outsourcing to Latin America or making the decision to move out of India and the Philippines. 

Max Levine

mlevine@callcenteradvisors.com

Economy
GDP (2008): $326.7 billion.
Annual real growth rate (2008): +6.8%.
Per capita GDP (2008 estimate): $8,219.
Natural resources: Fertile plains (pampas); minerals--lead, zinc, tin, copper, iron, manganese, oil, and uranium.
Agriculture (10% of GDP; including agribusiness, about 58% of exports by value): Products--oilseeds and by-products, grains, livestock products.
Industry (21% of GDP): Types--food processing, oil refining, machinery and equipment, textiles, chemicals and petrochemicals.
Trade: Exports ($70.6 billion)--oilseed by-products, vegetable oils, cars, fuels, grains. Major markets--MERCOSUR 23%; EU 19%; NAFTA 10%. Imports ($57.4 billion)--machinery, vehicles and transport products, chemicals. Major suppliers--MERCOSUR 35%; EU 17%, NAFTA 16%. Imported goods from the United States totaled approx. 12% of Argentine imported goods.

Philipines overview

I have spent a lot of time in and around Manilla as part of my analysis. Overall i would give this country decent ratings - good pricing, decent accent. More difficult to manage than India. Decent sales. Can handle high volume campaigns. 

If you would like to learn about my analysis and comparison between Manilla, India, differences between this country and Latin America or to learn more about our call center referral services feel free to email me to chat - mlevine@callcenteradvisors.com.

Max Levine

Philippines

Offshore call center outsourcing agencies in the Philippines are quickly increasing their share of the global call center market resulting in an employment boon and significant new revenue sources for the country.

The call center industry grew 90 percent in 2005 with US$ 1.7 billion in revenues generated. Currently, there are more than 100 centers in different locations in the Philippines from Manila to Davao City, creating high-paying jobs for competent young Filipinos.

The country’s call center industry has indeed experienced incredible growth from employing less than 2,000 people in 200, it has grown 100 times in size in a span of only five years with a current estimate of 200, 000 professionals.

The dialect and accents tend to be better than India. The manageability is tougher – less passive than Indian culture.

Call Center Services
Commonly outsources campaigns: Direct Response, sales verification, telemarketing, credit and collection, reactivation or reinstatement of accounts, and other customer support services.

About 90 percent of services offered by offshore call center outsourcing firms Philippines are inbound call handling.

Economy

GDP (2008): $166.9 billion.
Annual GDP growth rate (2008): 3.8% at constant prices.
GDP per capita (2008): $1,841.
Natural resources: Copper, nickel, iron, cobalt, silver, gold.
Agriculture: Products--rice, coconut products, sugar, corn, pork, bananas, pineapple products, aquaculture, mangoes, eggs.
Industry: Types--textiles and garments, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, wood products, food processing, electronics and semiconductor assembly, petroleum refining, fishing, business process outsourcing services.
Trade (2008): Exports--$49.0 billion. Imports--$56.6 billion.

Opening a contact center or call center in Latin America

Max Levine (mlevine@callcenteradvisors.com)

Last May I sold a technology firm I founded in 2000, an IT consulting firm based out of the Bay Area in Northern California to a Private Equity Group. We had large clients like Kaiser, Wells Fargo, Genentech, UHG, Levis and others. We were about $60 million in revenues.

Outsourcing to Latin America

A big part of our success was outsourcing sales, direct response work and inbound campaigns to Latin America. Eventually we had success in these countries beyond my wildest imaginations and in ways I would not come to realize until much later.

India versus Latin America

I spent close to 18 months butting my head against the wall in India (an automatic pit stop for most first timers). After partnering & eventually owning call centers in Asia we achieved success from a cost saving perspective but could never really eliminate the accent issues and stigma being created within our client base. Although we could never assign specific numbers to how much we lost from a perception perspective we felt the risk of hurting our image was not worth the immediate cost savings.

This is what brought me to Latin America. At first we tried to reach out to call center owners and consultants that claimed the new Latin America Call Centers but eventually realized to really understand it we would have to go first hand. I took a deep plunge and literally spent almost 300 of 365 days in my first year touring and living in call centers between Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Guatemala, Argentina and Columbia.

I spent countless hours analyzing Inbound, Outbound, Direct Response, Sales Campaigns of all types, Customer Service and much more to understand which countries and call centers did what better than others. I focused not only on objective measurements but dove deep in to areas that had much more subjectivity. I created a Matrix (get a free copy at www.callcenteradvisors.com) that examined each Latin American country on 30+ criteria to create comparative ratings.

The results were astonishing

Some of the countries had more aggressive personality types and were better at sales.

Some were horrible at sales – the accent was hard to overcome.

Others had larger percentages than others of people that had lived in the US for over 2 years.

Others had a more passive nature, were easier to manage, took less hand holding and performed much better in certain inbound customer serivice rolls.

One of the countries rolled out the red carpet for us.

Other literally ignored us.

Some of the countries have political climates that support employees in specific types of call center jobs in ways that could hurt an outside employer coming in.

One of the countries literally handed us over qualified employees daily, as a free referral service.

We found call centers in every country that ranged from amazing to downright miserable. (more on these in my next blog)

The list goes on.

Anyway I am very interested in sharing my detailed experiences & analysis with any clients considering relocating to Latin America. I have set up relationships with 100 (and continue to refine these as we use them) of the top call centers in Latin America. I live between 6 countries in the Latin American hemisphere and try to get involved directly in making sure the referrals I make stick. The call centers pay the fee, which is minimal and I guarantee both the call center and the client that they will be satisfied. I don’t get paid if both sides are not happy.

Visit us at callcenteradvisors.com and drop us a line to chat further.

Max Levine (mlevine@callcenteradvisors.com)