The Benefits of Outsourcing Call Center Services to Mexico

Nearshoring is a huge trend in CX right now—but is it worth the hype?

If you’ve been considering outsourcing your call center services, you’ve no doubt heard the increasing hype of nearshoring. For the uninitiated, nearshoring is an outsourcing solution where the outsourcing provider is located outside of the country of business, but somewhere geographically nearby. In many cases, this means Mexico, Puerto Rico, or elsewhere in Latin America.

And while nearshoring has many benefits on its own, Mexico boasts a number of benefits as a nearshoring destination.

Here are 9 key benefits to outsourcing call center services to Mexico:

Cost Savings

Of course, outsourcing is often used as a cost-savings measure, with 59% of companies citing “cost reduction” as a motivation for outsourcing in the first place. When it comes to cost savings with outsourcing, though, not all locations are created equal. This brings us to the first of our benefits to outsourcing in Mexico:

1. Lower labor costs and overhead costs. 

Many companies assume that all quality outsourcing providers cost pretty much the same rates—but the fact is that outsourcing your call center to Mexico is much cheaper than outsourcing domestically. Since the cost of living in Mexico is much less than the US, the labor costs are lower as well. US companies can benefit from these more affordable rates, while still providing agents with reasonable wages, simply by nearshoring instead of hiring domestically.

In addition, when you outsource your call center to Mexico, you can significantly reduce your overhead costs, especially when compared to running a call center in-house. Consider some of the cost differences:

As you can see, outsourcing provides a much clearer month-to-month rate, lower startup and scaling costs, and significantly reduced overhead overall.

2. Favorable exchange rates. 

Of course, there are dozens of reasonable locations one might outsource to—but consider that Mexico:US exchange rates also favors the US company. Not only are labor costs lower, but the US dollar stretches further in Mexico than it does in other countries—particularly other nearshoring countries that also use the US dollar.

At the time of writing, the exchange rate is approximately $1 USD : $17 Mexican pesos.

3. Tax incentives in Mexico. 

The Mexican government and taxation system also presents a favorable situation for US-based businesses, with very affordable taxes for international businesses. Compared to other nearshoring or offshoring locations, there are tax benefits and incentives associated with outsourcing to Mexico that can further reduce costs and improve affordability and scalability.

Proximity and Time Zone Compatibility

Lower costs isn’t the only benefit outsourcing to Mexico provides—a major benefit to outsourcing to Mexico compared to almost anywhere else is proximity.

4. Location and time zone proximity 

When it comes to outsourcing, greater proximity grants you greater control and leverage over day-to-day operations of your outsourced call center. Location matters for more than just quality control, too—the greater proximity you can have with your outsourced team, the easier it is to collaborate.

As a result, having time zone overlap and geographic proximity is actually a collaborative (and competitive) advantage. Consider: are you more likely to hop on a call to discuss new QA processes with a team in the Philippines—with a call that happens at 2am your time—or a call center in Mexico, likely within a few hours of your local time zone? Some US teams actually are closer in time zone and proximity to Mexico than other US teams!

At the same time, it’s also easier to cover after-hours service or 24/7 service when working with outsourced teams. Even if your outsourcing partner is in a similar time zone, covering overnight shifts is easier when you’re not working domestically.

5. Cultural and linguistic similarity 

This is a benefit for both you and your customers. Customers, of course, expect that great customer service agents are easily understandable—and easily understand and can resolve their problems. However, cultural and linguistic similarities make internal collaboration and communication easier as well.

Many Mexican call center agents have spent time living, working or studying in the US, which means they’re deeply familiar with US language and culture. As a result of that proximity, Mexican call center agents typically have a higher level of fluency compared to offshore agents.

6. Accessibility to North American markets

While Mexico’s proximity makes it easy for your team to travel to the call center office to be involved with quality control and day-to-day operations, it also makes it easy for your call center managers and team to come to you. With quick visits easily accessible, clients and teams alike can travel back and forth for training, knowledge sharing, onboarding and more, resulting in faster results and better communication and collaboration.

Increasing proximity and accessibility also allows you to ensure consistency between teams, especially if you have an internal team and are using outsourcing to support internal staff or handle call overflow. Nearby teams in Mexico can easily join team trainings, adhere to conversational scripts and best practices, and maintain a high level of familiarity and connection with US audiences.

Access to a Skilled Labor Force

Finally, there’s the ebbs and flows of the US labor market to consider. While many companies assume that outsourcing domestically gets the best results, that’s not always the case. Outsourcing domestically is the most expensive outsourcing option—but nearshoring offers some of the highest-quality agents.

7. Availability of trained and educated professionals 

Outsourcing to Mexico grants you access to a completely new labor market—one that is not subject to the ups and downs of the US workforce. Mexico offers a large market of trained professionals who are skilled in customer service and call centers. By tapping into this market, you expand your options for scaling, managing customer expectations and expanding your services.

For example, most Mexican call center agents will be bilingual in at least English and Spanish, a much less common occurrence in domestic outsourcing. As such, you can more easily offer bilingual or multilingual services, reaching more US customers with higher-quality service, and at a more affordable cost to your company.

8. Technological capabilities and infrastructure 

Mexican technology and infrastructure is well-suited to support the US market. Particularly when compared with offshoring options, the Mexican infrastructure offers much higher capabilities, more security and greater consistency.

In addition, as more and more companies outsource to Mexico, the BPO market there is growing—now estimated to be worth about $3 billion USD. As a result, the Mexican market is both poised to provide support services now, as well as highly focused on growing and innovating to continue to provide quality services and grow their BPO market in the future.

Compared to offshore call centers, nearshoring companies tend to have access to more best-in-class technology, which can allow you to offer more sophisticated services, implement omnichannel support, and innovate new solutions to improve customer experiences.

9. Government investment in education and training

As the Mexican BPO industry grows, the Mexican government is continuing to invest more and more in education and training programs to increase the quality and competitiveness of Mexico’s call centers.

With more training and education, agents will (obviously) become highly skilled and valuable resources for your call center. But additional training and education also points to a growing skilled labor force—providing you more opportunities for scaling quickly and affordably, while offering effective service with high-quality agents.

Real-Life Examples of Mexico Call Center Success

Many global companies outsource to Mexico to save money, improve service, and scale quickly—but do they get results?

With ROI CX Solutions, our global teams have helped dozens of companies achieve results like:

• achieving a 45% lead conversion rate
• generating over $22 billion in new revenue
• improving service levels for bilingual support
• and more!

Curious how outsourcing to Mexico could support your company?

ROI CX Solutions is an experienced nearshore provider with proven results and decades of experience boosting customer satisfaction, improving customer experiences and growing or maintaining service levels through our Mexican call centers.

When you’re ready to outsource to an affordable, scalable call center provider who knows how to get the results you need, contact ROI CX Solutions.