Tunisia, India, the Philippines, Mexico: with so many call center outsourcing locations to choose from, how do you decide which is best for your organization?

Tunisia is an up-and-coming location for call centers, but though it has many benefits, it also has some challenges to be aware of. With a team in Tunisia ourselves, we’ve put together this guide to help you understand if Tunisia is right for your organization. Keep reading to learn what you need to know, what to consider, and who Tunisia is right for.

Understanding the Tunisian Call Center Landscape

Outsourcing in Tunisia is a hot market—and growing! While Tunisia is dedicated nationally on growing their call center and outsourcing market, this growth is also a response to increasing demand as more and more companies recognize Tunisia as a powerful location for outsourced call centers.

Many companies are outsourcing to Tunisia for:

• proximity to Europe and familiarity with Western cultures and languages
• affordability and ample scalability that makes rapid growth possible
• multilingual and omnichannel capacities
• high emphasis on technology and innovation

Of course, while there’s many benefits to outsourcing to Tunisia—we’ll get into more of those below—the cultural, political and educational landscape in Tunisia also lends itself to being an effective outsourcing destination. For example, consider that Tunisia has been ranked as one of the most innovative countries in Africa, and has been recognized as a hub for innovation and business growth across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

The growth in outsourcing isn’t just the result of affordable prices or proximity—it’s supported by a strong governmental and cultural foundation.

Benefits of Setting Up a Call Center in Tunisia

Tunisia offers a variety of benefits as an outsourcing destination, including cost-effectiveness, service quality, proximity, and robust infrastructure. 

Cost-effectiveness. Offering a competitive salary in Tunisia is more cost-effective compared to domestic hiring, in large part because of the lower costs of living. Since the cost of living is lower, salaries are therefore lower as well. In addition, operational costs are lower—both in Tunisia, and with outsourcing. This not only makes it more cost-effective to run your call center, but makes it easier to scale, increase capacity and services and offer better customer service.

Service quality. With Tunisia’s growing capacity for, and investment in, call centers, comes an increased emphasis on training and educating workers who can staff them—and Tunisia is doing this well! Their sizable workforce is skilled and well-educated, not just in customer service techniques but also in technology, business, and so on, giving you access to a well-rounded and quality workforce. In addition, many Tunisian call center workers speak multiple languages—most commonly, English, Arabic, German and Italian. This opens up the capability for you to offer affordable multilingual customer service for a European, or even global, audience.

Proximity. Tunisia, as a nearshoring location from Europe, offers an accessible, yet affordable option for outsourcing. Just a 2-3 hour flight from many European hubs, it’s easy to visit a Tunisian call center for an overnight—or even same-day—trip. In addition, the proximity means you’ll enjoy similar time zones, making meeting together and collaborating much easier than offshoring destinations.

Robust infrastructure. The ICT infrastructure in Tunisia is growing as well, creating a robust network of business, technology and innovation for your call center. With governmental support backing the infrastructure, you can take advantage of Tunisia as a reliable and stable location to outsource to.

Potential Challenges and Solutions when Operating a Tunisia-Based Call Center

While Tunisia offers many benefits, it’s important to consider some of the potential challenges and solutions. Outsourcing to any country—including Tunisia—creates the possibility of political and economic instability that you may not be familiar with. As a result, you should both:

1. perform a comprehensive assessment of the Tunisian political landscape and environment before establishing your call centers, and understand the current political and economic environment, and
2. partner with local experts who can provide you with deeper, local knowledge of the country’s political and economic climate and any potential risks.

Ideally, your local partner can continue to advise you as you operate your call center, thus mitigating many of the risks involved with navigating unfamiliar cultural waters.

In addition, if you’re outsourcing to Tunisia from the US, you may encounter some time zone differences, which can be a challenge when trying to collaborate or communicate with your outsourced team. Putting communication strategies in place before you begin your partnership, or establish your Tunisian call center, can alleviate some of the stressors of working across time zones and allow you to take advantage of many of the benefits—such as more effective and affordable after-hours staffing.

Working with an outsourcing partner like ROI CX Solutions can help make managing and mitigating these risks much easier. With an established partner who knows the landscape, has established and proven operations and has experienced local partners to navigate unfamiliar cultures for you, you can rest assured that your call center is supported by experienced management.

Comparing Tunisia with Other Popular Call Center Locations

One of the easiest ways to determine if Tunisia is right for your call center is to compare it with other popular locations that may be on your list of potential options. Here’s what you should consider:

Tunisia vs. India or the Philippines. 

India and the Philippines are extremely common outsourcing locations, and tend to be chosen primarily for their familiarity—many other companies use them—and their price. India is one of the cheapest places to outsource, whether that’s IT development or customer service. However, India and the Philippines often have lower service quality, lower levels of cultural familiarity or linguistic capabilities and a less robust infrastructure.

Tunisia vs. Eastern Europe 

If you’re a European-based business, you might be wondering why you shouldn’t just outsource to an Eastern European country rather than moving operations to another continent. The reality is that Tunisia has a strong reputation for innovation and technology, and a robust infrastructure to support it—something that many Eastern European nations can’t yet compete with. In addition, depending on your location, Tunisia can often be more proximate and easier to access than some Eastern European destinations.

Tunisia vs. Mexico 

If you’re a US-based business, you might be looking at nearshoring options like Mexico or Puerto Rico. While Mexico and Puerto Rico are obviously closer to the US than Tunisia, Tunisia offers a high-quality “offshoring” option for US-based businesses. The cost-effectiveness of Tunisia, combined with the high quality and strong focus on innovation, may be more appealing to some businesses than proximity.

Steps to Set Up a Call Center in Tunisia

Does Tunisia seem like the right place to set up your call center? If so, here’s a birds-eye view of how to go about setting everything up:

First: do your due diligence with pre-planning. Before you attempt to actually set up your call center, you should ensure you’ve done adequate pre-planning research. This should include things like:

• determining and documenting the objectives and scope of your call center
• defining your needed services
• calculating hiring and staffing needs
• determining an actionable timeline
• understanding regulatory and legal processes in Tunisia

By creating a clear and documented vision for your call center, you can more easily create a call center that aligns with your needs and goals—and ensure it’ll get the results you’re looking for. You’ll also need to create an established and legal business in Tunisia, according to local laws, that will support your call center.

Partner with local service providers. To establish your call center in Tunisia, you’ll need to find an adequate location and/or choose a local partner to house your team. (Or, create a remote-first model, which of course comes with its own challenges.) Any service providers you work with should be vetted thoroughly and should align with your goals, workplace culture and communication styles. In addition, a local partner can help you understand local politics and geography to find the best cities or towns for your call center.

Train and staff your call center. This is one of the most underrated and difficult parts of establishing a new call center. Regardless of location, training and staffing your call center is obviously an essential step, but one that requires significant time and resources. To do this effectively, you’ll need to manage:

• recruitment and search strategies
• pre-screening and selection strategies
• hiring and onboarding processes
• training for new hires and existing staff

Finally, ensure technological setup and support. Call centers require a lot of technology and software to run effectively—from telephony systems to customer CMS software, laptops and phones for agents, auto-dialers and omnichannel software—there’s a lot to consider, set up and implement. Ensuring that all the technology is appropriately set up for your call center helps create a strong foundation for you, your employees and your customers.

Of course, each of these steps has numerous sub-steps within it. If creating your own call center is too resource-heavy for your team, consider an outsourced call center in Tunisia instead. The outsourcing industry in Tunisia is growing, and with Tunisian teams supported by US-based outsourcing providers, like ROI CX Solutions, you can get proven support while still taking advantage of the many benefits offered by Tunisian outsourcing.

Not to mention that outsourcing to an established provider eliminates the need for your team to focus on many of these steps, as your outsourcing provider will take care of most of them on your behalf.

Measuring the Success of Your Tunisia-Based Call Center

Regardless of how you decide to establish your call center, you’ll want to actively measure the quality, success and level of service your call center is providing, both to your internal teams and your customers.

The most effective way to measure call center success is to identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) early on in the process that can quantify and track over time the results and quality of service your team is providing. Determining the right KPIs to measure comes down to your goals, objectives and services, however, we recommend that all call centers track at least:

• CSAT (Customer Satisfaction)
• AHT (Average Handle Time)
• FCR (First Contact Resolution Rate)
• CRR (Customer Retention Rate)

These four key metrics will help you measure both operational efficiency and customer experience. 

CSAT measures customer satisfaction, typically after a specific interaction or connection with your brand. For example, you might ask customers to rate their recent interaction with your customer service team on a scale of 1-10. The resulting average is your overall CSAT. By tracking CSAT over time, you not only get an idea of how your team is performing, but also how customers are responding to it.

AHT measures the average length of time it takes agents to handle a call or other customer communication. This is an important operational metric that allows you to track efficiency over time, accurately predict staffing needs, improve processes and so on.

FCR measures how frequently you’re able to resolve a customer’s concern the first time they contact you. FCR is positively correlated with CSAT—the more you’re able to give customers quick, effective service the first time they reach out, the more satisfied they will be. If you notice FCR declining, it can be a sign that you need to improve training or hire more agents.

CRR measures the amount of customers that stay subscribed or active with your brand over a set period of time. It’s the inverse of measuring customer churn. Whichever you choose to track, keeping an eye on customer loyalty can give a birds eye view of your service levels’ impact.

Whichever metrics you choose to track, make sure that they align with your goals, are tracked consistently over time and are reviewed regularly to create plans for improvement.

Is Tunisia the Right Location for Your Call Center?

So, is Tunisia the right destination for your call center? You should outsource to Tunisia if:

• you’re looking for affordable outsourcing that doesn’t impact service quality
• you need multilingual services in languages like German, French, Italian or Arabic
• you want to focus on technological or innovative solutions for your call center
• you need to scale quickly and are looking for a highly-skilled workforce with room to grow
• you’re a EU-based business looking for a high-quality nearshoring option

With ROI CX Solutions’ Tunisia-based call center, you can take advantage of many of the benefits of outsourcing to Tunisia while mitigating many of the risks and challenges. Working with the ROI CX Solutions team, you not only get access to a team of experts and decades of experience, but also:

• an established call center with proven results
• well-established processes for data security and privacy
• ample services that can support your team’s goals
• dedicated agents and managers who are committed to your brand
• affordable and flexible solutions that can scale with you

and so much more! Interested in how ROI CX Solutions can support your business operations with our Tunisia team? Connect with an expert today to see how we can help your business grow.