Global Contact Center Strategy: Connecting the Dots on Labor, Tech, and Vendors

Today’s contact centers operate in an increasingly complex environment — shaped by labor shortages, rising customer expectations, vendor fragmentation, and rapid technological innovation. Business leaders face difficult, interconnected questions:

• Are our call centers in the right labor markets for long-term scalability?
• Should we outsource, insource, or adopt a hybrid approach?
• Which technologies can actually reduce call volume or improve agent productivity?
• Which global geographies offer the best labor quality, cost, and risk balance?
• How do we choose the right vendors — and how do we structure agreements that work?

Site Selection Group works with organizations to address all of these questions in a unified strategy. While most consultants specialize in a single aspect — such as site selection, vendor procurement, or technology deployment — SSG integrates all of these disciplines to help clients build high-performing, resilient, and cost-effective contact center networks.

1. Footprint Optimization: Labor Alignment and Market Diversification

The performance of a contact center is deeply tied to the labor market it draws from — and that’s not a static variable. Many companies operate in legacy locations that no longer support their workforce or service needs.

SSG helps organizations evaluate their current footprint and model new options using detailed labor market data, real estate availability, workforce profiles, and geopolitical risk factors.

Matching Market to Service Type

Different functions thrive in different markets:

• High-empathy service? Think Tier 2 U.S. cities or parts of Latin America.
• Collections or sales roles? Consider areas with more assertive cultural profiles.
• Technical support? Look for markets with strong higher education pipelines.

Geographic Risk and Diversification

Most companies’ contact center operations are too heavily concentrated in a single market — such as the Philippines — leaving them vulnerable to wage inflation, political volatility, or natural disasters. SSG routinely helps companies diversify across complementary geographies, including Latin America, Africa, India, and Central Europe, depending on the specific workforce and risk needs.

2. In-House vs. Outsourced: Structuring the Right Delivery Model

The question of whether to operate contact centers internally or through outsourced vendors is more nuanced than ever. It’s not just about cost — it’s about risk, control, scalability, and talent.

Site Selection Group helps clients evaluate and design the delivery model that best fits their organizational goals, including:

• Fully in-house (captive) centers
• Fully outsourced (BPO) models
• Hybrid approaches by function or geography

We provide data and insights on:

• Total cost of ownership (TCO)
• Vendor performance benchmarks
• Labor pool depth and quality by region
• Risk exposure and continuity planning

This analysis allows organizations to make informed tradeoffs and avoid relying on outdated assumptions.

3. Technology: Choosing the Right Tools for Call Deflection and Agent Optimization

The contact center technology landscape has grown crowded — and confusing. AI-powered tools promise improved routing, voice neutralization, summarization, and agent assistance. CCaaS platforms now offer scalable cloud infrastructure. But how do you separate trend from transformation?

SSG works with clients to evaluate technology investments through a business lens, ensuring that platforms are aligned to operational needs, integration feasibility, and ROI.

We help answer questions like:

• Will this tool reduce average handle time or just shift the workload?
• Is our current platform limiting geographic flexibility or BPO integration?
• Can voice-neutralization technology help us expand to lower-cost markets?

Michael Replogle, a voice in this space from our team, has shared detailed perspectives on how AI tools are making measurable improvements — when implemented strategically.

4. BPO Vendor Strategy: It’s Not Just About Cost

Many companies approach BPO vendor selection with only a shortlist of names — often identified through basic internet searches or informal referrals. But vendor choice should be rooted in data, not familiarity.

The Site Selection Group helps companies source and structure vendor relationships through a rigorous and objective process. We support:

• Vendor identification based on capabilities, location, capacity, and compliance
• Competitive bid management and pricing analysis
• Contract structuring with clear SLAs, KPIs, and risk-sharing mechanisms

We also advise on market rates for different regions and service levels, helping clients avoid overpaying or under-specifying key deliverables.

5. In-House Contact Centers: From Site Selection to Incentive Capture

When a company chooses to open or relocate a captive contact center, the stakes are high, and the process involves multiple disciplines.

Site Selection Group provides full-service support throughout the lifecycle of in-house site development, including:

• Labor market feasibility studies
• Location modeling and site selection
• Real estate acquisition and lease negotiation
• Infrastructure and facility planning
• Economic incentive evaluation and negotiation

Our team helps clients balance long-term operational goals with short-term speed-to-market and cost management, ensuring the location is viable not just today, but over the next decade.

Conclusion: The Value of an Integrated Perspective

Every company has different priorities — such as cost control, customer experience, scalability, and compliance — but few companies succeed when decisions are made in silos.

Site Selection Group is unique in our ability to help companies view contact center strategy as an interconnected system, where labor markets, delivery models, technology, vendors, real estate, and incentives must align to deliver sustainable performance.

This integrated perspective enables our clients to avoid common missteps — like locating in the wrong market for a specific service, overspending on unproven tech, or under-leveraging BPO partners — and instead build contact center operations that are fit for the future.