The Keep Call Centers in America Act: One Year Later

One year ago, the contact center industry was asking whether the Keep Call Centers in America Act would fundamentally reshape outsourcing in the United States. Today, the more interesting story is not what Congress has done, but what the market has done on its own.

When the Keep Call Centers in America Act was introduced in 2025, it immediately sparked conversations across the contact center industry. The proposed legislation sought to encourage companies to retain customer service jobs in the United States by requiring greater transparency around offshore call handling and limiting certain federal incentives for organizations that relocated customer service work overseas. For many enterprise organizations, particularly those in highly regulated industries, the bill raised important questions: Would companies begin bringing large portions of their customer service operations back to the United States? Would offshore outsourcing become more difficult or less attractive? Would buyers need to rethink their long-term sourcing strategies?

One year later, the answer is more nuanced than many expected.

The Bill Remains Stalled in Committee

The legislation has seen little movement. Both the Senate and House versions remain in committee, with no hearing, markup or vote recorded since introduction. While Congress has debated the issue, enterprise buyers have continued making sourcing decisions based on business realities rather than waiting for legislation to dictate their strategy. Ironically, the market has evolved significantly even though the bill has not.

Action Shifts to the Regulatory Front

Although the Keep Call Centers in America Act has remained dormant, a broader conversation surrounding data security, customer privacy, regulatory oversight and consumer expectations has accelerated through a different channel.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has taken more consequential regulatory action. In March 2026, the FCC initiated a formal rulemaking proceeding to encourage communications providers to bring customer service operations back onshore, proposing limits on offshore call volume and new data-handling restrictions. KPMG's Manish Shah, speaking to CX Dive, cautioned that it's still too early to treat the FCC proposal as a finalized regulation, but he was equally clear that regulatory uncertainty isn't a reason for companies to delay their own onshoring and delivery-model planning. Several states have layered their own disclosure and consumer-protection requirements in parallel.

Whether any specific proposal ultimately becomes law is almost secondary. Enterprise organizations are already asking different questions during the procurement process. Rather than focusing exclusively on hourly labor rates, buyers are increasingly evaluating where customer interactions should occur based on risk, complexity, customer expectations, regulatory requirements and business continuity. This represents one of the most significant shifts our industry has experienced in years.

The Bigger Change Was Optimization, Not Reshoring

Many people assumed the conversation would become one of onshore versus offshore. Instead, it has become a conversation about optimization.

After nearly four decades in the contact center industry, I have learned that geography has never been the first decision. The first decision is to understand the client's business objectives. Geography is simply one of the tools used to achieve those objectives.

The organizations seeing the greatest success today are rarely placing all their operations in one country. Instead, they are designing delivery models that align specific types of work with the geography or the technology that is best equipped to perform it.

The Rise of the Hybrid Delivery Model

Hybrid delivery is rapidly becoming the preferred operating model for many enterprise organizations. Rather than asking whether work should be performed onshore or offshore, companies are asking where each interaction creates the greatest value.

A typical hybrid strategy may look something like this:

This approach allows organizations to improve customer experience while balancing cost, compliance, resiliency, and scalability.

Hybrid Delivery in Action: Two Real-World Examples

Two recent, well-documented examples illustrate how this is already playing out at scale—one on the reshoring side, one on the AI side.

Telecom reshoring, driven by deal terms rather than legislation. When the FCC approved Charter Communications' $34.5 billion acquisition of Cox Communications in February 2026, the onshoring commitment was baked into the deal itself: Charter agreed to bring all of Cox's currently offshored job functions onshore within 18 months, aligning Cox's workforce with Charter's existing 100% U.S.-based customer sales and service model. Notably, this commitment came from a merger condition and a company's own workforce strategy and not from the Keep Call Centers in America Act, which had no bearing on the deal. It's a clean illustration of the broader pattern: reshoring is happening where it makes business sense, deal structure or regulatory leverage—independent of whether the named federal bill ever passes.

AI is the newest tier in the hybrid stack, not a replacement for it. Verizon CEO Dan Schulman told the Bloomberg Tech conference in June 2026 that AI would take over “a large percentage” of the company's customer service work, pointing to a three-month internal pilot in which AI-handled interactions scored notably higher on customer satisfaction than the prior service model. At the same time, Schulman was direct that more complex, sensitive interactions will continue to require human agents working alongside AI tools. As a result, the company has committed $20 million to retraining and reskilling employees. The Communications Workers of America pushed back publicly, arguing that AI-driven headcount reduction—not offshoring—is now the bigger threat to contact center jobs, and calling for a standing customer right to reach a human representative. Whichever side of that argument proves right, the practical result for buyers is the same: AI has become a fourth delivery tier alongside onshore, nearshore and offshore, not a side project.

These two examples point in the same direction. The future is not about replacing one geography with another. It is about placing the right work in the right location—with the right combination of human and AI delivery—regardless of what happens or doesn’t happen on the House and Senate floor.

Who Benefits Most

Organizations with diversified delivery strategies are well positioned for whatever regulatory changes may occur in the future.

Companies operating blended delivery models are benefiting from greater operational flexibility, stronger business continuity, improved access to talent, and the ability to balance customer experience with cost management. Nearshore destinations throughout Latin America continue gaining momentum because they offer strong English proficiency, cultural alignment, overlapping business hours, and geographic proximity to the United States.

Artificial Intelligence has also become an important part of this equation. Rather than replacing customer service professionals outright, the more durable pattern — visible in Verizon's own rollout — is AI enhancing productivity through automated quality assurance, real-time coaching, knowledge retrieval, translation, call summarization, and workflow automation. At the same time, human agents retain complex and sensitive interactions.

The organizations seeing the greatest success are leveraging technology to support their people, not simply replacing them.

What This Means for Buyers

For organizations evaluating a new BPO partner, the lesson is clear: Do not allow proposed legislation to drive your sourcing strategy. Instead, build a strategy around your business objectives.

Every organization has unique customer expectations, regulatory requirements, service level objectives, growth plans, and financial goals. Those factors should determine the optimal delivery model long before selecting a provider. As the Charter-Cox and Verizon examples both show, the companies making headlines on delivery strategy right now are acting on their own commercial logic—deal terms, competitive differentiation, workforce economics—not on what Congress may or may not eventually pass.

Conclusion

In the one year since the Keep Call Centers in America Act was introduced, it has generated considerably more discussion than legislative action. Yet the questions it raised have influenced how organizations think about customer service delivery.

Today's sourcing decisions are no longer driven solely by labor costs. They are increasingly shaped by customer experience, compliance, resilience, data security, Artificial Intelligence, and the ability to place the right interaction in the right geography. Regardless of whether Congress ultimately advances this legislation, the contact center industry has already begun writing its own future.

The winners will not necessarily be the organizations that operate entirely onshore or entirely offshore. They will be the organizations that build thoughtful, flexible, hybrid delivery models capable of adapting to an increasingly dynamic business environment.

If your organization is still waiting for legislative clarity before revisiting its delivery model, the market has already moved on without you. Site Selection Group's Outsourcing Advisory practice helps clients evaluate their current provider footprint against exactly this kind of shifting landscape. Reach out to start a conversation about where a hybrid delivery model could strengthen your customer experience, your compliance posture, and your bottom line.