Call Center Agency: Dedicated Nearshore Agents at $13 to $19 per Hour, All-In

What is a call center agency?

A call center agency is a company you pay to handle calls for your business, inbound, outbound or both. The term covers two different businesses. A staffing agency finds agents and places them on your team. An outsourced call center, sometimes called a BPO, supplies the agents and runs the operation: training, scheduling, quality checks and reporting.

Shared answering services get called agencies too. They rotate agents across many clients and mostly take messages, which suits low or unpredictable volume. Call Force Global sells dedicated teams billed per agent hour, starting at two full-time agents, and that includes answering and overflow work. For how the wider industry is measured, see our call center and outsourcing statistics for 2026.

Job seekers use the same phrase for recruiters that place people in call center roles. If that is what brought you here, our remote call center jobs page is the place to start.

Staffing agency vs outsourced call center agency

A call center staffing agency recruits agents and places them under your supervision, then steps back. You run the floor, the dialer, the supervisors and the QA. An outsourced call center agency supplies and manages the agents, runs the operation and sells you the result by the hour, the call or the transfer.

If you already run the floor and need people in seats, a staffing agency is the honest answer, and we will say so on the discovery call. If you are weighing an outside team against hiring your own, our in-house vs outsourced call center comparison runs the costs both ways.

What a call center agency should include

An all-in rate only means something once you know what sits inside it. Every Call Force Global rate covers agent pay, recruiting, certification, supervision, coaching, QA review and reporting. Our dialer, call recording and 100% AI QA start at the $14 Scored Desk, and the reporting portal at the $15 Open Desk.

• The dialer, from the $14 Scored Desk up. Agents do not hand-dial: your lists load with real-time federal and state DNC scrubbing, recorded consent disclosures and calling-window rules. We do not sell or supply lead data; you bring the lists and the consent records.
• 100% AI QA on every call from the Scored Desk up^*, plus Call Force Global's human review of 10 percent or more of calls per agent per week.
• From the $15 Open Desk, a reporting portal built to your KPIs, so you see what our supervisor sees. The transparent BPO model explains the layers.
• Call recording stored in your bucket or ours from the $14 Scored Desk up. On the $13 Staffed Desk your own dialer records.
• A trained bench of one to two agents on rotating coverage, which is how an agent who misses your QA bar gets replaced within 5 business days.
• A named senior ops manager who owns the program and runs the weekly QA review with you, with operations managed from the Caribbean.

Services a call center agency runs

Every program below runs on our managed team model and bills $13 to $19 per agent hour on one rate card. Bilingual English and Spanish costs the same as English-only.

• Inbound call center: customer service, order taking, tier-1 help desk, appointment booking and overflow.
• Outbound call center: lead qualification, follow-up, renewals and win-back campaigns on our dialer, calling only lists you supply.
• Live transfers: fronters qualify the caller and warm-transfer to your closers or licensed staff.
• Appointment setting: booked meetings straight into your calendar, with confirmations to cut no-shows.
• Bilingual call center: English and Spanish from Colombia for US Hispanic markets, at the English-only rate.
• After-hours call center: evenings, weekends and holidays, so callers reach a person instead of voicemail.
• Help desk outsourcing: password resets, account access and how-to questions, with escalation to your tier-2 team.

Licensed work stays with your in-house staff. Our agents are fronters: they service, qualify, schedule and transfer. They do not quote insurance, bind coverage, enroll Medicare plans or validate debt in regulated states. The nearshore call center services page covers the delivery model behind all of it.

How to judge a call center agency: the benchmarks

Judge a call center agency on how fast callers reach a person and whether the first conversation solves the problem. Call Centre Helper puts the industry standard service level at 80 percent of calls answered within 20 seconds, and first contact resolution at 70 to 75 percent.

Sources: Call Centre Helper, industry standards for call centre metrics (updated January 2026); SQM Group, first call resolution benchmark (updated August 2026).

These measures pull against each other. An agency paid to protect service level can hit it by rushing calls, then resolution drops and the repeat callers push the queue back up. Write each queue's targets into the statement of work as a set, with the definitions spelled out. Our call center KPI benchmarks tool has figures by industry, and the Erlang C calculator sizes a team to your own volume.

Call center agency pricing models and market rates

Call center agencies bill per agent hour, per minute, per call or per transfer, and staffing agencies add a markup or placement fee to the agent's pay. Outsource Consultants puts US onshore agents at $28 to $40 an hour, nearshore agents at $13 to $23 and offshore agents at $6 to $12, with per-minute plans averaging $0.35 to $0.75.

Call Force Global bills dedicated teams per agent hour, all-in. Outbound and live-transfer programs bill hourly first; per-transfer pricing can follow once we have seen your list's real transfer rate. Whoever you compare, normalize the quotes first: one all-in hourly figure, a sample invoice, and any setup, technology or QA fees written out.

The market rates are published in Outsource Consultants' guide to call center outsourcing costs (2025), which also puts per-call pricing at $4 to $15 a call.

On those figures, Call Force Global's $13 to $19 sits inside the nearshore band. Next to a US in-house seat the difference is larger. We estimate that seat at $35 to $48 an hour fully loaded, built on BLS wage and benefits data, and the US agent loaded cost index shows the method. Onshore, nearshore and offshore each suit different work. The call center outsourcing cost guide has the regional detail, and the cost calculator runs your own numbers.

How to choose a call center agency

Decide first whether you need a staffing agency or an outsourced call center. Then shortlist three agencies that cover your channels, hours and compliance needs, get an all-in written quote from each on the same scope, and run a paid pilot on your real calls before you sign a term.

Lists of the top call center companies mix four kinds of agency, and some of those lists are written by a provider that ranks itself first.

• Global BPOs run multi-country, multi-language programs built for enterprise volume and procurement.
• US onshore call centers keep agents in-country, which some regulated and public-sector programs require.
• Nearshore agencies, Call Force Global among them, staff US-facing work from the Caribbean and Latin America on overlapping hours.
• Shared answering services take messages and overflow on per-minute, per-call or monthly plans.

Questions to ask every agency

1. Are you a staffing agency or an outsourced call center, and who manages the agents day to day?
2. Who exactly will answer our calls, where are they, and how are they engaged?
3. What does the hourly rate include, and what is billed on top: dialer seats, recording, QA, reporting?
4. What share of calls is quality-scored, and can we see the same dashboard you do?
5. Which service level and resolution targets will you write into the contract?
6. How many business days from kickoff to first live call, and what pauses the clock?
7. How fast is a weak agent replaced, and from what bench?
8. What are the exit terms after the pilot, and where do our recordings and records live when we leave?

Red flags

• A rate quoted before anyone asked about your call types or hours.
• Quality checked on a sample you never get to see.
• Per-minute pricing with no monthly cap.
• A term contract before a single live call.

Our own answers are on this page. For named comparisons, see the best call center outsourcing companies, our shortlist of nearshore call center companies and the customer service outsourcing companies list. The 30-point vendor vetting audit goes deeper if you are running a formal RFP.

Call center agency services by industry

Call center agencies work wherever customers call often and most calls need no license: insurance, healthcare administration, home services, collections, e-commerce and software. The dividing line is the same in each. The outsourced agent services, books and qualifies, and licensed or binding work stays with your staff.

• Insurance: first notice of loss, billing and policy status calls, certificates of insurance, and warm transfer of quote requests to your licensed producers.
• Healthcare administration: scheduling, reminders, intake and referral calls. HIPAA-bound programs go live 10 business days after a completed kickoff, with the BAA in place first; Medicare AEP programs run on the standard 7.
• Home services and solar: booking and dispatch by day, emergency triage after hours, and inbound lead qualification with warm transfer to your closers.
• Debt collection: reminder and inbound account calls under your compliance rules. The Jamaica debt collection page shows how those desks run.
• E-commerce and retail: order status, returns and exchanges, with holiday peaks staffed as a block rather than as permanent hires.
• Software and technology: tier-1 help desk work such as password resets and how-to questions, with escalation to your tier-2 team.

Who answers your calls

Call Force Global agents are independent contractors, contracted directly by Call Force Global, who work remotely from home offices in Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Guyana and Colombia. Operations are managed from the Caribbean, headquarters is in Toronto, and every program has a named senior ops manager.

None of the six countries changes its clocks for daylight saving. Jamaica and Colombia sit at UTC-5, Belize at UTC-6, and Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana at UTC-4, so every team is within an hour of US Eastern or Central time all year.

Before any client hears them, agents complete our two-day internal certification, five hours a day across customer support, sales and the tech stack. They then get 4 to 24 hours of training on your program, depending on complexity, plus daily pre-shift meetings and coaching for as long as it runs. Every home workstation is vetted for reliable internet and backup power before onboarding. On HIPAA-bound programs, agents work in a private room on an encrypted device we manage, with no paper or pens and personal phones off the desk. Programs run in English, or in English and Spanish from Colombia, and we assess language skills agent by agent rather than by country.

The agents are fronters. They answer, service, book, qualify and warm-transfer; they are not licensed advisors. Insurance quoting and binding, Medicare and ACA enrollment, claim valuation and anything else that needs a license stays with your staff, and we write that line into the statement of work before launch. The fronter scope matrix shows where it falls by vertical.

Frequently asked questions