What is contact center outsourcing?
Contact center outsourcing is contracting a third-party provider to run your customer conversations across phone, email, live chat, SMS and social messaging. The provider recruits, trains, supervises and quality-checks the agents. You supply the knowledge base, the systems they log into, the escalation rules and the targets they are measured against.
It is the multichannel version of call center outsourcing. A call center program is built around the phone queue. A contact center program puts the same dedicated agents on the written channels as well, so a customer who chats on Monday, emails on Tuesday and calls on Wednesday reaches people who can read the whole thread in your helpdesk. The channels change; the agent, the supervisor and the rate card do not.
Short on time? Tell us your channels, your hours and monthly volume by channel, and we will send a written quote within 24 hours. Start on the quote form, or browse everything CFG runs on the services hub.
What contact center services include
Contact center services cover seven lines of work: inbound customer service calls, outbound calling, live chat, email and ticket support, SMS and messaging, social media replies, and the back-office follow-through that closes a conversation. Call Force Global runs all seven on dedicated agents at the same hourly rate, and one program can combine any of them.
| Service | What the agent does |
|---|---|
| Inbound customer service | Answers order, billing, account and scheduling calls, troubleshoots, and warm-transfers what needs your staff |
| Outbound calling | Appointment setting, lead follow-up, live transfers, renewals and win-back, on a list you supply |
| Live chat | Website, in-app and pre-sales chat inside your chat tool, with unresolved chats turned into tickets |
| Email and tickets | Works the helpdesk queue: account requests, refunds within policy, triage and routing |
| SMS and messaging | Replies to customer texts, appointment changes and delivery questions on your texting platform, inside your opt-out rules |
| Social media replies | Public replies and direct messages on your brand accounts, within what you approve for public comment |
| Back-office follow-through | Order changes, CRM updates, data entry, and claims and document intake that finish what a conversation started |
Bilingual English and Spanish coverage comes from Colombia at the same rate; see our bilingual call center page. Healthcare programs run on the same model and go live in 10 business days, because the BAA and HIPAA setup come first; the details are on our HIPAA call center page. Queues that are mostly technical sit on help desk outsourcing.
What stays with your team
Call Force Global agents handle Tier 1 and Tier 2 support and work as fronters on sales calls. Engineering fixes, refunds above your limit, policy exceptions, legal and trust and safety cases, and anything that needs a license stay with your staff, reached by warm transfer or an escalation queue. Write that split into the statement of work, including the amount an agent may refund without approval.
The contact center scoping sheet: what to settle for each channel
The rate is the same on every channel. What differs is what you write into the statement of work before go-live, and which number you hold the provider to. Use this sheet with any provider, us included: one row per channel you plan to outsource.
| Channel | Settle before go-live | Target to write into the SOW |
|---|---|---|
| Phone | Staffing for your busiest half-hours, the transfer path, and who owns the recordings | Service level, abandonment rate, average handle time |
| Email and tickets | Macros, saved replies, refund limits and the tags agents must apply | First-response time and resolution time |
| Live chat | Chat hours, how many chats one agent runs at once, and when a chat becomes a ticket | Wait time to first reply and chat CSAT |
| SMS and messaging | Your texting platform, opt-out handling, and which messages need a human reply | Reply time inside your stated hours |
| Social media replies | What may be said in public, and what moves to a direct message | Reply time on public comments and messages |
| Back office | Which tasks close a conversation, and who approves exceptions | Turnaround time and accuracy rate |
Quality is checked on every channel: 100 percent AI QA on every ticket and chat transcript, and on every call from the $14 Scored Desk up, with human review and coaching on top. Set each target from your own baseline in the first weeks rather than from a brochure; our call center KPI benchmarks tool has reference ranges for the voice metrics.
Contact center vs call center outsourcing
A call center handles the phone. A contact center handles the phone plus email, live chat, SMS and social messaging, with the same agents and one customer history. When you outsource, the rate per agent hour rarely changes. What changes is the skill bar, because contact center agents write as much as they talk.
Pick a voice program when nearly all of your volume is calls: outbound sales, appointment setting, urgent service lines. Pick a contact center program when customers already reach you by email, chat or text and those queues sit unanswered. Many programs start voice-first and add email and SMS to the same seats later, which is a change to the statement of work, not a new vendor. The full comparison, with an eight-row differences table, is in our guide to call center vs contact center, and voice-only programs are scoped on our call center outsourcing page.
Contact center outsourcing pricing models and market rates
Outsourced contact centers bill per agent hour, per minute, per ticket or contact, or as a flat monthly plan, and dedicated teams usually bill per agent hour. Outsource Consultants puts US onshore call center agents at $28 to $40 an hour, nearshore agents at $13 to $23 and offshore agents at $6 to $12. Call Force Global's $13 to $19, all-in, sits inside the nearshore band.
| Option | Typical cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| US in-house contact center agent | $35 to $48+ an hour, loaded (Call Force Global estimate) | The full payroll burden. You recruit, train, manage and replace, and you license the helpdesk and phone stack yourself. |
| US onshore provider | $28 to $40 an hour (Outsource Consultants) | Agents in your customers' own time zones, at the highest outsourced rate. |
| Offshore provider | $6 to $12 an hour (Outsource Consultants) | The lowest rate. US business hours fall on the overnight shift in the Philippines and India, so ask who supervises the written queues at 2 a.m. local time. |
| CFG dedicated contact center team | $13 to $19 an hour, all-in | Named nearshore agents on your channels, inside your helpdesk and CRM, on US hours, live 7 business days after kickoff, month to month. |
All-in means pay, supervision, coaching, QA review, recruiting, IT support and reporting sit inside every rate; the dialer, call recording and 100% AI QA on calls start at the $14 Scored Desk. Against a US in-house seat at $35 to $48 an hour loaded, $13 to $19 is about 46 to 73 percent less. That onshore figure is a Call Force Global estimate built on BLS wage and benefits data, and the method is in our US agent loaded cost index.
A blended team, priced. On Call Force Global's rate card as of October 2026, three agents on the $14 Scored Desk who cover phone, email and SMS for 160 hours each come to $6,720 a month (3 × 160 hours × $14). The same three seats on voice only cost exactly the same, which is the point of pricing by the hour: adding a channel changes the work, not the invoice. Per-ticket and per-minute plans can cost less at very low volume and more as volume grows, so ask any provider to price the same month of your real volume both ways.
Market rates: Outsource Consultants, The True Cost of Outsourcing a Call Center (posted January 26, 2025). Run your own numbers in the cost calculator.
How go-live works: 7 business days from kickoff
Most contact center programs go live 7 business days after a completed kickoff, or 10 for HIPAA-bound healthcare. The clock starts at a completed kickoff, not at signature, and pauses while we wait on your access or approvals. If the first live contact slips past day 7 on our side, your live month extends day-for-day at no charge.
| Day | What Call Force Global does | What we need from you |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Scope confirmed channel by channel and the agent perimeter written into the statement of work | A scoping call, escalation rules, refund limits and volume by channel |
| Day 2 | Helpdesk, CRM, chat, texting and phone access; agents set up as named users | Logins and routing rules |
| Days 3 and 4 | Product, policy and tone training for each channel, led by your senior ops manager | Your help center, macros and saved replies |
| Day 5 | QA certification on mock calls, tickets and chats, scored on the live scorecard | Sign-off on the scorecard |
| Days 6 and 7 | Supervised live contacts begin on every channel in scope | A named contact for day-one escalations |
Every program starts with the Pilot Month, one live month from one agent at the normal rate for the desk you choose, then runs month to month. We recruit continuously across the Caribbean and Colombia and keep a bench of pre-screened agents, so staffing starts from a warm pool. Tier 2 work takes longer to reach full speed than Tier 1, so we write the ramp targets down at scoping, channel by channel.
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Who answers your customers
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.
The six delivery countries are Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Guyana and Colombia. Agents complete our two-day internal certification before any customer hears or reads them, then train on your product, policies and tone. Programs run in English, or in English and Spanish from Colombia at the same rate, and we assess language skills agent by agent. Our delivery countries sit on or within an hour of US Eastern and Central time, so your supervisor and ours can work a live escalation in the same business day.
How to choose a contact center outsourcing provider
Choose on channel fit and quality control before price. Shortlist providers that already run the channels you need, ask each for an all-in written quote on the same scope, find out how every channel is quality-checked, and run a paid pilot on live contacts before you sign a term.
Questions to ask every contact center provider
- Do the same agents work every channel, or does chat go to a separate team?
- Which channels are scored, and what share of contacts on each?
- Will agents work inside our helpdesk and CRM as named users we can switch off?
- Can we read redacted email and chat transcripts from a live program, not just hear call recordings?
- Is the price per agent hour the same for every channel, or are there per-ticket or per-message fees?
- Who keeps the recordings, transcripts and customer data when the contract ends?
Red flags
- A surcharge for adding email or SMS to a seat that already answers calls.
- Round-the-clock chat coverage promised with no named staffing plan behind it.
- An offer to supply calling or texting lists along with the agents, with no consent record you can inspect.
- A setup fee or an annual prepay before a single live month.
For a deeper read on running every channel from one nearshore team, see our guide to the nearshore omnichannel contact center, and for why one dedicated agent per account beats a shared pool on written channels, dedicated vs shared call center agents.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are contact center services?
Contact center services are the customer service, sales and support conversations a team handles across phone, email, live chat, SMS and social messaging. Typical work includes inbound support, outbound follow-up, chat, the email and ticket queue, text replies and back-office follow-through. Call Force Global provides them with dedicated nearshore agents at $13 to $19 per agent hour, all-in.
What is contact center outsourcing?
Contact center outsourcing is contracting a third-party provider to run your customer conversations across phone, email, live chat, SMS and social channels. The provider recruits, trains, supervises and quality-checks the agents, who work inside your helpdesk and CRM. You keep the knowledge base, the escalation rules and the targets. It is the multichannel version of call center outsourcing.
What is the difference between a call center and a contact center?
A call center handles customer interactions by phone only, inbound, outbound or both. A contact center handles the phone plus email, live chat, SMS and social messaging, with shared queues and one customer history. Outsourced, both are usually billed per agent hour; the contact center version needs agents who write as well as they speak.
How much does contact center outsourcing cost?
Outsource Consultants puts US onshore call center agents at $28 to $40 an hour, nearshore agents at $13 to $23 and offshore agents at $6 to $12. Call Force Global charges $13 to $19 per agent hour, all-in: $13 Staffed Desk, $14 Scored Desk, $15 Open Desk, and up to $19 only for regulated verticals or out-of-hours coverage. Every channel bills at the same rate, bilingual costs the same, and there is no setup fee.
Can one agent handle phone, chat, email and SMS?
Yes, and on a dedicated seat that is usually the point. A blended agent takes calls first and works the email, SMS and ticket queues between them, so one person holds the whole customer history. Live chat needs fast replies, so a busy chat queue usually gets its own scheduled hours. The rate per agent hour does not change with the channel mix.
What does contact center as a service mean?
Contact center as a service, or CCaaS, is cloud software that runs a contact center's phone, chat, email and SMS queues, routing and reporting on a subscription. It is the platform, not the people. Contact center outsourcing supplies the people: Call Force Global agents log into the CCaaS platform, helpdesk and CRM you already license, as named users you can switch off.
How long does it take to set up an outsourced contact center?
Call Force Global programs go live 7 business days after a completed kickoff, or 10 business days for HIPAA-bound healthcare, because the BAA and HIPAA setup come first. If the first live contact slips past day 7 on our side, the live month extends day-for-day at no charge. Every program starts with the Pilot Month from one agent, then runs month to month.
Where are your contact center agents located?
Call Force Global agents are independent contractors working remotely in Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Guyana and Colombia. Operations are managed from the Caribbean, and headquarters is in Toronto. Our delivery countries sit on or within an hour of US Eastern and Central time, and Colombia supplies bilingual English and Spanish agents at the same rate.
Related Reading
- Call center outsourcing: inbound and outbound programs, prices and how to choose
- Call center vs contact center: channels, technology and fit
- Customer service outsourcing
- Live chat outsourcing
- Inbound call center services
- Back office outsourcing
- BPO call center services
- In-house vs outsourced call center: the cost math
- Best customer support outsourcing companies
- How CFG pricing works: line-item breakdown
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