Blog

If you’re planning to outsource your call centre operations, South Africa could be the place you’re looking for.

The world is no stranger to the concept of call centre outsourcing. Companies of all kinds have been doing it for years. However, how the market works is changing. Traditional outsourcing powerhouses such as India or the Philippines are making way for new, more developed countries such as South Africa. In South Africa call centre outsourcing is thriving as companies in Western countries seek to blend lower operational costs with the better and more familiar customer service people have been looking for.

Business Processing Outsourcing in South Africa Surges

The last few years have seen a dramatic shift in the balance of business process outsourcing. The business process outsourcing (BPO) sector in South Africa is growing rapidly. McKinsey expects it to almost triple in size by 2030. Leading the way has been call centre outsourcing – something more commonly associated with low-cost locations such as the Philippines or India.

The rise is being driven by several factors including:

• Cost-effectiveness: While the cost of labor might still be lower in countries such as India, South Africa still represents a highly affordable alternative when compared to Western markets.

• Government support: The South African government has created multiple incentives and tax breaks to encourage foreign investment in the country.

• Highly educated workforce: The workforce is highly skilled and educated. The workforce is young, tech-savvy and proficient in several languages, especially English.

• Language skills: English is spoken widely in South Africa with a strong neutral accent that is easy to understand. Other languages such as French and Portuguese are also commonly spoken. As such it addresses one of the most common complaints made about traditional call centre outsourcing.

• Cultural match: South Africa’s culture is similar to many in the West, making it an easy match for good quality customer service.

• Time zones: South Africa’s time zone is a good match for Europe with only a few hours difference making it easy to offer service during working hours. Although the match might not be as good for the US, they can make it easier for companies to offer 24-hour service levels by switching to a South African call centre for out-of-office hours support.

Ultimately, South Africa promises to change the dynamics of the outsourcing market.

Traditionally companies felt they had to choose between quality and cosy. India, for example, could offer enormous cost savings, but that came at the expense of quality. Call centre staff might be highly educated, but their English skills could be variable and they would often struggle to make themselves understood.

A lack of cultural familiarity also made it difficult for call centre staff to engage with customers on anything more than a superficial basis. Increasingly, those communication challenges have created friction between companies and their customers.

Demand is changing. Customers increasingly value good customer service and will even prioritise those firms which can offer it. Some companies have already identified the direction of travel. Firms such as PlusNet turned a locally based call centre operation into a major plank of their marketing campaigns. BT also promised to bring call centres back to the UK after a backlash from customers.

The rise of customer service

Demand for good quality service, therefore, has grown. Customers increasingly expect a highly personalised multichannel experience. They have become more educated, demanding and savvy. They know when they are not the centre of attention and when a company is looking to cut corners and when they detect that in their customer service interactions, they tend to vote with their wallets.

According to various studies, good personalised customer service is increasingly seen as a top priority. In a highly competitive marketplace in which consumers have choices everywhere, the days when they feel compelled to put up with poor service are a thing of the past.

At the same time, though, the realities of cost are hard to ignore. Businesses of all sizes are finding profit margins coming under pressure from all quarters. Companies need to find affordable options without forcing them to compromise on quality.

South Africa appears to have everything businesses need. The cost of labor might be higher than in real low-cost destinations such as the Philippines and India, but it’s still a hefty discount on the UK, US or Western Europe. English is widely spoken with an easily understandable neutral-sounding accent, removing any language barriers.

The social and working culture in South Africa is similar facilitating easier engagement between customers and call centre advisors. Furthermore, the impact of government grants for businesses that employ South African staff means the overall cost could even match the lowest code locations.

At first sight, therefore, it seems to offer the best of all worlds – a chance for businesses to have their cake and eat it with one of those rare occasions where low costs and high quality go hand in hand.

However, South Africa is still a new country with its own set of regulations and business practices. To ensure successful outsourcing strategies, domestic businesses need to adopt an effective and nuanced outsourcing strategy.

Building your operation

The first thing to think about is the type of call centre you’ll need. For day-to-day enquiries, you’ll need a call centre which is operational during working hours. For the UK and Western Europe, South Africa is a pretty good match with only a few hours’ time difference.

For the US and Australia, the difference can be much greater, but that in itself comes with opportunities. Time zone differences can make it an attractive location for out-of-hours call centre activity. For example, a company in the US may have a domestically located call centre during the day and switch to a South African operation for the night.

If the two call centres operate harmoniously it can give customers access to 24/7 support without having to pay staff additional rates for night shifts.

Business structure

The next question will be how the staff should be employed. The traditional approach to employing domestic staff is to set up a subsidiary or an overseas branch. This comes with considerable costs. Not only do you have to recruit staff members, but you also have to manage every aspect of their employment including dealing with tax, meeting employment laws and providing a competitive benefits package.

This takes time and effort and may well require additional support staff to be hired to manage the South African-based workforce. This adds to costs and can increase the risks of unintentional non-compliance.

South African employment law can be strict and is constantly changing. Fines for any company found to have breached regulations can be high. For a foreign company, keeping abreast of the latest regulations can be challenging.

Alternative solutions can be found with structures such as:

• Employer of Record: An employer of record is a company set up to handle all the legal and logistical requirements of employing staff. For legal purposes, the EOR will be the employer within South Africa. It will be responsible and have liability for ensuring all employees are classified correctly and meeting obligations in the form of tax, employment rights, disciplinary procedures and staff benefits.

• Agent of Record: AORs work similarly to EORs but they are more aimed at independent contractors. They help overseas companies manage, onboard and categorise all independent contractors they work with. Unlike an EOR they will not be the employer, and the legal liability will lie with you as the business. However, they can help you navigate legal complexities in South Africa and avoid any non-compliance fees. They are a great option for businesses which employ a large number of freelance and independent contractors.

• Professional Employer Organization: A PEO again serves a similar role to an EOR, but employment is shared between you as a business and the PEO which means you are still legally responsible for your employees. The PEO handles all the legal and administrative duties while you as a business take care of the day-to-day management of your staff. It’s much like having your own dedicated HR department with specialist local knowledge of the rules and regulations within South Africa.

Which of these options works best for you will depend on your type of business, the industry the nature of your call centre operations and how much you’re willing to pay. In many cases, these can be good first-step options, giving you the structure on which you manage employment issues within your call centre operations without the expense and work involved with setting up a full foreign subsidiary.

For example, this can work in the early days of a market expansion followed by the move to a more permanent set-up once fully established.

Setting up your business

Other factors that might influence how you set up a call centre could include the sector you’re working in and your customer profiles. South Africa is particularly strong in the financial sector with a good infrastructure allowing for the rapid flow of information to and from South Africa.

A familiar culture also enables call centre advisors to empathise more easily with customers than their counterparts in India. It enables them to develop a more in-depth and effective relationship with customers leading to higher sales and better customer retention.

Customer service, therefore, really is South Africa’s superpower when it comes to the business outsourcing solution. It’s a key differentiation which other locations. It has enabled South Africa to present itself as a no-compromise option. A place in which businesses no longer need to sacrifice quality to save money and that’s why South Africa has emerged so quickly and why it seems to be primed for even more growth in the future.

The number of independent contractors and freelancers employed by businesses of all kinds is on the rise, but what’s the difference?

Today’s workforce is more diverse than ever before. Using freelancers and contractors can be an effective and affordable way to tap into new skills and talent within your team and drive more value for customers. However, as with so many things you need to ensure they are classified in the right way and that you set the best working relationship for all sides.

Freelancers

A freelancer is an independent professional who works with multiple clients on a case-by-case basis. They will be engaged on a short-term basis and will present invoices as soon as their work is finished.

A freelance professional will typically work with many clients. Some will be on a short-term basis, while others may be more regular and recurring engagements. However, crucially, the working relationship is loose. It’s like working with a service provider. You hire them for a certain set of skills, negotiate a fair price and, once the work is done satisfactorily, they will submit an invoice which you will pay within an agreed time.

Freelancers set their rates, payment terms, and working patterns and have complete independence over how they work and when they work. Deadlines will be set in negotiation with the freelancer who will generally have to fit your work in and around their other commitments.

Independent contractor

An independent contractor will have a more regular working relationship with you as a business but will still be separate from your company. They effectively sit between freelancer and employee and will likely perform certain services and functions on a regular or semi-regular basis.

For example, your business might have a regular need for marketing services. However, the need might not be so regular as to justify a full-time employee. You’ll work with a contractor to come in and perform that role on a contractual basis.

Contractors will often be working on much larger and long-term projects and may work onsite at your office. In many situations, they may start to look and feel like any other part of your team.

However, as with freelancers, they are still fully independent of your company. While employees work for a regular salary, they will perform the contracted role, submit an invoice, and leave.

Freelancers and contractors are both independent which means they will handle their taxes. All you have to do as a company is make sure you abide by the payment terms and satisfy invoices when they become due. Payment can be delivered in a variety of ways such as bank transfer, check, money order, or cash. Whatever option you go for you should make sure it’s recorded and the worker correctly classified.

Advantages of freelancers and contractors

Both freelancers and contractors offer advantages to businesses including:

• Flexibility: You only have to engage them and pay for their services on a case-by-case basis. Some companies will have a pool of freelancers enabling them to reach out as and when they need to.

• Simplicity: Because they are not employees you don’t have to worry about withholding deductions, managing PAYE, or making sure you meet all employment regulations. It’s fast simple.

• Affordability: With freelancers, you only pay for what you get. Every dollar you spend can be linked to a piece of work. With employees, you’re paying them every month whether they are busy or not.

• Skills: Engaging freelancers enables you to reach out beyond the confines of your business to the wider market. You can access a wider talent pool and specific skills or certain tasks. With in-house employees, you’re often asking people to adapt to tasks that are not in their central skillset.

Disadvantages of freelancers and contractors

While there are many advantages there are some challenges:

• Cost per hour: While you only pay for specific services the actual cost per hour of their work can often be slightly higher. As work becomes more regular, you may look at whether it would be more cost-effective to hire them as employees.

• Control: With employees you control where they work and when they meet deadlines. Freelancers can work from anywhere and will generally fit your role around their other commitments.

• Compliance issues: Authorities have become much hotter on practices that they see as disguised employment. If you’re working with people regularly and if they are on site they may start to look and feel like regular employees. In a world in which most businesses have a hybrid workforce correct classification of workers can be very difficult.

Working with independent contractors overseas

As technology becomes faster and more agile businesses can find it easier to engage with professionals from all over the world. Thanks to the internet it is possible to hire a freelancer from anywhere and have them collaborate quickly and easily with your own domestic team.

This has many advantages including:

• The ability to widen the talent pool: Traditionally, businesses were constrained by their geographical area. However, today you can easily tap into a rich and diverse talent pool.

• Affordability: Outsourcing operations to freelancers overseas can reduce your operating costs. By working with people in countries with a lower cost of labor, you can get services at a more competitive price.

• Working culture: Engaging with a more international workforce can have all sorts of surprising benefits that ripple across your entire business. Working with people in other countries brings fresh knowledge and perspectives that can be immensely beneficial.

Certain countries such as South Africa offer a particularly appealing proposition. A diverse and highly qualified workforce coupled with a matching time zone for the UK and Europe and a low cost of living make it a perfect location to source affordable but high-quality freelancers.

However, whatever country you choose it pays to make sure you understand the market and find the right people.

How to hire contractors and freelancers

When working with independent workers – especially if they are located overseas – you will have to decide on how to engage with them. Most companies will start by directly engaging the services of freelancers. There are a host of freelance platforms available that can help you connect with talented professionals across the world.

This can be quick and simple and involves no intermediary fees, but you will have to handle all administrative details including getting the right classification and treatment of workers.

When hiring freelancers and contractors overseas, it can be easy to run into regulatory difficulties. Adhering to the rules of a foreign and unfamiliar country is far from straightforward. Keeping up with changing regulations can also be extremely challenging.

For this reason, it’s worth partnering with a specialist firm dedicated to classifying your workers in another country. There are various options for doing this.

• Employer of Record (EOR): An EOR handles all the regulatory and logistical challenges of dealing with your employees overseas. They can make sure all legal requirements are met and avoid any compliance issues.

• Agent of Record (AOR): An agent of record is better suited to independent contractors and freelance. They can help you with sourcing talent, onboarding, and making sure everyone is classified correctly.

Last but not least your relationship with freelancers and contractors can be very fluid and will likely evolve. For example, you may start by hiring a freelancer on a one-off basis. If things go well, you may hire them on a more regular contractual basis. At some point, they may spend so much time working with you that you need to classify them as a full-time employee. Understanding where the lines are drawn between employee and contractor is critical and difficult in a foreign country.

At Future Teams, we provide support for all your outsourcing needs in South Africa. If you’d like to know more download a PDF of our guide and feel free to contact a member of our team.

If you want to boost your digital transformation efforts it might be a good idea to hire remote developers.

Technological capability is fast becoming a crucial differentiator in the world of business. Tech-savvy enterprises can deliver services faster, to a better standard, and at a lower cost than their less sophisticated rivals. Unfortunately, that can be bad news for many small and medium-sized enterprises. While larger corporations can splash out the cash to access the best technical talent, you might be limited by the expertise within your in-house team. With talented developers being hard to come by that could leave you at a distinct disadvantage. However, if you hire remote developers, you can level the playing field.

The promise of remote work

Of course, we have all become familiar with remote working. The chances are that at least some of your current employees are working remotely at least part of the time. Thanks to Covid-19 something that used to be a marginal option has quickly become the norm. Business attitudes have shifted and digital communications have become transformed. Platforms such as MS Teams and Zoom now mean you can collaborate seamlessly with multidisciplinary teams from around the world.

Remotely sourcing developers comes with a host of advantages including:

• Widening your talent pool: Casting your net further gives you access to developers based not just here in the UK but everywhere in the world. As long as you’re set up for remote work operations, there are very few restrictions on location. Advanced software projects will often require individuals with skills and talents that are simply not available in your local area or within your existing team.

• Optimizing your costs: Working remotely can help you use the power of the market to find high-quality individuals at the best available costs. When working with overseas developers you may be able to take advantage of lower costs of living in other countries which enables them to offer more competitive services.

• Scalability: Hiring remote developers enables you to access services as and when you need them. The world of business is more agile and fluid which means you need to be able to respond to demand as and when you need to. You may often find yourself faced with one-off technological challenges that require a talented team on a short-term basis only. Remote developers enable you to scale up your talent pool temporarily to meet short-term needs.

How to hire remote developers

When hiring remote developers there are several things to consider:

• Sourcing talent: Where will you source talent? Software development is a highly technical discipline. Anything but the most basic of IT projects will need more than just regular IT professionals. You’ll need to understand the requirements of your project and work out where to find people with the appropriate skills to help you out.

• How to work with them: Remote developers will need to collaborate with you and, most likely, people in your team. For that, they will need a clear pipeline to do so. The better communications are the easier it will be to have a two-way conversation. Of course, it will never be as easy to manage work in the same way as if they were there in your office, but platforms such as video communications and instant messaging can work wonders at breaking down barriers and reducing the distance between teams.

• Set key milestones: Establish what you want from the working relationship and establish clear milestones and KPIs to help you assess how successfully the engagement is going.

• Security: Working with remote third parties across any discipline can expose your organization to a host of cyber risks. In a traditional workplace, in which everyone worked on-site, securing your technical infrastructure was relatively straightforward. It was like securing your castle with a moat and wall. Bringing remote employees into the equation can complicate matters. Vulnerabilities in their security posture can cause a breach in yours. Whether working with individuals or companies make sure you understand how they are connecting to your system and that all devices and endpoints are secure.

• Establish a clear working relationship: When hiring freelancers, this can usually be done on an ad-hoc and one-off basis in which they work on a certain project and get paid via an invoice. However, if you have regular development needs it pays to work with people you know and trust. Over time you could build up a regular team of remote developers who you can turn to when you need them.

• Classify workers: Whatever the working relationship you need to make sure they are classified correctly. As the working relationship becomes closer you may find it beneficial to switch from ad-hoc freelancing to a more closer contractual relationship. You’ll have to be careful to make sure that you categorize them correctly. If they are working with you every day they may become indistinguishable from regular full-time employees. If the authorities start to feel you’re using them for disguised employment you may run into legal difficulties.

Hiring remote developers overseas

Working with remote developers overseas can be a great way to not only widen your talent pool but also optimize your costs. Labor costs in the UK are some of the highest in the world. Elsewhere lower cost of living means professionals can offer significantly discounted work.

Developers in one country might be much cheaper than in your home market. However, you need to make sure that what you save in costs will not come back to haunt you in quality.

When choosing countries you need a location that has:

• A highly diverse, talented, and technically minded workforce

• Good IT infrastructure

• A commitment to best practice

• Clear working regulations

• Discounted working rates

South Africa is one of the few countries that offer all this in one package. The country benefits from a low cost of living. Cities such as Durban and Cape Town are some of the cheapest in the world which means professionals can pass those savings onto you as the end client.

At the same time, though, the country has a thriving economy and a highly talented workforce. It has a strong IT sector with plenty of people able to offer high-quality software development expertise.

Good technical infrastructure facilitates fast, low-risk communications which will help you collaborate with professionals quickly and easily. South Africa is also only a couple of hours ahead of the UK which means it’s easy to arrange meetings without suffering from service delays.

On top of that South Africa has one of the fastest growing business process outsourcing sectors in the world. The country is keen to attract foreign investment into the South African economy and will offer a host of grants to businesses that provide jobs for local South Africans.

South Africa is, therefore, a perfect location offering low cost, good talent, easy communications a friendly government regime, and a matching time zone.

Furthermore, it has plenty of ways in which you can hire developers from arranging an individual freelance contract to working with dedicated outsourcing companies.

To do this it’s important to find the right structure to avoid any compliance problems. South Africa has strict labor laws and fines for any company that breaks them – whether deliverability or accidental can be high.

To avoid that it helps to have the support of a local company. An Employer of Record can help you source developers and meet all legal and administrative responsibilities. An EOR avoids the need to have a legal entity such as a foreign subsidiary in the country and will serve as the legal employer in the country. They will also assume all liabilities for their employment as well as manage PAYE obligations.

Alternative options include Professional Employers Organization (PEO). It works in much the same way as an EOR but employment is shared. The PEO handles all the admin requirements of the employment while you manage the day-to-day relationship.

An Agent of Record (AOR) meanwhile can help manage relationships with freelancers and contractors and avoid the risk of poor worker classification.

Each of these can provide the help and support you need to hire remote developers in South Africa and manage their ongoing employment.

At Future Teams, we provide comprehensive support services to help you source and work with highly skilled individuals of different disciplines. To find out more download our free PDF report.

Businesses of all sizes are looking to hire remote marketing teams. Here’s how to make it work for your business.

Marketing is crucial to the future of your business, but it can also be costly and uncertain. Hiring a full-scale internal marketing team can be prohibitively expensive for most small businesses, putting them at a disadvantage against larger competitors. In an increasingly busy marketplace making yourself heard as a small business can be tough.

One option could be to outsource the operation and hire a remote marketing team. Rather than taking on the expense of an internal team, this can help you scale operations up and down as needed and benefit from top-class talent and cutting-edge technological infrastructure.

How remote marketing works

Outsourcing is becoming increasingly common as businesses look to hire third parties to manage operations such as customer service, technical reports, or accounting. With remote marketing, you can contact a specialist company with its own team of professional marketers to promote your business, products, and services.

You will pay a set fee for which you’ll benefit from the expertise of their team and all the infrastructure available.

Alternatively, you can hire a remote marketing team on a freelance or contractual basis, building up a team of contractors to work with you on ad-hoc projects. This can be useful for companies who may need staff for a short space of time to work on specific projects such as a product launch.

Why hire a remote marketing team

Hiring a remote marketing team comes with a host of advantages:

• More bang for your buck: Hiring your internal team can be expensive. You need to hire staff, office space, and equipment. You may also be restricted in terms of talent by the location of your office. Hiring a remote team enables you to do away with the space, equipment, and staff and simply pay a fee to a company.

• Specialist talent: Hiring a remote marketing team allows you to cast the talent net wider. A remote marketing team will have all the latest equipment and a highly trained team of specialist marketers ready and waiting to work on your product. You can pick and choose who you work with from a much wider selection of talented professionals.

• Flexibility: With an in-house marketing team, you’ll be paying the same amount every week regardless of need. Sometimes resources will be too much; sometimes they won’t be enough. Hiring a remote marketing team enables you to scale up or down as needed. When you have a specific project in mind you can bring in more marketers to boost your team.

Fresh perspective: When you hire a remote marketing team, you’re ringing in highly qualified external experts. They will come to your product or service with a fresh pair of eyes and new ideas that could be invaluable in driving new sales revenue. Sometimes this different perspective can open up new opportunities you weren’t aware of before.

Hire remote marketing teams, the cons

There are of course some reasons why an in-house team might be beneficial in some situations. They will know your company and product better giving them better insights into how it works and the customers to target. A remote marketing team will take time to get up to speed with your product and may struggle to replicate the innate understanding you have of your product.

When you have an in-house marketing team, you’re in control. You have regular contact with your team who will be in the same office complex and can easily shape the strategy and manage them in person. You can be more agile and flexible in how you work. When your team is in the same office as you, the only thing you need to do to change strategy is speak to them.

How to hire remote marketing teams

There are, therefore, challenges, but these can be overcome if you adopt the right strategy. When hiring a remote marketing team think about the challenge in three dimensions. If you focus only on one – such as cost – you’ll lose out on others such as quality and effectiveness.

Here are a few things to think about:

• Recruitment: Whether hiring a remote marketing team as a whole or building up your remote team person by person, think about the skills and qualities you need in your business. Outsourced marketing companies will generally employ highly skilled individuals capable of turning their skills into many different marketing challenges. However, it pays to do a bit of due diligence and find out who they have working for them or what recruitment support they can provide in adding new staff to work on your project.

• Training: All remote marketing teams need training to understand your product, company, and market. This can be a two-way process. Their expertise can bring new perspectives that could identify new opportunities you might not have already spotted.

• Payment: Understand the best payment structure and see how it compares with using an in-house marketing team. Set clear benchmarks and key performance indicators so you can assess your new remote strategy effectively and evaluate how well it’s working.

Hire a remote marketing team overseas.

The number of companies looking to hire remote marketing teams in other countries is growing. Better technology and communications are making it possible to work with professionals around the world and take advantage of lower labor costs.

Countries such as South Africa, with a young, highly qualified, workforce represent an excellent option. A low cost of living means wages are around 40% to 60% of the level in the UK depending on the job role. While other low-cost destinations provide language barriers and a lack of available skills, South Africa has both. English is widely spoken and cultural similarities make it easier for marketing professionals to engage and empathize with customers. A commitment to following best practices in everything they do also provides security, reliability, and accountability.

South Africa is only a couple of hours ahead of the UK and Europe which means it’s a good time zone match for the UK working day. Meetings can be scheduled easily and services can be delivered without undue delay.

Another reason for hiring remote marketers could come with overseas expansion. Launching a product in a different country can be challenging. You’ll be unfamiliar with the market conditions, the existing competitors, or the customer bases.

Hiring a remote marketing team in that country gives you a team of professionals on the ground with in-depth local knowledge and expertise in that sector. They can help you adapt your product or services to the nuances of the market, supercharging your prospects of success.

When hiring a remote marketing team overseas, you will have to set up an effective legal structure. The traditional approach has been to set up a legal entity and employ people directly, but this comes with expense and risk. Your marketing team will also need administrative staff to support and manage their employment and make sure all legal requirements are taken care of.

Ticking each box in a foreign and unfamiliar country can be challenging and foreign companies have a high risk of unintentional noncompliance. Keeping pace with a constantly evolving regulatory landscape can be challenging.

A cheaper and more effective way is to hire an intermediary in that country such as an Employer of Record (EOR) or a Professional Employer Organization (PEO). Each of these differs slightly in structure, but they serve the same purpose – to take on the administrative burden of managing staff and provide expert localized legal knowledge to avoid falling afoul of the regulators.

An EOR serves as the legal employer of staff in that country. They may already have people available who can provide marketing services or they can provide support in hiring, recruiting, onboarding, and managing the employment of a new team.

The EOR will be responsible for managing all the details of employment including onboarding, worker classification, managing PAYE, making deductions, and managing day-to-day employment matters.

A PEO, meanwhile, will work as a shared employer alongside your own company. They will effectively work as the HR department managing all the legal and administrative support while you will manage the day-to-day employment.

Both of these offer a low-cost and low-risk way of hiring remote marketing teams in another country. They can be a great way to access highly skilled talent without having to take on the cost and upheaval of setting up your subsidiary.

They can offer a short-term or long-term option. For example, if you’re just expanding into a new country, you can dip your toe in the water by using a remote marketing team through an EOR. If the expansion goes well, you could then look at establishing a more permanent entity in the country.

Hiring freelance marketing teams overseas

Countries such as South Africa also offer a good source of highly qualified freelance professionals. They can offer comparable skills to marketing professionals in your own country at a much-reduced cost.

They can also help in the early days of expansion by providing one-off support on specific projects. You can work with them on a case-by-case basis scaling up support as and when needed.

As the working relationship evolves it may be worth building a more long-term relationship by hiring them as contractors. They will work with you regularly but will still be independent and will perhaps also work with other companies.

Hiring people on a contractual basis can be part of a pathway that leads to a long-term full-time employment relationship. This can be a great way to build a team of professionals with an in-depth understanding of your business operations.

As the working relationship evolves you may find yourself with a diverse team comprising a mixture of full-time, contractor, and freelance staff. Making sure each worker is classified correctly according to the law can become challenging. Using Agents of Record (AOR) can remove the administrative burden of doing this and also avoid any unintentional compliance issues.

Building success for the future

Whatever the size of your business or the nature of your marketing strategies, therefore, the ability to hire a remote marketing team can drive enormous benefits. It can help you access new staff, scale operations as needed, or optimize your costs.

If you’d like more support on how to hire a remote marketing team download our free guide for all the information you need.

Customer service is one of the most important factors customers consider when choosing a company, but it’s one many businesses get wrong.

Buying a service or product is much more emotional and complicated than people like to meet. It’s more than just a transaction. People want to have an emotional connection with their products. They want to support companies that mirror their values and attitudes in life. Much of what people feel about a company starts and ends with their customer service experience. Get it right and you can have a loyal customer for life. Get it wrong and you’ll push them into the arms of your competitors.

This fact is one reason why the idea of hiring a remote customer service team can be controversial. When done right it can deliver a host of benefits but when done wrong it can impose further barriers between you and your customers.

The move to remote customer service

If you’re considering hiring a remote customer service team, you’re not alone. Remote customer service roles surged during the pandemic. Covid-19 created a perfect storm. Lockdown meant businesses had to think of new ways of working, and faster digital communications meant they no longer needed a customer service team based onsite to engage with customers.

Now they could easily outsource to another location or have teams of remote customer service agents connecting to your systems from their homes. Customers quickly became accustomed to the idea of customer service agents speaking to them directly from their living rooms.

Covid may have provided the impetus, but the drive to hire remote customer service teams has continued apace. Companies have been driven by several factors including:

• Lower costs: Remote customer service teams can be more cost-effective than in-house teams. By outsourcing to another organization or hiring freelancers you can free up space in your office and reduce equipment costs. If you hire remote customer service agents in a country with cheaper labor costs, you can also keep employment costs much more affordable.

• Flexibility: A remote customer service team enables you to scale operations up and down as you need them. It can provide extra capacity at peak times. If you hire remote customer service agents overseas, you can have them operate in a completely different time zone allowing you to offer 24/7 support.

• Wider talent pool: With an in-house team you’re restricted to professional representatives who can commute to your office. By hiring remote staff you can broaden the talent pool to potentially include the entire world.

The risks of hiring remote customer service

The overriding motivation behind remote customer service operations has always been affordability. The ability to take advantage of lower labor costs and friendlier employment laws prompted many companies to move customer service functions offshore. Countries such as India and the Philippines earned a lucrative niche in providing UK companies with bargain basement customer service teams. However, that came as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they saved money, but their customers were not happy.

Communication difficulties created friction in the customer experience. Complaints were common. Businesses quickly discovered that customer service was much more than an operational cost. When customers experience poor service they look for alternatives.

Many firms such as Lloyds TSB and BT began to bring back customer service functions in-house, but that doesn’t mean customers have abandoned call centers or that there is no need for remote customer service. Far from it. Instead, attitudes are changing with a much greater attitude toward quality and value.

Wherever customer service operations are based, they need to be able to provide first-rate customer service. This has prompted businesses to look at new locations for remote customer service staff. One promising option in particular is South Africa.

At first glance, South Africa seems to have everything:

• The language and time zones are a good match for the UK. English is widely spoken with a clear, fluent neutral accent.

• So too is the culture. South Africans share many of the same sports and pastimes making it easier to empathise with customers.

• Staff are highly trained with a commitment to quality. South Africa prides itself on a reputation for providing outstanding customer service results. Companies maintain a commitment to best practices and adhere to internationally recognized standards of data security and accountability.

• The workforce is young, diverse, upwardly mobile, and highly educated – everything you want from a customer service agent. There is also a wide and deep talent pool incorporating multiple disciplines which makes it a good option for many different areas of expertise.

• The government has worked hard to attract foreign investment. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has become the country’s top export. Any company that creates employment for local South Africans can potentially receive valuable tax breaks, incentives, and grants.

• Best of all the cost of labor is much lower than in Europe. When government support is factored in hiring remote customer service teams in South Africa can be as cheap as in the lowest-cost destinations.

How to hire remote customer service teams

South Africa offers a no-compromise solution – a place where you can optimize your costs without compromising on quality. However, when you hire South African staff you will have to make sure you comply with the regulations. Employment laws are strict and the penalties for non-compliance can be high.

The traditional approach of setting up a local legal entity in the form of a local branch or subsidiary can be expensive and comes with compliance risks. Understanding the rules can be difficult in a foreign country.

A cheaper and safer option can be to go with a local intermediary in the form of an Employer of Record, a Professional Employers Organization, or an Agent of Record.

They all serve similar roles but differ slightly. An EOR serves as the legal employer of remote customer service teams and will handle operations such as PAYE, tax deductions staff entitlements, and all other legal and administrative duties. As the legal employer in South Africa, they will have liability for those employees which protects your business. You will pay a set fee to the EOR and they will pay the wages of the employees.

A PEO is a slightly different approach in which employment is shared. They handle the legal and admin duties, while you manage the day-to-day relationship with your employees.

An AOR, meanwhile, tends to be for freelancers and independent contractors. It will handle details such as onboarding, contracts, and worker classification.

Each of them offers the same proposition – a chance to benefit from local experts who can shoulder the legal and compliance requirements of managing staff. They can help with sourcing the right people and navigating the legal requirements of employment law. They can do all this without you having to set up an expensive legal entity in the country.

Customer service, therefore, should be a top priority. By hiring remote customer service staff, you can give your company all the tools it needs to thrive. To find out more download a PDF guide free of charge.