Individual answering service companies are expanding their work to include call center functions, and may outsource parts of your company’s project to an offshore call center. Do you know who is answering your phone calls?

Does Your Answering Service Subcontract to Offshore Call Centers?

Answering service companies are changing, offering their clients a comprehensive suite of robust call center service options. These features have the potential to radically transform a local small business into a global company. When business owners make the decision to take advantage of call center features, they need to be aware that there’s a possibility that parts of their account activity could be outsourced to other answering service companies and other call centers. Some of this call center outsourcing activity is domestic, but some projects are offshored to call centers operating outside the United States.

Answering service clients need to be aware of how their calls are being handled. Some answering services will be forthright and disclose all the details of how they subcontract their work, other vendors may not provide clients with any information about subcontracting partners. In many cases, how calls are handled makes little difference to the success of the account. However, if the regular activity in an account deals with sensitive information, including information about intellectual and creative property, financial information or personal data, who answers your calls, and the international locations vendors subcontract to, impacts client security.

Offshoring Disclosure Makes A Difference

When answering services divide projects and subcontract parts to offshore companies, any sensitive information passing between callers and clients is at risk. While the United States and most of the West have established comprehensive laws and regulations that protect intellectual property, creative rights and personal data, many countries hosting booming call center business sectors have not caught up to addressing legal and ethical business concerns. If data or a creative business idea is captured and sold by an innovative call center worker in a foreign country, companies have little or no legal recourse. There have been incidents of brazen intellectual property theft associated with call center and answering service offshoring practices. When businesses try to go after legal remedies in foreign courts, they find themselves stuck in long processes that may never be resolved.

If you found out that someone answering your customer support hotline lifted your intellectual property, and sold that information to a producer in another part of the world, how would you react?

Offshoring Disclosure Protects Intellectual Property

1-800 We Answer, Inc. is a United States-based answering service company offering a full range of call center options for our clients. Because we operate several inbound and outbound call center locations, we normally never need to subcontract answering service and call center, mail fulfillment or any of the other business support services. We’ve self-disclosed our activity to The Foundation for Transparency in Offshoring, and they have certified us as a BPO that does not engage in offshoring.

This certification means that our clients’ intellectual property rights, their data and any sensitive business information shared with our company in the life of an account project is fully protected by United States law. 1-800 We Answer implements technology that shields our computer and data networks from outside eyes, and we carefully screen our answering service operators and call center staff members before they begin work with us. We take the extra precautions to protect our clients’ technology plans, trade secrets and other creative and intellectual property.

Outsourcing and Offshoring Transparency Provides Security

When it comes to your company’s answering service account, call center activity, data collection or any business support project, you can trust 1-800 We Answer to manage your account using sophisticated tools that protect your account from insider theft and outside data attacks. It’s important to know who is answering your calls and how call data is protected. Offshoring transparency information gives you the ability to stay in complete control of the call center projects that you outsource to us.