Call centre outsourcing for UK businesses, onshore, nearshore or offshore

What UK firms outsource

• Inbound calls: orders, bookings, account questions and faults, plus complaints once the team has settled. Most firms start here, because the volume is steady and the answers are usually written down already.
• Outbound calls: sales, renewals, appointment setting and collections. These carry the extra UK calling rules covered below.
• Chat and email: slower to answer than a phone, easier to check, and the simplest way to test a provider before you trust them with your phone lines.

Start with one queue. A mixed brief on day one makes it hard to tell which part is going wrong.

Onshore, nearshore or offshore

The choice is mostly about four things: the hours you need covered, how your customers react to the voice on the line, the cost, and where your customers' data goes.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table.

On time zones, South Africa runs on SAST, which is UTC+2 all year. That puts it two hours ahead of the UK in winter and one hour ahead during British Summer Time. A South African team can work almost the whole UK day on normal shifts. A team in Manila or Bengaluru can cover your morning on its afternoon shift, but your evening falls in their night.

On accents, don't take anyone's word for it, ours included. Ask for recordings of real calls with UK customers, and listen to how agents handle a complaint, not a password reset.

Sending UK customer data abroad

When a team outside the UK can see your customer records, that's usually a restricted transfer. The ICO says it must be covered by adequacy regulations, an appropriate safeguard or an exception (ICO, brief guide to international transfers).

The UK government's list of adequacy destinations includes every EU and EEA country. Outside Europe it includes Canada (partial), Japan (partial), New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States under its Data Privacy Framework, among others. South Africa, India and the Philippines aren't on it (GOV.UK, UK approach to international data transfers).

For those countries, the usual safeguard is one of the ICO's two sets of standard clauses: the International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the Addendum to the EU's clauses. The ICO says you also need a transfer risk assessment alongside them (ICO, the IDTA and the Addendum). Ask the provider to sign one before any live data moves, and keep the risk assessment on file. This is a summary, not legal advice.

Ofcom, silent calls and the TPS

Section 128 of the Communications Act 2003 lets Ofcom act against anyone who persistently misuses a phone network. Misuse here means causing someone unnecessary annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety (Communications Act 2003, s128). The maximum penalty is £2,000,000 (s130). Ofcom's statement of policy on persistent misuse sets out how it applies this to silent and abandoned calls from diallers (Ofcom, persistent misuse policy). Read the current version, and ask the provider to show you how they measure their abandoned call rate against it, per campaign.

Sales and marketing calls have a second rule. You can't make unsolicited live marketing calls to numbers on the Telephone Preference Service or the Corporate TPS unless the person has told you they don't object. A new registration can take 28 days to become active, so screen your lists against both registers within that window (ICO, live marketing calls). The rule binds whoever instigates the call, not only whoever dials it (PECR regulation 21), so a provider calling for you from abroad doesn't take it away from you.

If you're regulated by the FCA

The FCA's Consumer Duty has four outcomes, and one of them is consumer support. The rules came in on 31 July 2023 for products open to sale and on 31 July 2024 for closed products (FCA, PS22/9). If your outsourced team answers customers about a regulated product, its scripts, call recordings, complaint handling and quality scores become part of how you show you meet that outcome. Put access to all of them in the contract.

How providers price

Most quote one of three ways. Per minute means you pay for handling time only. Per hour means you pay for the time agents are logged in, including the gaps between calls. Per full-time person means you pay a monthly amount for each dedicated agent, whatever the volume.

For an onshore comparison, the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over is £12.71 an hour from April 2026 (GOV.UK, minimum wage rates). That's the agent's pay alone. A provider's hourly rate also has to cover employer costs and supervision, then the technology and the provider's margin on top. We couldn't find a published UK provider rate card we'd trust enough to quote, so get written quotes on the same assumptions. Our article on what it costs to outsource customer service goes through the cost lines in more detail.

A worked example

Say you take 4,000 inbound calls a month and each takes six minutes including wrap-up. That's 24,000 minutes, or 400 hours of handling.

On per-minute pricing you pay for those 400 hours. On per-hour pricing you pay for logged-in time. If agents spend three quarters of their logged-in time on calls (an assumption for this example), that's about 533 hours. On per-person pricing, 533 logged-in hours at about 160 hours a person each month is three and a third people. Allow for leave and your Monday morning peak, and that's four.

None of these is cheaper by default. Per minute suits uneven, low volume. Per person suits steady volume and gives you the same agents every day, who learn your products. Ask each provider to price the same example so you compare like with like.

A short checklist

• Count contacts a month by channel, and plot a normal week by hour. Nobody can size a team without this.
• Decide your hours in UK time, weekends included, and what happens out of hours.
• List what stays with your own people: complaints above a set value, vulnerable customers, anything with legal consequences.
• Ask where the agents sit, who employs them, and what security certification covers that site.
• If the team is outside the UK and EU, ask which transfer safeguard the provider will sign and who completes the transfer risk assessment.
• For outbound, ask how they screen against the TPS, how they measure abandoned calls, and what number shows on the customer's phone.
• Agree the pricing model and what counts as a billable minute or hour, in writing.
• Ask for a pilot on one queue with a clear pass mark before you move anything else.

Contract terms and the first 90 days are in our buyer's checklist for outsourcing customer service, and how to outsource without losing quality covers the quality checks. Both were written for Australian buyers. The steps carry over to the UK.

Questions

Is nearshore always safer than offshore for data?

It's simpler on paper, because EU countries have UK adequacy. It isn't automatically safer in practice. Access controls, named logins and the provider's security certification matter more than the flag on the building.

Can an offshore team handle UK complaints?

Yes, if they have the authority to fix things and a clear route to your team for anything above it. An agent who can only say sorry and pass the call on makes a complaint worse wherever they sit.

Who is responsible if the provider breaks the calling rules?

You can be. The TPS rules cover calls made on your behalf, and Ofcom's powers under section 128 apply to any person who persistently misuses a network. Get the provider's screening and dialler settings in writing.

Next step

Our customer teams work from South Africa on ISO 27001-certified infrastructure, inside your own systems, and usually go live in about four weeks. If you're weighing that against an onshore or EU provider, book a call with me and bring your monthly volumes. I'll tell you which hours we cover well and where we'd struggle. There's more on how we work with UK businesses too.