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What makes Bulgaria an attractive outsourcing destination

Posted July 9, 2015 - Updated April 8, 2019
Sofia at night

For many years now, companies have been torn between the high costs of outsourcing customer service to onshore locations and the low service levels sometimes prevalent in offshore destinations.

Yet this is changing rapidly, with many brands recognizing Eastern Europe as a viable location for outsourcing customer service. According to AT Kearney’s Global Services Location Index, Bulgaria is ranked in the top 20 countries worldwide for outsourcing, and is a top three choice in Europe.

With its combination of multilingual skills, a highly educated and motivated workforce and competitive pricing, Bulgaria is an increasingly attractive choice for outsourcing customer service and other functions.

Why Bulgaria?

AT Kearney describes Bulgaria as a home of advanced IT centers servicing both multinationals and local companies. True, Bulgaria offers everything that a company would look for in an outsourcing destination, especially for the IT sector – a large talent pool of professionals, a strong educational system that excels in engineering, and a strong presence of multinational companies in the region.

Bulgaria also offers:

  • Maturity and robust growth of the BPO and contact center sector, with over 67,000 people employed in the industry, forming 2.4% of the labor market in Bulgaria
  • Excellent language skills in all major European languages. More than 66%
  • of the students in Bulgaria study English or German. Additionally, about 60% of the working population speaks at least one foreign language.
  • A highly-qualified, motivated and flexible labor force – 51% of the working population in Sofia has a university degree
  • A large talent pool with strong aptitude for IT and traditions in the engineering industry
  • Cultural proximity to the Western business world in terms of business attitude and ethics
  • Geographical proximity to Central and Western Europe, and EU member states

How Business Process Improvement changes the outsourcing landscape

In the past, outsourced contact center vendors were simply evaluated on their low-cost ability to provide basic customer service, but today they are evaluated on their strategic ability to deliver on the customer journey, while adding value to the overall customer experience.

Today, contact center providers must fully understand the processes of their clients and be able to assess and improve them. This is referred to as Business Process Improvement (BPI). This trend will continue to shape the industry and be a driving factor in the evolution of BPO and call center services in the years to come. BPI eliminates any unnecessary processes and procedures, which not only reduces costs, but also allows a business to become faster and much more responsive to its customers, while driving revenue growth.

As more BPOs develop these kinds of high-value services, Bulgaria’s reputation as a preferred outsourcing partner will only continue to grow.

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