That's the underlying message of some of the latest research on selecting sites for call centers – onshore or offshore.

In any given region, you'll find people who work for more or less money than people in another place. But site selection isn't simply about comparing hourly wages.

Wages represent tradeoffs. In a wealthy country that offers, say, consistently top-notch public education and universal health care, you may pay more up front in hourly wages. Yet as a percentage of these wages, you might pay less for some types of benefits, like health care, if they're already available to residents in or citizens of that country.

Here's something else to keep in mind. If you're in an area where the labor market is saturated, you increase your risk of turnover among agents. A call center that retains more than half its workforce throughout the course of a year is more productive than one that doesn't.

Other factors in site selection that have become painfully apparent during the last 13 months include the vulnerability of a region to natural disasters, as well as a region's political stability.

The upshot: As you think about prospective locations for your call center, don't limit your consideration only to agents' wages; find out about the environment in which agents work and live.

Stay tuned – and join us – for further discussions about how to evaluate agents not in terms of what they earn, but rather what they do.