On the UK side was Steve Hurst, a call center journalist, and Peter Ryan of Datamonitor (actually a Canadian, but from the US point of view, that's British enough for us). Peter also presented a fantastically fact-filled report later on at the conference - more about that presently.

So what's to be said about the divergence of views? I think we found that the viewpoints of the panel were much more in harmony than was expected. Maybe that's because we are all looking at things from within the call center industry; there was a sense - and I hope I don't misrepresent the views of the other fellows - that a flattening of the competitive landscape between regions is inevitable and ongoing. That the perception of offshoring as an economic dilemma for the US and UK is an erroneous one. While the public outcry against calls being answered in India was very loud as recently as two years ago, it seems to have receeded. In the US, the public is more annoyed at how well their calls are handled than they are about where the call goes - though the combination of a bad quality interaction and a heavy accent can fan nativist sentiment.

I've been trying to get to the heart of what really bothers American consumers about offshoring. Is it offshoring per se that they object to? I don't think so. I don't think the average American cares where the call goes. I think the issues involved in offshoring are much more nuanced and difficult to parse for Americans than they are for outsiders. And I think that leads to misunderstanding of the intentions and motivations of American call center operators - and American consumers.

For example, a couple of years ago, we at Call Center Magazine did a survey of how satisfied Americans were generally in their interactions with call centers. Only 22% of callers rated their interactions as satisfying or very satisfying. But when you ask the same question of call center managers, how satisfied are their callers, 65% say they are satisfied or highly satisfied. Quite a dramatic disconnect. To me, it revealed that there are a great many unknowns operating in the call center environment even before we start to analyze where the call is handled. We as an American industry are not clear on the way our own domestic constituency is operating vis a vis our customer experience. How are we to judge whether there's a quality or perceptual from offshore activity if we don't know our own customers, and our own minds?

Three quarters of the business-to-business callers we surveyed said that they it was somewhat or very risky to exchange data with an offshore center.

But then when we asked the offshore centers themselves what specific steps they've taken to secure customer and company data, you find that they have better security measures in place than the typical American center. In other words, despite what an American business caller thinks is the case, they appear to be more likely to suffer a data breach calling a center in Texas than they are in Manila.

I have to conclude that the disconnect comes from a lack of information about the real facts of doing business with call centers, near and far. Americans are self-conditioned to look inward. We don't, as a rule, learn foreign languages or travel abroad. Culturally, we are an island unto ourselves, and perhaps that is reflected in our view of offshoring, just as it is in our national debates about immigration policy. They are both informed by the same set of criteria: a very local or individual view of the economic good (or bad). For most Americans a negative view of offshore call handling is less a measure of anger at job loss than it is anger at the company for sticking them with sub-standard service because they've chosen the lowest cost provider.

Which is perhaps one of the reasons that 25% of all offshoring endeavors are ultimately repatriated back to the States. (I believe it was Keith Fiveson who said that during our panel. If I'm wrong, or misquoting him, my apologies.) What accounts for the pullback is that American companies often jump too quickly into offshore arrangments that are all about cost, and not about quality or about understanding the impact on the customer experience. they essentially offshore their problems, and then blame the location or their partner providers for not solving them.

In the US, I think the perception of the failure of offshore interactions has less to do with a real gap in the quality of the interactions than with with companies failing to precisely calibrate the needs of their customers with the wide variety of ways to deliver service and conduct the interaction.

And I think that the American consumer is less concerned with the economic impact of call center jobs migrating offshore than they are with losing higher paying jobs in the blue collar or white collar sectors. I think a strong argument can be made that in US call centers we're losing more jobs to automation than we are to offshoring.

But that aside, I think what I learn from this panel (and from my experience listening to offshore providers talk about their capabilities and their clients) is that in most places you can upgrade the infrastructure very quickly to American levels. The value proposition for any locate that wants to attract US or European call center investment is in the training and skill levels of the potential agent population.

I.e., it's not about being the lowest cost provider; it's about marrying low cost with security and quality.