In December of 2011, the US Call Center and Consumer Protection Act was introduced in Congress. The bill would refuse federal grant or loan programs to companies with offshore call center operations. It would also require offshore call center employees to reveal their location to U.S. consumers and give them the option to be transferred to a domestic call center.

The reasons why a company would offshore its call center are manifold. Many companies had no other choice. Companies traditionally needed a location with a low-cost labour force that could support high agent attrition rates. The need to house expensive hardware often made it optimal to create call centers away from the company headquarters.

In today’s fast-paced business world, however, the need for a traditional call center has evolved as companies require a more sophisticated solution, which includes phone email and chat. Additionally, the technological constraints that required a centralized call center no longer exist. In fact, the notion of a “center” and a confined building are outdated.

The ability to host services in the cloud shifts the call center paradigm dramatically. Virtual technology gives businesses of all sizes access the resources that previously were only affordable to large businesses. Cloud based autodialer software makes it such that agents can be located anywhere—remote offices or working from their home.

Virtual call centers can be deployed with minimal upfront costs and be deployed within days. In fact, hosting your call center auto dialer in the cloud allows you to eliminate investment in call center hardware and software entirely. You also have the flexibility of integrating all methods of your customer contacts including voice, email and chat, into one easy to use platform.

And best of all, a power dialer campaign can include all of the bells and whistles you'd expect — skills-based routing, call center monitoring and call center recording is a breeze, and interactive voice response is right at your fingertips. Additionally, integrating your virtual call center with your CRM provides your agents a 360-degree view of your customers in real-time. Because this is a virtual call center, you have on-demand provisioning to facilitate rapid configuration changes as your business evolves.