Ultimate Nearshoring 5-Min from US Border – with Joe Andere of CallZent

In this episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast, Derek Gallimore is joined by Joe Andere, the CEO of CallZent.

They discussed Joe’s 20-year call center experience, nearshoring to Mexico, average salaries, and outsourcing’s impact on Tijuana’s economy.

About Joe Andere and CallZent

CallZent is a multichannel call center based in Tijuana, Mexico. While the firm has only been established 18 months ago, its CEO Joe Andere has over 20 years of outsourcing experience under his belt.

Joe recalled, “I’ve been in the call center industry for 20 years. I started off as an agent doing appointment setting for a vacuum cleaner company. I just got sucked into the call center world, moved my way up, and became CEO of a call center.”

CallZent specializes in nearshore outsourcing. The CEO said, “[We offer] anything from tech support or customer service. Obviously, customer service is really popular.

Collections, lead generation, sales – we have experience in all that. But if I were to select a niche, it would be customer service. I think that’s where we excel.

We have experience in everything, but customer service is our niche.”

Building his own outsourcing company

Joe was the CEO of a call center before he decided to build his own outsourcing company. He shared his philosophy when he was just getting started with CallZent.

“My philosophy has always been to create extraordinary experiences for our clients. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing – if it’s customer service, collections, sales, we have the ability to change people’s lives in one interaction at a time. That has always been my philosophy and my way of thinking.

One of our values is passion. I’m a very passionate guy. I love what I do, and I feel like if you don’t do things with passion, don’t do them at all. Why are you doing things that you don’t have passion about, right? So, we try to empower our agents to wow our clients. That’s our philosophy basically.”

Further, Joe admitted that talking to potential clients at first wasn’t easy.

“Most clients are skeptical at first. [This is why] we always like to start off small.

We like to grow with our clients, and we like them to feel comfortable with the decision to (i) outsource and (ii) outsource to us. We always walk hand in hand with our clients through every single step of the process.”

He added, “The most important thing is for [clients] to feel comfortable with outsourcing – not only because of the pricing but because of the quality of the service that they’re going to receive.”

Average salary and cost of living in Tijuana

Joe mentioned that salaries in Tijuana depend on the call center campaigns. However, typical call center agents earn around $300 per week (gross salary).

As for the cost of living in Tijuana, “I would say [cost of living] is 40-50% cheaper than in the U.S. Obviously, some things like luxury items are more expensive in Mexico than they are in the U.S.

But just basic food and cost of living is much cheaper in Tijuana than it is in San Diego [California, US].”

The CallZent CEO added, “San Diego is one of the more expensive cities for cost of living in the U.S. [Since we’re geographically close to the US], we’ve had clients from Los Angeles drive to Tijuana and visit us. [They] don’t have to take a plane.

[They] can just drive down and drive back the same day – it’s that convenient for them. They can visit their operations in Mexico and go back home on the same day.”

To learn more about CallZent, visit their website or email Joe at [email protected].