Right-Shoring Solutions for Australian Businesses

What is Right-Shoring?

Right-shoring is the practice of deliberately placing different types of customer contacts with the location — onshore, nearshore or offshore — that delivers the optimal outcome for that specific contact type, rather than applying a single location decision to all contacts. The "right" location for a contact is determined by its complexity, compliance sensitivity, language requirements, customer value and the cost implications of handling quality errors.

Right-shoring rejects the false binary of "onshore vs offshore" and instead asks: what does each contact type actually require to be handled well, and where can that requirement be met at the best cost? The answer is often different for different contact types within the same business — and sometimes within the same campaign.

How Right-Shoring Works in Practice

• Complex complaints and hardship — onshore Australia — contacts with regulatory obligations, vulnerable customers or significant legal exposure stay onshore where compliance depth, cultural knowledge and real-time supervision are strongest
• Empathy-sensitive service and retention — onshore or NZ — contacts where the quality of the human conversation directly determines customer lifetime value decisions; language and cultural alignment justifies the cost
• Standard customer service — Philippines, SA or Fiji — routine enquiries, account management, FAQ handling and order support where the contact is scripted, the resolution is clear and cost efficiency is the primary driver
• After-hours and overflow — Philippines or SA — coverage outside Australian business hours at offshore rates, with Australian agents resuming during core hours
• Back-office processing — Philippines or India — data entry, document processing, system updates and other structured tasks where output quality can be verified digitally

Right-Shoring vs Offshoring vs Onshoring

• Pure onshoring — all contacts handled in Australia; highest quality baseline, highest cost; appropriate for regulated industries with complex compliance obligations across all contacts
• Pure offshoring — all contacts handled offshore; lowest cost, highest risk of quality compromise across all contact types; often applied without sufficient analysis of contact-type requirements
• Right-shoring — contacts mapped to locations based on their specific requirements; achieves cost efficiency on contacts where offshore is appropriate while maintaining quality where it matters most; requires more governance sophistication but delivers better outcomes than either pure approach

How to Implement Right-Shoring

• Contact type analysis — map all contact types by complexity, compliance sensitivity, language requirement, customer value and volume
• Location matching — assess which location can meet each contact type's requirements at what cost
• Provider selection — identify providers that can manage multi-location delivery, or build a managed multi-provider model
• Routing design — configure your contact routing to direct each contact type to the appropriate location automatically
• Governance framework — establish quality monitoring and reporting that covers all locations with consistent standards
• Continuous optimisation — regularly review contact type performance by location and adjust routing as data accumulates