In-house or outsourced in South Africa: call centre, sales and back office compared

Outsourcing tends to fit work that is well defined, measurable and uneven in volume: first-line customer support, overflow and after-hours calls, outbound prospecting, data capture and document handling. Keeping work in-house tends to fit work that changes week to week, needs deep product judgement, or sits at the centre of how you win and keep customers. You can also split the work between the two; the usual splits are set out below.

The comparison that decides it is the full cost of one handled contact, one held meeting or one processed document, each way. A monthly salary set against a monthly fee leaves out most of the costs on both sides.

Pay is the largest line. Everything around it is easy to underestimate.

• Pay. Self-reported salary data puts average base pay at R93,781 a year for a call centre agent, R101,242 a year for a data capturer and R197,420 a year, from 29 salary profiles, for a sales development representative. The spread around each average is wide, so check it against your province and the roles you would actually hire.
• The legal floor. For most workers, the national minimum wage is R30.23 for each ordinary hour worked from 1 March 2026; workers on the Expanded Public Works Programme have a lower rate.
• UIF. The employer pays 1% of remuneration and deducts the same from the employee, on earnings up to R17,712 a month.
• Skills Development Levy. 1% of the total paid in salaries, once total salaries are expected to pass R500,000 over the next 12 months.
• Injury on duty cover. The annual assessment to the Compensation Fund.
• Leave cover. Someone has to answer the phones while an agent is on annual, sick or family responsibility leave, so a team needs more people on the payroll than seats filled at any hour.
• Recruitment. Advertising, screening and interview time, or an agency fee when you use one.
• Ramp-up. New people are paid in full before they are fully productive. A survey of 351 business-to-business companies, most of them outside South Africa found sales development reps took 3.0 months on average to ramp.
• Attrition. The same survey put median annual turnover of those reps at 40% in 2024. Each departure repeats the recruitment and ramp-up costs. We found no primary source for South African contact centre attrition, and published figures change with how a leaver is counted, so measure your own.
• Management. Team leaders, quality assessment, workforce planning and reporting. A team too small to keep a team leader busy still needs one.
• Systems and premises. Contact centre software, a CRM, headsets, call recording and its storage, desks, and backup power and connectivity.
• Idle time. You pay for every seat whether or not the phones ring.

Contracts charge by the dedicated agent (suited to steady volume), by the agent hour (seasonal or campaign work), by the handled transaction or minute of talk time, by outcome (each sale, held meeting or rand collected), or as a base fee plus a variable part. Whichever model you choose, the contract's definition of a handled transaction or a result carries the weight. Ask which costs sit inside the fee and which are charged on top: setup, training, ramp-up, quality assessment, reporting, technology licences, after-hours and public holiday cover, and script changes.

Two kinds of work can be outsourced on their own.

• Back office and data capture: capturing forms, indexing documents, checking records and keeping them up to date. The work is easy to measure, so write turnaround time, accuracy on a sample you check yourself and the backlog into the contract, and decide who handles an item that does not fit the rules.
• Virtual reception and call answering: a team that answers your line in your business's name, takes messages, books appointments and puts urgent calls through. Agree the script, the hours covered, how messages reach you and what counts as urgent. It suits a business whose phones ring unevenly or after hours, without the volume to keep a receptionist busy.

In-house, they are the costs listed above that never appear on a payslip.

Outsourced, they sit in the contract and in your own diary:

• Minimum volumes or minimum team sizes, with charges for shortfall or overage.
• Lock-in periods, notice terms and what it costs to leave.
• Your own people's time to brief the team, review calls, approve scripts and run the relationship.
• Data protection duties that stay with you. Under section 21 of the Protection of Personal Information Act, a business must ensure, "in terms of a written contract", that a provider processing personal information on its behalf keeps proper security measures. The provider must tell you immediately when it has reason to believe personal information was accessed by someone unauthorised.

Outsourcing tends to fit when:

• Volume swings with seasons, campaigns or product launches.
• You need extended hours or weekend cover without building a shift roster.
• You need to start quickly, without first recruiting and training a team.
• The work is defined well enough to write down and measure.
• Running a contact centre is not where your management attention should go.

Keeping it in-house tends to fit when:

• The work needs judgement that depends on how your product or policy changes week to week.
• The conversations are few but valuable, such as key accounts or complex claims.
• Volume is steady and large enough to keep a team and its team leader busy.
• The conversation is part of how you win customers, and you want direct control of every word.

A hybrid splits the work by type or by time of day. The common splits:

• First-line queries outsourced; complex and escalated cases kept in-house.
• Business-hours calls in-house; overflow and after-hours calls with a provider.
• Outbound prospecting outsourced; closing kept with your own sales team.
• Back-office capture and document handling outsourced; decisions on the captured data kept in-house.

A hybrid works when one person owns the handover rules: which cases move, how, with what notes, and how both sides report against the same measures. Without that owner, customers repeat themselves and each side blames the other.

If you outsource work your own staff already do, the people may move with it. The Labour Relations Act deals with this in two places, and which one applies depends on how the arrangement is set up.

When a provider takes over a service as a going concern, section 197 applies. A "business" there includes "the whole or a part of any business, trade, undertaking or service". When it passes from one employer to another as a going concern, the new employer is "automatically substituted in the place of the old employer" in all contracts of employment that existed immediately before. Rights and obligations carry over, and continuity of employment is not broken. The new employer must keep transferred staff on terms "on the whole not less favourable" than before. Those effects change only by a written agreement with the employees' representatives. The Act does not define a going concern, so whether a particular outsourcing deal is one turns on its facts.

What follows from a transfer:

• A dismissal because of the transfer, or for a reason related to it, is automatically unfair under section 187(1)(g).
• The old and new employer must agree in writing a value for the leave pay, severance pay and other accrued payments of the people who move, and who pays them.
• For 12 months after the transfer, the old employer stays jointly and severally liable for those payments if a transferred employee is retrenched, unless it can show it complied with the section. Both employers are jointly and severally liable for claims about terms of employment that arose before the transfer.

When a labour broker places people in your own team, section 198A applies instead, to employees who earn below the earnings threshold the Minister sets under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act. The current threshold took effect on 1 May 2026. A person placed with you for more than three months, other than as a stand-in for one of your employees who is temporarily absent, is "deemed to be the employee of that client", unless a bargaining council collective agreement, a sectoral determination or a notice from the Minister classes the work as a temporary service. You must then treat them on the whole not less favourably than your own employees doing the same or similar work, unless there is a justifiable reason for the difference.

The practical question in both cases is who directs the work and who carries the employer's risk. A provider that delivers a defined service with its own people, under its own management, is a different arrangement from a supplier of people who work under your supervision. Write that into the contract, and agree with the provider before you sign what happens to your current staff.

This is not legal advice. Checked against the text of the Labour Relations Act, as amended in 2002 and 2014, the Minister's earnings threshold notice under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, and the Protection of Personal Information Act on 9 October 2026. Have an attorney check your own arrangement.

1. Write down the work: volumes by hour and by month, contact types, handling times, the systems agents need and the hours you cover.
2. Cost the in-house team in full: pay, statutory contributions, leave cover, recruitment, ramp-up, attrition, management, systems and premises.
3. Ask each provider to quote against the same written workload, with every add-on named.
4. Compare the cost of each handled contact, held meeting or processed document, never a salary against a fee.
5. Add your own management time to the outsourced side.
6. If staff would move, get legal advice before you announce anything to them.

IAMX delivers business process outsourcing through BPO partners: customer support, back-office work, collections and recoveries, and managed teams that scale with you. Tell us your X. We bring in the right specialists from a vetted network, and one accountable lead owns the outcome.

• Is outsourcing cheaper than running our own call centre?

  Not by any fixed margin: we found no independent South African figure for the saving. Cost the same written workload both ways and compare what one handled contact costs.

• What does it cost to employ a call centre agent in South Africa?

  Self-reported base pay averages R93,781 a year, and most workers may not be paid less than R30.23 an hour for ordinary hours. On top come the employer's UIF contribution, the Skills Development Levy once payroll passes its threshold, injury on duty cover, leave cover, recruitment, training, team leaders, systems and premises.

• Do our staff move to the provider automatically?

  They can. If the provider takes over the service as a going concern, section 197 of the Labour Relations Act puts the provider in your place as employer, on terms on the whole not less favourable, unless a written agreement with the employees' representatives says otherwise. Have an attorney check your arrangement before you sign.

• Can we outsource only part of the work?

  Yes, using one of the hybrid splits above. Agree the handover rules and the shared measures before the provider goes live.

• How long before an outsourced team performs?

  We found no public South African figure, so ask each provider for its ramp plan and write it into the contract: what the team is measured on in its first weeks, and when full targets apply. For sales development reps, one survey, mostly of companies outside South Africa, found ramp averaged 3.0 months.

• Payscale: Self-reported salary data puts the average base pay of a call centre agent in South Africa at R93,781 a year, from 281 salary profiles, last updated 8 June 2026. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Payscale: Self-reported salary data puts the average base pay of a data capturer in South Africa at R101,242 a year, from 191 salary profiles, last updated 1 March 2026. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Payscale: Self-reported salary data puts the average base pay of a sales development representative in South Africa at R197,420 a year, from 29 salary profiles, last updated 9 March 2026. Checked 9 October 2026.
• SAnews, Government Communication and Information System: The national minimum wage rose from R28.79 to R30.23 for each ordinary hour worked, binding from 1 March 2026; Expanded Public Works Programme workers, under a special dispensation, have a lower rate of R16.62. Checked 9 October 2026.
• South African Revenue Service: The employee contributes 1% of remuneration to the UIF and the employer another 1%, a total of 2% that the employer pays over. Checked 9 October 2026.
• South African Revenue Service: UIF contributions are calculated on earnings up to R17,712 a month (with effect from 1 June 2021), so the most deducted from each side is R177.12 a month. Checked 9 October 2026.
• South African Revenue Service: The Skills Development Levy is 1% of the total paid in salaries, and an employer is liable once total salaries are expected to exceed R500,000 over the next 12 months. Checked 9 October 2026.
• The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions and Metrics 2025: A survey of 351 business-to-business companies, most of them outside South Africa, published 6 February 2025, found an average sales development rep ramp time of 3.0 months and median annual SDR attrition of 40% in 2024. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Government Gazette No. 37067, Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013: Protection of Personal Information Act section 21: a responsible party must, in terms of a written contract, ensure that an operator processing personal information for it maintains the security measures in section 19, and the operator must notify it immediately of suspected unauthorised access. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Department of Employment and Labour, Labour Relations Amendment Act, 2002: Labour Relations Act section 197, as substituted in 2002: when a business, including part of a service, transfers as a going concern, the new employer is automatically substituted for the old in all existing contracts of employment, on terms on the whole not less favourable, unless a written agreement under section 197(6) says otherwise. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Government Gazette No. 37921, Labour Relations Amendment Act, 2014: Labour Relations Act section 198A, inserted in 2014: an employee below the earnings threshold who is placed by a temporary employment service with a client for more than three months, other than as a substitute for an absent employee or in work that a bargaining council collective agreement, a sectoral determination or a ministerial notice determines to be a temporary service, is deemed the client's employee and must be treated on the whole not less favourably than the client's employees doing the same or similar work. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Department of Employment and Labour: The Department of Employment and Labour announced a new earnings threshold under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, in effect from 1 May 2026. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Government Gazette No. 37921, Labour Relations Amendment Act, 2014: The legal points in this guide were checked against the gazetted text of the Labour Relations Amendment Acts of 2002 and 2014 and the Protection of Personal Information Act on 9 October 2026. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Department of Employment and Labour, Labour Relations Amendment Act, 2002: Labour Relations Act section 187(1)(g), added in 2002: a dismissal is automatically unfair if the reason is a transfer, or a reason related to a transfer, contemplated in section 197 or 197A. Checked 9 October 2026.
• Department of Employment and Labour, Labour Relations Amendment Act, 2002: Labour Relations Act section 197(7) to (9): the old and new employer agree in writing a value for accrued leave pay, severance pay and other payments; for 12 months after the transfer the old employer is jointly and severally liable for those payments on a retrenchment unless it shows it complied; both are jointly and severally liable for claims that arose before the transfer. Checked 9 October 2026.