The rules governing where US companies can run their customer service operations are about to get tighter. On March 26, 2026, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would impose new regulatory duties on providers using offshore call centers, including English proficiency standards for call center workers and measures to expand the use of domestic call centers. 

The draft rules go further: they would cap the percentage of customer service interactions handled offshore, require disclosure when calls are handled abroad, give consumers the right to transfer to US-based representatives, and restrict offshore handling of sensitive consumer data. Separately, a bill in Congress - the Keep Call Centers in America Act - would require federal contract call center work to be performed in the US and mandate transfer-to-US-agent on consumer request, though it remains in committee.

None of this is law yet — comments on the FCC proposal closed in June, and the congressional bill has not advanced — but the direction is clear enough that companies relying on fully offshore customer service are already rethinking their setup. As one industry analysis put it, the working assumption in customer experience has flipped: from offshore by default to domestic for anything sensitive or regulated, offshore or nearshore for the rest.

That shift plays directly into the model Covisian has been building for its US clients. Rather than running nearshore operations as a separate, loosely supervised extension, Covisian keeps governance anchored in the United States: a single US-based point of contact oversees both the domestic and the nearshore operation in Colombia, with both following the same management framework, quality standards and performance objectives. 

It's a structure that already resembles what regulators are pushing the industry toward — visibility, accountability and a clear line back to a US-based operator  without waiting for a final rule to force the change.

"Companies are looking for partners that can manage current operations while also helping them evolve," said Bart Miller, CEO of Covisian USA. "At Covisian, we combine operational expertise, technology and flexible delivery capabilities so clients can improve performance, integrate AI into their processes and adapt their model as business needs change."

The infrastructure behind that claim includes Covisian's Control Rooms, which give teams continuous, real-time visibility over service performance, a capability that would help clients respond quickly if new disclosure or offshore-volume rules take effect. Quality itself is tracked through the Covisian Q Model, a single framework covering operational efficiency, process compliance, commercial performance and Customer Experience, which makes it possible to compare and audit results across services and locations rather than treating each site as a black box.

The regulatory pressure adds urgency to a trend KPMG had already flagged. In its 2025 report The Future of Outsourcing: Rethink Everything, the firm found that 81% of US companies want their service providers to act as strategic collaborators, not just vendors — a bar that gets harder to clear if a provider's offshore operations become a compliance liability instead of a strength.

For now, the FCC's rules and the congressional bill remain proposals. But for companies weighing where and how to run their customer service operations, the calculus has already changed. Covisian is positioning its hybrid US-Colombia model, built over more than 35 years of Customer Experience work under the banner TECH. PEOPLE. SMILES., as the answer to a question more CFOs and compliance teams are now asking.

Ready to explore a customer service partnership built to withstand what's coming next? Contact Covisian USA.