BPO
Business process outsourcing in Portugal and the Lusophone world
Customer support, back office, finance and moderation, run in European Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese and more than thirty languages, from Lisbon, Sao Paulo or anywhere in the network.
What does outsourcing customer support in Portugal cost?
It depends on three things: where the team sits, which language and variant it speaks, and what hours it covers. An onshore operation in Portugal costs more than one in Brazil and less than hiring in-house in Lisbon, because the cost of an in-house seat is not the salary. It is the salary plus the fourteen payments, employer social security, the meal allowance, space, equipment, recruitment and attrition.
That is why the savings calculator on this site compares fully loaded cost with fully loaded cost. Setting a Portuguese gross salary against a supplier's hourly rate is the fastest way to reach a wrong conclusion, and it usually flatters the supplier. We would rather the comparison were honest, even when it narrows the gap.
For a concrete number applied to your case, the calculator at /precos/ produces a euro estimate by role, seniority and delivery model, with the breakdown visible. We do not ask for contact details to use it.
Can I outsource to Brazil while holding European customer data?
You can, with the right instruments. Brazil holds no European Commission adequacy decision, which means the transfer rests on standard contractual clauses accompanied by a transfer impact assessment. Brazil's LGPD helps, because it brings the local framework closer to the European one, but it does not substitute for an adequacy decision that does not exist.
In practice this is settled before the operation opens, not after. We define which categories of data leave the European Economic Area, which stay, and where the boundary sits. In many cases the right answer is mixed: the contact work runs in Brazil, the specially sensitive data stays in Portugal, and the system design makes the separation real rather than merely contractual.
For health data, and for some public-sector cases, the recommendation is usually the EEA-only model. It costs more, and we say so from the outset.
Why are European and Brazilian Portuguese not interchangeable?
Because the customer notices within seconds and reads it as poor service. European Portuguese keeps the formal and informal registers apart and expects measured courtesy and precision. Brazilian Portuguese has largely flattened formality into warmth and expects proximity and flexibility. An excellent Brazilian team serving a Portuguese customer sounds like people who have not understood who is on the other end.
The operational consequence is concrete: route by market from first contact, author content natively in each variant rather than converting it, write tone guides that quality assurance actually scores, staff same-variant native reviewers, and report separately. Averaging Portugal and Brazil into one number hides precisely the problem worth seeing.
This is why we keep Lisbon as the PT-PT anchor even when the volume sits in Sao Paulo. The two operations share systems and management; they do not share scripts.
How does the transition of an existing operation run?
In phases, with a pilot before the commitment. The usual path is discovery, solution design, proposal, a thirty-day pilot, transition, operation and continuous improvement. The pilot exists so that both sides find out early what does not work, at a scope where that is still cheap.
In transition, the rule we apply is to document before transferring. If a process exists only in the heads of two people on your team, the first piece of work is to write it down, and that work stays yours whatever happens to the relationship with us.
The BPO services we run
The list below is what we actually run, not a catalogue of intentions. Each service has its own page, setting out what is delivered, which delivery models make sense, and whether there is a variant decision to take.
Service index
- Customer supportContact centre operations in Portuguese, English and more than thirty languages, across voice, email, chat and social.Variant
- Technical supportLevel 1 and 2 support for software, telecoms and hardware products, with structured escalation.Variant
- Back officeAdministrative processing, document management, data entry and internal operations support.
- Finance and accountingAccounts payable and receivable, reconciliations, invoicing and close support, alongside your own accountants.
- Data processingExtraction, classification, validation and enrichment of data at volume, with measured quality control.
- Content moderationModeration of listings, reviews, profiles and user-generated content in Portuguese and other languages.Variant
- Sales and lead generationLead qualification, outbound prospecting and sales-cycle support, integrated into your CRM.Variant
- Appointment settingBooking qualified meetings for sales teams, with confirmation and no-show reduction.Variant
- Credit and collectionsAmicable collections and arrears portfolio management, respecting the applicable rules and the commercial relationship.Variant
- Healthcare administrationScheduling, provider administration and processing of non-clinical healthcare documentation.
- Multilingual supportOne operation covering Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, German and more, from Lisbon and Porto.Variant
- European Portuguese supportAn operation designed for the Portuguese customer, with the register, courtesy and precision PT-PT expects.Variant
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum size of an operation?
Three full-time people for a dedicated team. Below that, holiday and absence cover stops working and the service becomes unreliable.
For smaller volumes, the option is a shared team, where your operation takes part of the capacity of a team serving several similar clients. It is cheaper and less tailored.
How long does it take to stand up a team?
Four to eight weeks for an onshore team in Portugal, and three to six for Brazil or the global hubs, counted from a signed proposal.
Does data leave the European Economic Area?
Only if you choose a model that requires it. There is an EEA-only delivery option, and for health data it is usually the one we recommend.
Do you hire native speakers or fluent ones?
Native speakers in the highest-volume languages and in any that require a specific variant. High-level fluent speakers in low-volume languages, and we say which is which before signing.
How is quality measured?
By sampled scoring against a rubric agreed with you, with reviewers native to the variant assessed, and results reported by variant and by market.
What happens if I want to end the contract?
There is an agreed notice period and a written reversal plan, which includes returning the process documentation and supporting the handover to another team.
The process documentation is yours from day one. A supplier who makes leaving difficult is telling you something about the confidence they have in their own service.
Do you work with Portuguese public administrations?
Yes. The framework is the Código dos Contratos Públicos and procurement runs through the usual platforms. The public administration page sets out the process and the points to watch.
Who signs the contract?
Corpshore Solutions Corporation, based in Toronto. Corpshore Portugal is a division, not a Portuguese company, and we do not bury that in the small print.
Are you ISO 27001 certified?
We do not claim that certification. We work in compliance with the GDPR and Lei n.º 58/2019, aligned with SOC 2 at group level, and data governance documentation is available on request.
Does the complaints book apply to an outsourced service?
The electronic complaints book obligation falls on the company providing the service to the consumer in Portugal, which is you. The outsourced team has to know how to route a complaint correctly.
Can you operate outside Portuguese business hours?
Yes. Continuous cover is built across several hubs in different time zones rather than night shifts in one place, because the second option degrades quality within months.
How does a no-commitment conversation start?
With a twenty-minute discovery call, or with a proposal request where you set out volumes, languages and constraints. We reply within six hours.
Let us look at the numbers for your case
Tell us which processes you want to outsource, in which languages and at what volume. We come back with a euro estimate and an operating design, with no commitment.
We reply within 6 hours on working days. If you would rather write: info@corpshore.solutions