Meta Description: Compare the top call center companies in Costa Rica for 2027: bilingual BPO providers in San Jose and Heredia serving US and Latin American clients.
Costa Rica has been a nearshore destination for customer support since the late 1990s, when the first international contact centers opened in the Central Valley. Today the industry is concentrated in San Jose, Heredia and Cartago, much of it inside free trade zone business parks, and it serves clients in the US, Canada and Latin America. The country runs on Central Standard Time all year with no daylight saving changes, so it matches US Central time in winter and US Mountain time in summer. This guide is for customer experience, operations and finance leaders comparing call center companies in Costa Rica.
Buyers usually choose Costa Rica for three reasons: a workforce with strong English, a stable democracy with clear legal protections for foreign investors, and time zone overlap with North America. The trade-off is cost. Costa Rican wages are higher than in many other nearshore markets, so the country tends to win work where language quality, regulated processes and low attrition matter more than the lowest hourly rate. Our guide to onshore, nearshore and offshore BPO explains how that trade-off compares across regions, and our pillar guide on what BPO is covers the basics.
The market is split between large multinational operators, which employ thousands of people in Heredia and San Jose, and a smaller group of locally founded firms that serve US small and mid-sized businesses or Central American companies. Going into 2027, both groups are adding AI tools such as voicebots, speech analytics and agent assist, and several local firms now sell dedicated, embedded teams rather than shared seats.
Pricing and contract structure are also shifting. More providers now quote per agent per month for dedicated teams, with separate fees for AI tools, rather than a single per-hour rate, and several local firms offer short pilots so buyers can test English quality before committing. Buyers who handle payments or health data are also asking for certifications earlier in the process, which favors providers that publish them. Keep these points in mind as you read the profiles, because the cheapest headline rate is rarely the cheapest program once supervision, quality and technology are included.
Each firm on this list was checked on its own website for its services, the Costa Rican locations it delivers from and its ownership. Costa Rica has fewer independent BPO companies than Colombia or Mexico, and we found eight we could verify and recommend, including two multinationals with a large local footprint. We would rather publish eight credible BPO companies in Costa Rica than pad the list with firms whose sites we could not confirm.
| Company | Headquarters | Best For | Core Services |
| Costa Rica’s Call Center | San Jose, Costa Rica | US small and mid-sized firms needing bilingual outbound and inbound support | Customer care, telemarketing, sales, virtual assistants, research |
| Foundever | Miami, Florida, USA | Large multilingual programs from Costa Rica | Customer care, technical support, collections, sales and retention, back office |
| Movate | Plano, Texas, USA | Technical support and multilingual CX for technology companies | Technical support, customer experience, AI-led sales and revenue services |
| Resuelva Costa Rica | San Jose, Costa Rica | Collections and credit portfolio management | Collections, credit verification, telemarketing, customer service, staffing |
| Contact Center Latam | San Jose, Costa Rica | Latin American banks, cooperatives and telecoms | Customer experience, collections, telemarketing, back office, help desk |
| SMASH | San Jose, Costa Rica | Embedded bilingual CX teams for US SaaS and consumer brands | Customer support, technical support, customer success, sales development |
| Conexus Group | San Jose, Costa Rica | Loyalty, CRM and patient programs with call center support | Call center, eCRM, loyalty programs, patient programs, analytics |
| iWantHelp | San Jose, Costa Rica | Small companies outsourcing front and back office tasks | Customer service, fraud and risk, payments, retention, translations |
Costa Rica’s Call Center was founded in San Jose in 2008 by Richard Blank, a US entrepreneur who has become one of the better-known voices of the Costa Rican call center industry through his podcast appearances. The company has spent more than 15 years supporting North American businesses with bilingual English and Spanish staff working on Central time.
Its timeline shows how the offer has grown. In 2012 it expanded its bilingual recruiting and training programs. In 2018 it strengthened omnichannel work across voice, chat, email and operational workflows. In 2022 it broadened the portfolio to cover customer care, sales, research, executive assistants, training, web and software support. Its homepage lists ten service categories, including virtual executive assistants who handle calendars, email, research and reporting for leadership teams.
The company describes a four-step onboarding process: discovery of your goals, workflows and KPIs, then building and training a dedicated team, then launch with CRM integration, quality assurance and dashboards from day one, and finally ongoing optimization with monthly business reviews. That structure is helpful for a first-time buyer who has never outsourced before.
Costa Rica’s Call Center fits US small and mid-sized companies that want a locally based partner for outbound lead generation, appointment setting, customer care or assistant work. It is a boutique rather than a high-volume operator, so ask about seat capacity, how quickly it can add agents and which certifications apply if you handle payments or health data.
Foundever, the company formed when Sitel Group acquired Sykes, has operated in Costa Rica since 1999, when Sykes opened what is widely described as the country’s first international contact center. Its Costa Rica page lists more than 3,000 associates across five locations, 28 clients and support in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. About half of its Costa Rican associates work from home.
The services delivered from Costa Rica are back-office support, customer care, collections, sales and retention, and technical support, for clients in banking and financial services, retail and e-commerce, telecoms, and travel and hospitality. Foundever reports a recent employee net promoter score of 41 for its Costa Rican workforce, which is a useful signal in a market where attrition can be a concern. Local press reported further hiring in 2024, including new roles in Cartago.
Foundever is one of two multinationals on this list. It suits enterprises that need large-scale, multilingual programs in Costa Rica, particularly where French or Portuguese coverage is needed alongside English and Spanish. As with any large operator, ask which site and team leader structure your program would use, and whether your agents would be on site or at home.
Movate, a digital technology and customer experience company, has operated in Costa Rica for more than 12 years. In August 2025 it opened a new center at the Ultrapark-LAG campus in Heredia, a free trade zone business park, covering more than 86,000 square feet with training labs and modern office space. At that time Movate employed around 1,500 people in Costa Rica, had grown its local workforce by 40% in 2024, and expected to close 2025 with about 1,800.
The Heredia center is positioned as a nearshore gateway for global enterprises. It delivers AI-driven revenue acceleration and multilingual support in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German, and focuses on agentic AI for sales, predictive analytics and customer journey work, alongside the technical support and IT services Movate is known for. Globally, Movate has more than 12,000 full-time staff in 20 locations.
Movate is the second multinational on this list. It is a strong fit for technology companies, SaaS vendors and device makers that need technically skilled agents and European language coverage from a Central time zone site. Ask for examples of technical support programs similar to yours and how AI tools are priced.
Resuelva Costa Rica is a locally headquartered contact center and outsourcing company based in Torre Mercedes on Paseo Colon in San Jose, with an operating office in Panama City. It describes more than 20 years supporting companies in Central America, and its specialty is collections and credit portfolio management.
Its service list is built around the credit cycle: administration of credit portfolios, credit analysis and verification, B2B and B2C telemarketing, multichannel customer service, virtual assistants, technical support, staffing and recruitment, and a geospatial intelligence service that uses territorial data analysis for decision-making. Resuelva holds ISO 9001:2015 for quality management and ISO 27001:2022 for information security, both listed on its homepage.
Resuelva suits banks, financial cooperatives, retailers that extend credit and other lenders in Costa Rica and Central America that need a certified local partner for collections and customer service. Its marketing is aimed at regional rather than US clients, so US buyers should check English capacity and US compliance experience, such as familiarity with FDCPA rules for collections.
Contact Center Latam is a business process outsourcing company headquartered in San Jose, Costa Rica, with a presence in five Latin American countries and more than ten years of experience. It describes itself as an operational transformation company rather than a call center, built around an end-to-end ownership model where it takes joint responsibility for client KPIs.
Its offer covers 16 capabilities, including customer experience, telemarketing, lead qualification using BANT, collections, back office, business intelligence, workforce management, quality assurance, help desk and logistics coordination. On the technology side it uses voicebots, speech analytics and predictive models, and offers real-time executive dashboards through what it calls a control tower for the region. It says it operates under PCI-DSS standards and Latin American data protection rules.
The client logos on its site are mostly regional: Coopecaja and Coopeande (financial cooperatives), Banco Promerica, Instacredit, KrediYA, Monge (retail), Tigo and Metrocom (telecom) and Papa John’s. It reports a 98% contract renewal rate and an average CSAT of 94%, both company-reported.
Contact Center Latam fits Latin American banks, fintechs, cooperatives and telecoms that want a Costa Rican partner with strong analytics. US buyers looking for English-language programs should confirm bilingual capacity and US references.
SMASH builds nearshore teams that sit inside a client’s own organization rather than in a shared call center queue. Its delivery centers are in Sabana in San Jose, Medellin and Bogota in Colombia, and Karachi in Pakistan, with office hubs plus home-office flexibility. The company explicitly says it is not a traditional BPO: it does not run shared agent pools or charge per interaction, and it prices per agent per month.
Its customer experience practice staffs tier 1 and tier 2 support agents, trust and safety reviewers, knowledge-base writers, sales development reps, account management coordinators, onboarding and customer success staff, and L1 and L2 technical support including API and integration support. Agents work in the client’s helpdesk, CRM and Slack, attend the client’s standups and cover voice, chat, email and tickets. SMASH also runs engineering and business support practices, and says clients typically grow from one embedded hire to about eight within twelve months.
A case study on its site describes a US consumer SaaS company that replaced a rotating BPO contract with a dedicated SMASH pod: CSAT rose nine points in three months and first-response time halved, and the team grew to twenty agents within a year. The company says it is preparing named case studies.
SMASH suits US SaaS and direct-to-consumer brands that want bilingual agents embedded in their own tools and culture. It is less suited to high-volume, SLA-driven queues where a managed operation is the better model.
Conexus Group, which also trades as LMT Conexus Group, is based in the Oficentro Condal building in San Pedro de Montes de Oca, San Jose, and lists a customer service contact for Colombia as well. It has more than 14 years of experience building relationship marketing, strategic CRM and customer contact solutions.
Its call center is one part of a wider offer. The omnichannel contact center handles phone, WhatsApp, social media, chat and chatbot interactions, and can install local phone numbers in any country and answer them centrally from Costa Rica over VoIP. Around that it sells an eCRM platform, relationship marketing strategy, loyalty program design and management, digital services such as email and SMS campaigns, a data analytics team that builds dashboards, and proximity marketing using beacons.
A distinctive line is patient programs. Conexus works with pharmaceutical laboratories to run programs that educate patients about their disease and treatment and support adherence, which combines call center work with regulated health communication.
Conexus Group fits consumer brands that want loyalty and CRM expertise together with contact center support, and pharmaceutical companies looking for a patient support partner in Central America. It is a smaller operator, so confirm seat capacity and English-language coverage for US programs.
iWantHelp is a business process outsourcing company based in Oficentro Sabana, Tower 6, in Sabana Sur, San Jose. It focuses on small and mid-sized companies that want to hand off non-core functions, and answers enquiries seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Its services span customer contact and call center work, VIP customer management, telemarketing and customer retention, plus back office services such as human resources, accounting, online payments and finance. It also offers fraud and risk management for companies that collect payments or customer data online, payment solutions, translations, market research and virtual office services for businesses starting up or expanding into new locations.
That combination of payments, fraud screening and VIP customer handling suggests a client base among online businesses that take payments from international customers. The site does not list certifications, client names or headcount, and its content is fairly general, so treat iWantHelp as a smaller boutique option.
iWantHelp fits small online businesses and startups that want one Costa Rican partner for customer service, payment support and administrative tasks. Ask for client references, security certifications and the size of the team before signing.
Foundever and Movate run thousands of seats with formal workforce management, multilingual coverage and global security programs. Local firms such as Costa Rica’s Call Center, Resuelva and Conexus Group offer closer senior attention and more flexibility but less capacity. If you need hundreds of agents or several languages, start with the large operators. If you need a team of five to fifty and want direct access to the owners, a boutique is often a better fit. Our list of call center companies covers global alternatives if you are comparing Costa Rica with other regions.
A managed program means the provider owns hiring, supervision, quality and SLAs. An embedded model, as SMASH offers, places named agents inside your tools who take direction from your team. Managed programs suit high-volume queues. Embedded teams suit SaaS and product-heavy support where deep product knowledge matters. Decide which you want before you collect quotes, because pricing models differ.
Costa Rica’s reputation rests on English quality, but levels still vary between employers. Large operators recruit at job fairs such as the multilingual fairs run by CINDE, the national investment promotion agency, and typically require B2 English or higher for US-facing roles. Ask for test results for your proposed agents, listen to call recordings from similar programs and run a paid pilot.
Many multinational call centers in Costa Rica operate under the free trade zone regime, which offers tax incentives to export-oriented companies in approved business parks such as those in Heredia. This mainly affects the provider’s costs, but it can show up in pricing and in the facilities you visit. Local firms in San Jose office buildings may operate outside the regime. Ask each provider about its status and whether it affects contract terms.
Ask for PCI DSS if agents handle card payments, a HIPAA-compliant process for US patient data, and ISO 27001 or SOC 2 for general security. Costa Rica’s personal data protection law (Law 8968) also applies to data processed in the country. Resuelva, for example, lists ISO 27001:2022 on its homepage, while some smaller firms do not publish certifications at all, which is worth probing. For a structured comparison, use our BPO RFP checklist and see our guide to call center outsourcing cost to benchmark quotes.
Costa Rica is not the cheapest nearshore call center location, but it is one of the most dependable for English quality, political stability and North American time zones. Foundever and Movate offer scale and multilingual coverage from Heredia and San Jose. Costa Rica’s Call Center, SMASH and iWantHelp serve US small and mid-sized companies, and Resuelva, Contact Center Latam and Conexus Group are strong for Latin American clients and collections, CRM and loyalty work.
Whichever provider you choose, plan the first ninety days carefully. Agree on the KPIs that matter most (first contact resolution, CSAT, average handle time or collections rate), set a calibration schedule for quality scoring, and ask for weekly reporting during ramp-up. Costa Rican teams tend to stay longer than teams in many offshore markets, so the time you invest in training and product knowledge early on usually pays back over the life of the contract.
Shortlist two or three of these call center companies in Costa Rica, test English with a pilot and compare fully loaded rates. If cost is the deciding factor, compare these options with our lists of BPO companies in Colombia and BPO companies in Mexico, which often come in lower per hour.