Hiring BPO and call-centre staff in Vietnam

You can staff a BPO operation or a customer-contact centre in Vietnam without incorporating your own company. An employer of record employs the agents, team leaders and quality-assurance staff through a Vietnam-registered entity that signs the labour contracts, runs payroll and statutory insurance and withholds personal income tax, while you direct the work and the queues. An employer of record in Vietnam is the fastest way to open a delivery line here before you decide whether a permanent entity is worth it.

Two things make contact-centre hiring different from a typical office role, and they are the substance of this page. First, “telemarketing and customer care” is one of the 20 occupations Vietnam explicitly permits for licensed labour dispatch, so the sub-leasing route is clearly lawful here as well as the ordinary direct-employment route.4 Second, a 24/7 roster that follows the US or European day triggers statutory night and overtime premiums that a nine-to-five team never meets.

Why do companies run BPO and customer experience in Vietnam?

Companies place business-process outsourcing and customer-experience (CX) work in Vietnam for a young, English-capable workforce, a cost base well below the US and Western Europe, and a UTC+7 time zone that covers an Asian day and overlaps part of Europe’s. The market is growing quickly, but it is measured in several different ways, so treat any single headline number with care.

One widely cited estimate (VOS Advisory, citing Statista) put Vietnam’s overall BPO market at about US$0.78 billion in 2024, rising toward US$1.21 billion by 2029; Statista’s own panel is lower, near US$0.64 billion in 2025 growing at roughly 8% a year.1 Within that, the customer-experience and contact-centre slice is smaller — one research house (Ken Research) values the Vietnam CX BPO market at roughly US$0.55 billion in 2024.2 Headline “about 30% a year” growth claims circulate, but they describe specific IT-enabled or CX niches rather than the whole market, which analysts put far lower; we cite all of these as dated third-party estimates, not our own figures.1

On cost, advisory sources describe Vietnamese labour as a large saving on comparable US or Western-European pay — one BPO advisory frames it as three skilled specialists for the price of one generalist in Europe or North America, and published estimates of the saving cluster around 50% to 70% depending on the role and the source.1 That is a directional market observation rather than a precise statistic, and the real all-in employer cost still includes the roughly 23.5% statutory on-costs set out below.56

Is customer-care outsourcing legal in Vietnam?

Yes. Vietnam has no dedicated “employer of record” statute, so an EOR works one of two lawful ways, and both are open to a contact centre. The common route is direct employment: a licensed Vietnam-registered company employs the agent on an ordinary labour contract and invoices you under a business-to-business service agreement. Because it is ordinary employment, it is not bound by the sub-leasing time limit.3 How that structure is lawful is explained on whether an EOR is legal in Vietnam.

The second route is licensed labour sub-leasing (labour dispatch), and this is where contact centres are unusual: “telemarketing and customer care” appears on the closed list of 20 occupations that Vietnam permits for dispatch (Decree 145/2020, Appendix II), so the dispatch route is clearly lawful for this sector rather than being a grey area.4 The trade-off is a hard limit: a dispatched worker can be placed with the same client for a maximum of 12 months (Labour Code 2019, Article 53), and the dispatch provider must hold a licence backed by a refundable VND 2 billion bank deposit and an experienced legal representative.34 The mechanics of the dispatch route and its licence are covered on labour outsourcing and dispatch in Vietnam.

For a standing contact centre you expect to run for years, the direct-employment route usually fits better because it carries no 12-month ceiling; dispatch suits a short, defined surge. Either way, the arrangement must name a Vietnam-registered legal employer — the single most important thing to pin down with any provider, as the selection method on EOR versus a staffing agency in Vietnam sets out.

What does a 24/7 contact centre cost in night and overtime premiums?

A contact centre that answers the US or European day runs shifts into Vietnam’s night, and that is where the labour-cost advantage meets a statutory cost stack. The starting point is the same as any employer: on top of gross salary, the Vietnamese employer pays about 23.5% in statutory contributions (17.5% social insurance, 3% health insurance, 1% unemployment insurance and a 2% trade-union fee), while the employee bears 10.5% — rates as of October 2026.568 The full breakdown is on Vietnam payroll and employer costs.

On top of that, night and overtime work carry premiums set by the Labour Code. Night work — defined as 10pm to 6am — is paid at least 30% above the normal day wage, with a further 20% uplift where overtime is worked at night, stacked on the overtime rate itself.3 Overtime is paid at a minimum of 150% of the normal hourly wage on a working day, 200% on a weekly rest day and 300% on a public holiday.3 Those uplifts are the real cost driver of a 24/7 roster, not the service fee.

There is also a ceiling on how much overtime you can roster. Overtime needs the employee’s agreement and is capped at 40 hours a month and 200 hours a year, rising to 300 hours a year only in specified sectors such as textiles, electronics and agro-processing.34 A general customer-support centre is not among those higher-cap sectors, so unless a particular operation can justify one of the narrow statutory exceptions, plan a 24/7 roster around the 200-hour annual limit and genuine shift rotation rather than standing overtime. The full set of limits is on working hours and overtime in Vietnam.

What rest and night-shift protections must a 24/7 roster respect?

A round-the-clock roster must still give every agent statutory rest, and it cannot be filled freely from the whole team. Both limits shape the headcount a 24/7 line needs, so build them into the shift plan from the start rather than discovering them later.

An employee working six or more hours in a day is entitled to a rest break of at least 30 minutes — at least 45 minutes on a night shift — and for a continuous shift of six hours or more that break counts as paid working time. Shift workers must also get at least 12 hours off before the next shift, and at least 24 consecutive hours of rest each week; where the work cycle makes a weekly day off impossible, the employer must give at least four days off a month on average.3

The law also limits who can be put on nights. An employer may not require a female employee to work at night, work overtime or travel on long-distance assignments once she reaches the seventh month of pregnancy (the sixth month in upland, remote, border or island areas), or while she is raising a child under 12 months old, unless she herself agrees.3 Plan the night rota around this; the wider set of safeguards is on female employee rights in Vietnam.

Should you hire through an EOR, licensed dispatch or your own entity?

Three routes can staff a Vietnamese contact centre. They differ in who the legal employer is, what the main limit is, and the kind of operation each suits — so match the route to how long you expect to run and how large the team is, rather than to the lowest headline fee.

How does EOR Vietnam staff your contact centre?

EOR Vietnam staffs a contact centre through the direct-employment route: a licensed Vietnam-registered entity employs each agent, team leader and quality-assurance specialist on a compliant labour contract, runs payroll in Vietnamese dong, withholds income tax, pays social, health and unemployment insurance and the trade-union fee, issues payslips and handles statutory filings — while you manage the floor, the scripts and the queues.

Our service fee is a flat US$149 per employee per month for Vietnamese nationals — the same fee regardless of salary, seniority, role, location in Vietnam or headcount, as of October 2026; it is not a percentage of payroll. There are no setup, onboarding, offboarding, contract or payslip fees and no hidden fees. Gross salary, the roughly 23.5% statutory employer contributions and any statutory or agreed employment payments — including the night and overtime premiums above — are passed through at cost.56 A refundable security deposit equal to two months of the employee’s employment cost (gross salary plus statutory employer contributions) is held for the engagement and returned at the end, less any unpaid amounts. Foreign nationals who need a Vietnamese work permit are quoted separately. See the full itemisation on what an EOR actually costs in Vietnam.

Location sets the minimum-wage floor and so the contribution base, though agent pay usually sits above it. Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi centres are minimum-wage Region I (₫5,310,000 a month under Decree 293/2025/ND-CP), while central Da Nang — a rising, lower-cost contact-centre location — is Region II (₫4,730,000), not Region I, a point several 2026 summaries get wrong.7 You can employ in any of them without a local office; see local notes for Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang.

Related guides

These pair with the full set of Vietnam employer guides covering pay, leave, working time and compliance.