BPO vs Call Center
BPO or Business Process Outsourcing refers to a unique method of outsourcing that involves assigning of specific business processes, operations and relevant responsibilities over to an intermediary service provider. In the initial stages the outsourcing of business processes took place in close association with large scale manufacturing firms like Coca Cola. The beverage company was into the practice of outsourcing large consignments of its gigantic supply chain. But in the contemporary times, the term BPO has come to refer to outsourcing of various kinds of assimilated and technical services. On the other hand, a Call Center is a full scale office set up which is centrally situated. It is used for reception and transmission of a voluminous amount of telephonic requests placed by commercial consumers. Call centers are operated by all those companies that manage both the inward bound product support and also handle the various inquiries from the customers’ end. Moreover, various outgoing business calls for marketing product services, telemarketing, clientele and debt collection may also be carried out from call centers.
The procedure of Business Process Outsourcing is further classified into,
- Front Office Outsourcing: Concerns contact center services and customer related services.
- Back Office Outsourcing: Concerns finance and accounting and other internal business functions in relation to human resources.
On the other hand, call centers can also be categorized into a number of sub-divisions which are as follows,
- Inbound Call Centers: Handle international calls for catalog orders and desk queries through toll free numbers.
- Outbound Call Centers: Proffer customer service through quality assurance programs and provides technological solutions.
- Web Enabled Call Centers: Take care of customer service issues directly through Internet without disconnecting.
- CRM Call Centers
- Telemarketing Call Centers
- Telephone Call Centers: Offer predictive dialing systems and call routing.
Nowadays a new genre of BPOs has surfaced that get established outside the country of location of the original company. This process is termed as Offshore Outsourcing. In case the BPO is situated to a nearby country next to the home country of the company, the process is termed as near shore Outsourcing. On the other hand, a call center is generally operated through a wide spread office that spaces call center agents placed at individual work stations with an individual computer, a telephone headset connected with a telecom switch and a couple of supervisor stations.
Summary:
1. BPO or Business Process Outsourcing refers to assigning specific business processes to intermediary service providers while Call Center is a centrally situated office set up that receives and transmits telephonic requests.
2. Business Process Outsourcing can be of front office and back office kind, while Call centers can be of six different kinds including inbound and outbound call centers.
3. BPOs may be situated offshore while call centers are housed in office setup with individual work stations.