BPO is the short form of business process outsourcing. Hence a BPO company that deals with outsourced jobs may or may not have call centres. BPO is a much broader term when compared to call centre. However, the two terms have a relationship. A call center is a sub-set or sub-unit of a BPO. It is a place where business is done over the telephone. Again there are BPOs where there are no call centres but the entire business is handled through the web. BPO includes, IT services, financial services etc.
A call centre can be seen as a centre for handling the business of internal and/or overseas clients and different companies can outsource parts of their business to call centres. A call centre is also considered as a BPO which handles business over the telephone. However, there is a misconception among many people that BPO means a call centre. This is incorrect.
Call Center is mostly situated offshore and in which staff make and receive calls in order to help the customers regarding electronic equipments, computers and so on.
Where as Bpo (Business Process Outsourcing) is a services to ordinations and services might include call center, human resources, software development and so on.
Call Center is a type of BPO only where only inbound and outbound services are handled whereas BPO is a place where any type of outsourcing work is done. A BPO may be doing HR outsourcing job for various companies, handling accounts for different companies etc.
Business Process Outsourcing basically is the leveraging of expertise or specialist process vendors to offer and administer an organization's critical or non-critical enterprise developments and applications. The most well known examples of BPO are call centres, human resources, accounting and payroll outsourcing.
A call centre basically is a centralized office generally used for the function of receiving and transmitting a huge quantity of requests via telephone. A call centre usually is controlled by a company to manage received product support or information queries from customers.
Outbound calls for the purpose of telemarketing, clientèle and dept collection are also carried out at call centres. A call centre is normally operated via a widespread open workshop for call centre agents along with a work station which normally comprises of a computer for each agent.
A Call Center is a place located either within the country of the business who hired the call center. Or, it could be located off shore in a different country. In a call center the only form of work performed is making telephone calls and receiving telephone calls. Some calls are made to customers regarding late payments; to solicit money; to request a payment owned; to inform a customer of changes within the company and similar tasks. In one call center there may be employees making calls for several or many different companies depending upon the size of the call center.
The employees also accept calls, they are what is often referred to as first line employees, they accept the initial call, then as needed refer the call on to the appropriate person or company. For instance, if I have new stove and something goes wrong with it, I will call the company. However, the phone may not be answered at the same location, I purchased my stove. If, this company's calls go through a call center then, my call could be answered from anywhere. Once, I tell the person who I am and what I need, I will be connected to a service person either at the place, where I purchased my stove, or where ever the service department is located.
Call centers handle calls and make connections to other people to deal with the person and resolve any concerns. Not all business use call centers, but have telephone operators in the place business to accept and disburse calls.
A BPO is Business Process Outsourcing which a company does several different types of work for other companies. Located within a BPO employees may be answering phones, making phone calls, performing accounting functions, cutting paychecks, stuffing envelopes and many other different types of work all under on roof. Picture a very large building, now picture divided into six sections, there are workers in each of those sections. Each section of workers is doing something different.
Within each of these sections, not all workers are necessarily doing the same type of work, for the same company, who has outsourced their work to the BPO. One person may be cutting checks for company A and the next person my cutting checks for company B. It all depends upon the size of the BPO and how many companies have outsourced their work to them.
The fundamental difference between a call center and a BPO is that a call center is be a BPO but a BPO may not be a call center. BPO is an abbreviation for Business Process Outsourcing. The process that is outsourced can be broadly classified into voice based and data based.
A call center is a voice based process. An example of a call center could be an insurance firm that chooses to sell insurance by cold calling potential clients. If it is based in the United States then the firm could choose to move the entire process to an Asian country. Agents will be hired in the Asian country and they will be trained. The act of selling insurance has been moved from the United States to a call center in Asia.
Since the business process outsourcing boom was primarily facilitated by the advent of call centers they have become synonymous with each other.
James willaim , In simple words Call centers are the subset of BPO., answered
Call centers specifically handles calls which are telephone based traffic and involved in activities such as telemarketing, managing customer queries, complaints etc. On the other hand BPO is engaged in activities like Payroll Billing, Back Office Processing, call center activities and etc.
In simple term I would like to explain the difference between Call Center and BPO's.
Call Center is generally a sub-unit of BPO, Call Center is a place where people take and make a call to/from a customer, to provide information. If we take a call it's an Inbound call center, and If we make a call it's an outbound call center.
BPO stands for Business process outsourcing. This is a much bigger conception than a call center. Generally companies outsource any department to an organization. They provide advance training to an employee and different departments like accounting, development and call centers, Technical Supports etc.
BPO is such a broad term to maintain foreign policies and customer supports.
A BPO or also know as Business Process Outsourcing is an organization that is responsible for performing various processes or part of a processes for other business organization. A Call Center performs part of the client's business that involves phone call or telephone calls. Usually for handling technical support and customs or client complaints. Moreover, call center is one of the outsourcing services so it means it is under BPO. BPO is often divided into two categories, back office and front office.
