Difference between Call Center and BPO

With increasing competition, every company and business is focusing on offering great customer service to its customers and improving customer satisfaction. A happy customer means a retained customer which means more revenue and business expansion.

In recent years, most companies have started to outsource their specific part of business, especially customer service to 3rd parties called vendors. Some of the main benefits of outsourcing customer service to a 3rd party vendor are improved customer service, high CSAT, Cost Cutting, hassle-free recruitments, etc.

These 3rd party vendors are often referred to as “ BPO “, “ Call Center” or “ Customer care” or “ Contact Center”. However, BPO and Call Centers are the most commonly used terms in the Customer service industry.

BPOs and Call Centers are primarily used to outsource a business and improve customer service.

Although BPO and Call Center are often used interchangeably, there are subtle differences between Call Center and BPO. In this blog today we will dive deeper into these differences. I hope by the end of the blog you will be able to have a clear difference between Call Center and BPO.

Before diving in to the main topic “Difference between Call Center and BPO“, let’s first understand the definition of Call Center and BPO :

What is a Call Center?

A Call Center is a place where customers can connect with the call center experts and get their issue resolved by experts and assistance with related to product service. A call center can be best described as

A dedicated department that handles calls and chats from customers to resolve their issues.

Often, there are 2 major types of Cal Centers

1. Outbound Call Center
2. Inbound call Center

Outbound Call Centers are primarily offer sales, marketing and customer retention.

Inbound call centers are primarily handles  customer service.

Now let’s discuss about BPO.

What is a BPO ?

BPO is the abbreviation for Business Process Outsourcing. As the name suggests, when a business plans to outsource a specific part of business to a 3^rd party or vendor , that vendor is often termed as BPO company. In simple words we can define BPO as:

The process of outsourcing a business to a 3rd party vendor is known as BPO or business process outsourcing.

Now as we understood the definition of both BPO and Call Center . Let’s jump into the main topic “ Difference between Call Center and BPO?

Difference between Call Center and BPO ?

As mentioned above BPO and Call Center terms are often misinterpreted and used interchangeably but there are subtle differences between BPO and Call Center.

Let’s understand the difference with the help of 5 major parameters.

1. Nature of Service:

The Call Center typically handles projects with customer service and customer handling, while BPO offers a broader range of services that includes but not limited to marketing ,sales, HR, Verification etc.

2. Outsourcing pattern:

Enterprise can operate its own Call center or can outsurce services to a 3^rd party vendor that means call centers can be operates from in hourse or can be outsourced , while BPO services are primarily outsourced to a 3^rd party who operates independently.\

3. Cost Structure:

Both BPO and Call Centers have different cost structures. Call center typically are estimated on the basis of various call center metrics and call Volume, Login Hours of CPM (Call per minute) , while BPOs are priced on the basis of nature of the tasks or service provided by them.

Eventually BPOs have more control on cost structure as compared to Call Centers.

4. Training and Coaching:

As mentioned above the BPO offers, services in different nature of business hence the staff experts can be cross trained , means trained on various operations, while the Call Centers staff trained on different aspect of customer service such as telephone etiquette, Soft Skills, Verbiages etc.

5. Communication Channel :

As BPO offers broader service to clients , hence it does not rely on single communication channel. BPO offers various commucation channels such as Voice ,Mail , Social Media, Chat etc. Contrary to that a typicall Call Center handles customer communication with only channel i.e Voice.

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Conclusion :

BPO and Call Centes have the same working pattern but since BPO offers diverse services and clients , Call center can be understood as a subset of BPO. In layman language we can use BPO and Call Centers interchangeably.

Now a days as customer service is getting advance day by day there is no significant difference between Call Center and BPO.

At the end of the blog it’s time to pick some FAQs:

FAQs:

Q1. Is Call Center or BPO Same ?

In a broader term Call Centers and BPO can be understood same and both terms can be used interchangeably but there are some difference between both the terms which is already explained the blog.

Q2. What is the difference between Call Center and BPO ?

There are many slight differences but 3 major differences are mentioned below :

1. Nature of Service offering.
2. Cost pattern
3. Communication Channel

Q3. What are the different types of call centers in BPO?

There are 3 types of Call Center:

1. Inbound Call Center
2. Outbound Call Center
3. Blended Call Center

Learn More : What is Blended process in Call Center ?

I hope this blog has answered all your queries related to “Difference between BPO and Call Center”.

In case still if you have questions , please contact us at : callcenter26@gmail.com.

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