Business Process Outsourcing Vs Call Center
In the cutthroat competitive business world, businesses are continuously looking for ways to be more efficient with their business so that they can be the best in their segment.
One of the major factors that affects the efficiency of a company is the work they do and the work they outsource.
One of the best ways to bring efficiency to any business is by outsourcing different works to the experts. So, when businesses look for business outsourcing options they often come in contact with two terms BPO and Call center.
Most of the time the business owners get confused about their services and have a question that is BPO and call center same and the answer is “NO”.
These are two different industries with totally different tasks.
What's the difference between BPO and a call centre?
Before we go into discussing the differences between BPO and call centre, let’s discuss what these terms mean individually :
What is BPO?
BPO means business process outsourcing. There are several BPO companies in India and companies contact them to get some expertise specific jobs done by them.
The BPO companies handle a large number of tasks from technical help, marketing, market research, sales and lead generation, strategy consulting, customer calls, revenue optimization etc.
The main reason why companies do deals with BPO service providers is because they helps them to get the experts for any particular job without investing time and money to hire them in-house and then train them about the same.
This helps the businesses to scale quickly by focusing on the more important tasks, increasing efficiency and also cutting costs. In BPO companies, the employees are properly trained and educated about the client’s product so that they can bring the best service for the product.
What is a call centre?
Now let’s discuss what a call centre is and how it works. That will help us further understand what’s the difference between BPO and a call centre.
The basic job of call centres is to have telephone conversations with the customers of the client company. But as technology has evolved and businesses have implemented new ways of communication so now they also take up responsibilities of SMS, Email, WhatsApp & other social media chats.
But mainly they focus on sales & pre sales calls, customer support calls and onboarding calls.
Their main job is to interact with the customer and gather feedback or solve their problems. Different companies have this in-house call centre that only works for that company but in outsourcing call centres the same guys make and respond to calls for multiple companies.
Now let’s discuss other differences between them –
A. Difference in work division :
BPO companies handle both kinds of services – back office and front office. For back office tasks, these agencies help the clients with surveys, accounts, finance, data entry and management. For the front office, they take up other tasks like social media marketing, customer support, sales, technical support etc. But all the BPOs don’t provide both kinds of services to their clients.
In the case of a call centre, it is a total front office task that is all associated with calling. The different types of calls include both inbound and outbound calls and with the emergence of modern technologies the scope of work has increased to other works like chat and SMS.
B. Difference in functionality :
The main purpose of a company looking for and hiring a BPO service company can be many things including strategy development to finance or marketing to technology development. It is mainly done to get the experts to do the job for you without hiring them.
For call centers, the functionality is only limited to calling. A call center can help you to serve your customers better and also bring sales for you but all with the help of telephonic calls. It is not a job that needs domain expertise.
C. Difference in need :
The other point we need to address to answer what’s the difference between BPO and a call centre is what needs they serve. A call centre serves your need to interact with customers.
A call centre can help to take your customer satisfaction to the top by solving their doubts and helping them with product problems. They also help you to gather feedback about your product.
But BPOs solve the need for other factors like marketing or finance that are internal essential elements of a business. BPO companies serve the need for experts who can execute some hard tasks for your firm.
D. Difference in cost structure
Another major difference between BPO and call centres is how they charge you. For BPO, mostly the costing model depends upon the tasks. They charge you on the basis of the work which can vary like running a marketing campaign or designing a website for you.
For the call centre, the charging style is different. They can charge you on the basis of call volume or number of hours they have to serve. But if you opt for a sales call, then the cost can be shaped based on how many leads they can bring.
Two major benefits of BPO and call center
Now, if you have got the solution to your doubt around is BPO and call center same, here are two benefits of working with them –
Benefits of BPO :
- Access to experts – When you hire a BPO firm you get access to the experts in that particular domain.
- Rapid scaling – When you have a different firm looking for different works of your company then you can just focus more on what brings you scale.
Benefit of call centre –
- 24×7 availability – Hiring a call centre helps your brand to be 24×7 available for your customers.
- Better customer satisfaction – With call centre agents you can provide better service to your customers helping your brand reputation.
Conclusion
n conclusion, we can say that all call centres are BPOs but not all BPOs are call centres. There are some BPOs that only provide some domain specific work like marketing or tech but if you want all BPO and call centre services from one firm then Goacclerix is the answer.