What Is A Call Center And How Is It Different From A BPO?

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.