Call centers serve many, many purposes, and that purpose changes depending on the type of company and industry. Some are exclusively dealing with customer service inquiries while others only function as a way for employees to communicate with one another. Depending on the size of your company, your budget and your needs, your core team may not have the bandwidth to handle all the inbound calls coming in. In these cases, you may consider outsourcing certain tasks to a separate call center, a process called business process outsourcing, or BPO. Here, we’re taking a look at some of the common tasks that companies outsource and how they utilize BPO.

Earlier we mentioned customer service. This is one of, if not the most common role of inbound call centers—and it is also one of the most commonly outsourced tasks. In many cases, the reason for this is that large companies are dealing with a huge volume of customer inquiries coming in, which requires a large team of agents manning the phones, a team so large that their budget may not cover the cost of such a large team if they were to hire all their agents as full-time employees based where the company is based. Indeed, with outsourced call centers the cost of labor is often much lower, which is a driving factor in the decision to use them. This is actually a win-win for the company and the customer, as the company is able to save money while guaranteeing that there are more people manning the phones in their call centers, which means shorter wait times for customers.

Even though it is used much less these days than it used to be, some customers still prefer to place orders by phone. There are also certain types of orders and transactions that are difficult to or impossible to complete online, which leaves communicating with a live agent to complete the order as the best option. That said, order processing is tedious and takes time, which is why this is another task that companies may outsource. By using an outsourced call center to input customer information, process payments, and place orders, it frees up your employees and your resources to focus on the things that drive those orders in the first place, such as product development, research and marketing.

One of the more overlooked tasks that call centers deal with is dispatch services. Dispatch call centers may be entirely internal, involving reps or techs who call in to receive assignments for the day, or external, in which customers call requesting services. The biggest reason that you may want to outsource your dispatch call center is that their services are typically only needed at certain times of day when employees are getting their assignments or customers are making appointments. In these cases, it might be a waste of money for a company to employ full-time people to staff these call centers. Instead, they can use the services of an outsourced call center for only certain hours, ensuring that their resources are used efficiently.

There are many cases in which a BPO call center may be the most cost-effective choice for a company and the most advantageous situation for the customer. Whether you are planning to outsource or are running a BPO call center, CallShaper is an excellent choice as a call center platform. To learn more about why, request a demo today.