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| WHAT IS A BPO? |
You have most likely called a BPO many times in your life. You may have made an airline reservation, called for directory assistance, ordered a product or called for technical support on a recent purchase. The BPO is the place where your telephone call is answered.
Depending on how many phone calls are received, BPOs may be very small or extremely large. Some companies need thousands of employees to handle the large volume of calls they receive from customers.
A BPO is like any other office environment where you will find many people talking on the phone and working with computers. The key difference is that in a BPO the employees primary job is to take calls and help customers. When they finish with one customer, they move on to the next customer that is waiting in line.
On a busy day, employees in a BPO (called customer service representatives or customer service agents) may take more than 100 phone calls. The number of calls that a customer service agent takes depends on the length of each call and their work schedule. On average call times last from three to four minutes, with about one minute of after call wrap-up to complete any unfinished work related to the call.
If you work in a BPO, you will need to be good with people and comfortable talking on the phone, but there is more to it than just the phone call.
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The role of the computer |
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Technology plays a major role in the BPO. Most BPOs will have a computer terminal for each customer service agent to use while taking calls from customers. These computers are used to access customer records, product information, ordering status, transaction history and many other types of data. For medical or technical BPOs, these computers will help the customer service agent’s access medical records or technical data.
For BPOs that accept email from customers, computers are the primary tools for the BPO agent. A customer service agent will read the email from the customer, access data, and conduct research and reply to the customer all from the computer terminal. In state-of-the-art centers, the BPO management team has the choice to blend email with phone calls and other customer contact work such as mail, fax and text chat. In this environment, a customer service agent may answer an email one moment and be on the phone for the next customer contact. |
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