How to Measure Agent Performance and Capacity

The primary reason why most call center managers and supervisors are the most detested and despised persons in the BPO industry is because they are in- charge of measuring the performance of the agents. It is a constant process that without a strict and stringent procedure, sales could go down, the call center put in jeopardy and the business in danger of losing clients and customers.

The problem with most call centers is that there is a discrepancy about the way they measure individual performance. Most agents feel that when they answer the call quicker, they give better customer service. This is a false notion that needs to be corrected. The truth of the matter is that most call centers include features that are sometimes hard to control especially by the call center agent.

For virtual call center agents, this may also be the case. Employers rate each agent differently. As it should be, because performance differs when type of account (inbound or outbound), call (sales, appointment setting or lead generation) and the channel (landline, chat or email) to which these interactions were made. Each of these should be measured differently and needed to be modeled after the agent’s specific and assigned task.

When trying to measure an agent’s productivity, you must first consider the factors which the agent is able to manage. Like available time, after call work time, adherence to the schedule and talk time. Available time is the allotted time that an agent is available to receive or make a call. For most call centers, this is in the 8 to 9 hour period. After call work time is the time spent by the agent completing task such as making reports after receiving and making calls. Adherence to the scheduled time will also affect the measurement of performance. Talk time refers to the duration of time that the agent is able to talk to a customer regarding their concerns. Why are these included? As a call center, you won’t be able to predict the length of time a customer talks to a specific agent, and the agent won’t have control over it as well.

There are a wide variety of call centers out there and the variation of call types will also affect the agent’s performance. Sales based calls should be measured by the sales percentage made, drop calls and sales closure rates. This is an indication of how effective the agent is in selling a company’s product. Another factor that needs to be considered is the quality of the calls made. While some call centers will be perfectly happy with a large volume of calls coming in, what will make or break a relationship with a client or customer is the quality of the call received and made by the agents. Virtual call centers should be wary of the quality of interactions made by your agents for this is a reflection of the kind of agents a contact center has.

Panoramic View of Virtual Call Centers

There has been an increase in the popularity of virtual call centers, making it the most talked about topic over the internet. And because of this popularity, many things have been written about the business, some are true; some are not which paved the way for wrong notions and ideas. The way you understand the call center industry all depends on which side of the fence you are standing. Whether you are company that is looking for a call center to outsource your services or someone looking for a new job, your perspectives is different. There are only 3 truths when we talk about virtual call centers; one is that it is a multi-million industry, it is growing and expanding and is an advantage both to the company and its workers.

In economics, companies are known to exist to gain profit. And hiring a call center ensures that you do. Virtual call centers are “off-campus” call center that allows you to outsource to home based agents abroad. You won’t need to worry about additional expenses for the construction of a new office or prate about the costs of new equipment. Another advantage is that it allows the company to allocate work like customer service, product sighting and other services to the call center and they could concentrate on expanding their businesses. A company would greatly benefit from an innovative call center, helping them on developing further marketing strategies and to help them reach their goals.

For a call center agent, a virtual call center job is an opportunity to get away from constricting and sometimes demanding call center environment. The virtual call center also gives you the choice of working at home. Another bonus, especially for new job seekers, is an opportunity to make money while sitting down comfortably in your own home. These is the perfect opportunity for many housewives, single and stay at home mothers, those who want to take a career change and is still yet undecided, for those with disabilities and cannot leave home, to find work and fend for themselves. It is not rocket science as well; all you need is a reliable internet connection, a landline and a computer. Of course a good set of communication skills will be beneficial as well.

Marketing your company would be a difficult undertaking because of the stiff competition in the call center industry. The key to building your reputation in a competitive industry like call centers is to raise and maintain your standards, an often disregarded process. Many businesses would hawk and gawk at the competition, that they forget to think of ways to further develop and expand their own companies. It is good to know what the competition is doing but it is even better to surpass them without trying to.

Virtual Call Centers on Holiday This September 5th

Mobile Express Contact Solutions (MECS) one of the leading call and contact Solutions Company is going to have a break this coming September 5, 2011. MECS serving a US based client is going to have some of its employees take the long weekend. Having a long weekend is a good way to start the month of September as there will be a very wide campaign for a MECS client this coming September 18, 2011. The employees can now have their plans of weekend getaways without the worry of returning to work on a Monday.

As a Virtual Call Center, MECS is following what days in the year are the holidays for a certain client. Since some of its employees are serving the east coast of the United States client, a long weekend is entitled to the agents assigned to this client. It is quite normal that the holidays in the Philippines will not match with the clients and as much as the MECS employees would like to work; they are in the mercy of the client’s schedule. It is totally a different scenario if it’s the holiday here in the Philippines. The employees are obliged to come on duty because the clients are not shutting down their operations on Philippines.

But working on holidays here in the Philippines gives some perks on an employee. They are entitled to have a wage that is twice of the normal of what they are expecting. Employees will not have the luxury of rest days during Philippine holidays but with US holidays the situations is reversed. The employees get to enjoy a day off while all part of the Philippines is working. It is give and take situation. This is a normal situation if you are outsourcing some jobs here in the Philippines. But there are times that the holidays are the same in all parts of the world.

A virtual contact center like MECS is taking into consideration the welfare of its employee by giving substantial rest periods for its employee and giving them what is essential like a double pay if the employee is working on a holiday and a rest day if the client has its own holiday.

This would be the perfect time for some of the employees of MECS to pursue some of their hobbies like travelling and if the employees don’t want to spend money they could just stay on their home and enjoy watching TV. After this long weekend the employees will feel energized and ready to take on the new task.

Virtual Call Center: Future of Your Business

The reason why businesses are ever evolving is because they want to stay on top of the pile. Customers are very difficult to please. They are looking for quality service, superiority and excellence, and if they feel that they do not receive the kind of service they feel they deserve, they will most definitely take their business away from you. Virtual call centers are not exempted from this and because of the way the economy has been going up and down, you cannot afford to lose any more clients and customers.

It will be such a shame that your patrons and clientele alike would not allow you to service them again just because you were not able to answer the phone on the first ring or because they got the voicemail instead. The reality is that you as a company have to be available to them every day, every hour. Virtual call centers should adjust their time and schedules to cater the people who made it possible for them to still be able to do business. It might be impossible to achieve but it is necessary. And with this feat comes the challenge of providing the kind of service your customers deserve and the capability of your call center to provide that without exhausting your agents.

There is a pressing need to stay on top of everybody else in the call center industry. You can achieve this by providing your customers the service they deserve, professional and of high excellence. As a virtual call center, you should be able to take calls, inquiries and complaints about the company that hires you. Your company needs to have skilled agents to be able to properly address the concerns of your clientele. Your services will be needed greatly by companies during holidays, after office hours, during weekends and especially during rush hour and hectic days.

Being able to get the messages in a timely and orderly manner is a challenge but not impossible. This is the number one reason why most companies choose to outsource customer service and other related services to virtual call centers because they have the expertise and the equipment to do so. They will also be able to address the different issues accordingly either through telephone conversations, email, fax or through live chat.

Almost all functions of an entire staff can be done by the call center you hire, at a smaller price. You would not have to pay salary and benefits. It would be also a money saver since you will only be paying the services done. It’s an easy and obvious choice, if you want to save on money yet not compromise on the quality of service, hire a virtual call center now.

Making Money At Home Through Virtual Call Center

The virtual call center gives you the opportunity to earn money at home through providing customer service to online clients. Outsourcing has reached new heights when it has tapped to the millions who are stay at home mothers, students and those that are not able to get a regular job. This is also a new opportunity for people with physical disabilities to make money.

The hype that these call centers are creating especially in the market are indeed beneficial to every one of us but with the competition in this particular market so high, the stakes are also as high. This is the reason why there are particular and specific qualifications that needed to be met first. Aside from having the ability to communicate effectively, you also have to have the personality and listening skill for you will be dealing with other people.

Virtual call center jobs are abundant if you want to consider a career in customer service. You will only need a computer and a high speed internet connection to do this job. Most of the interviews are done through phone. The reason why most preliminary interviews are done over the phone is to make sure that you are equipped with the most basic skills, and that is a very good grasp of the English language. It is also an advantage if you can speak more than one foreign language. Make sure that you put on your best voice and personality when talking. This will put positive weight in your application.

There are many companies now that are looking for virtual call centers where they could outsource their businesses. Businesses opt for virtual contact center because it does not need a physical structure to exist. It is like having a virtual office that can really function. The beautiful thing is that all the agents can be from every corner in the world and still work for the company that hired them.

Before accepting any offers for a career as a virtual call center agent, do not hesitate to ask questions. Also ask yourself if this is a good job for you and if the pay is enough to sustain you for the year or maybe for the lifetime if you want to stay longer in this kind of job. And once you do get hired, apply for every position you deem fit to your capabilities. The virtual call centers will be happy to help you grow your career. You should be aware of the choices you have.

Call Center Status: In A Relationship with Your Client and Customers

There are plenty of contact centers in the market and the fact remains that only the very best are thriving in the industry, and it all comes down to the reputation of your company in the business, the better the reputation, the more likely you will be hired by a company or a business. Brands in the market that are hoping to outsource will look for experience, along with technology and manpower. These are not the only considerations however. Before being considered for the job, brands and companies alike will consult peers in the industry or do a survey to see how a call center operates. In turn for virtual call centers to come across big clients they must be wary of the day to day operations to always be careful about the kind and quality of work they do, for the image of the company, its reputation in the business world, depends on it.

Reputations of all call centers are usually derived from the capability to deliver various call center services. First; it has to have a standard. Clients will immediately lose interest if the performance of the call center falls beyond mediocre. These companies invested in your services so it is prudent that you do not waste their resources by not performing your best. Most call centers have issues on lowering costs without sacrificing quality but it can become wearisome. You cannot progress without sacrifices plus the increase in demand for outsourcing call centers has added the issue of quality and loyalty. The answer to this is technology and how this tool is used by call centers to improve the superiority of work. Clients will also watch out for the quality of calls made to the possible customers and how they are treated. A client who is satisfied will earn you positive feedback and goodwill. These are good markers for building a reputation for future clienteles.

Another important aspect of building up your status in the BPO industry is coming through with deadlines and other time frames. It is important to stick to time schedules and limits, additional expenses and costs will be unavoidable if the call center does not stick to its schedule. And this is not something neither your clients nor your customers will be happy about. The number one reason why they are outsourcing is cut back on costs and yet the contact center does not do so. There should have strict adherence to project time frames. It is inescapable to encounter difficulties along the way but this is where the readiness and the initiative of call centers will be tested. Take these obstacles one at a time and you will be able to deliver work still on time. Punctuality will translate to efficient work, and practicing this will add constructive words for your contact center and will be good on the recommendation part.

It is never enough to be equal to the best in the BPO industry, if you could surpass them, then why not? It will not matter how advanced the technology the center possess if they do not deliver the kind of call center services expected from them. Remember that stability and continuity in the industry of call centers require positive feedback, and you must build it, not buy it.

Call Center Services In The Philippines

The Philippines has been a hot spot for the BPO industry even since it was introduced in 2006. Business process outsourcing or BPO in the Philippines actually started as a simple and primary response to emails and managing service concerns. The call center industry has since grown and the services that have been offered have increased as well.

The BPO has hugely been popular due to the fact that the Philippines is the second largest country who uses the English language, it being one of the two official languages used; and the work force available in the country is massive. Fresh graduates from college will opt for a call center job first to have a feel of the labor industry. The second reason is that operational costs and other expenditures in the country is less expensive compared to other countries in the world.

Call center services are the support available to the public to help and aid for a particular service or a tuning up. Look at it as a virtual and modern do-it-yourself help, which is available, at any time and any place in the world. Companies who do avail of the call center services are given the choice of outbound or inbound accounts.

Inbound accounts are when the call center handles inbound calls or calls initiated by the customer themselves. The calls will depend on the kind of account that the call center has. For example, a mobile service provider has hired a call center to receive their customer service concerns. This is an inbound service. Inbound services are also made through chat and emails.

Outbound accounts, on the other hand handles outbound call or calls initiated by a call center agent in behalf of the call center or a client. These kinds of accounts dominate the call center industry in the Philippines. For instance, a clothing brand has hired a call center for their services. What the call center will do is to call up possible customers to inform them that new shipment of clothes has arrived or the order they made has been placed and delivered. Most Outbound accounts are geared towards telemarketing, lead generation and sales.

There are also other call center services available now, much of them are fusions between inbound and outbound calls, not just limited to outbound and inbound accounts. There are medical transcriptionists and non-voice accounts as well. The medical transcriptionists are usually skilled typists and has a strong medical background, especially with short hand terms and jargon words. Other services such as non-voice accounts handle the inbound and outbound accounts where the concerns are either given through chat or through emails.

These types of services are all available in the Philippines. And with this, the BPO industry is sure to grow bigger and wider. Good news for the Filipino people and the Philippine economy.

Outsourcing with Freelancer or Affiliate Company

Outsourcing has changed the landscape of business all over the world. Through the Internet, it is now easier to get a freelancer or an affiliate company to fulfill the different needs of your company - from writing marketing copies, creating company logos, the actual website of the company or for any call center services. You just need to make a choice between a freelancer and an affiliate company to do the jobs you need. Affiliate companies are usually located overseas and tend to be composed of at least five employees. You do not blindly choose between the two. There are several considerations you have to think through before awarding the project to a freelancer or an affiliate company.

You need to determine how much budget you have as this may make an impact on whether it is best for you to contact a freelancer, before contacting freelancers or affiliate companies who can work on your project. The benefit of hiring a freelancer is that he usually works by himself and because of this the price may be negotiated through the interview and the negotiation phase. Affiliate companies, on the other hand, have more costs to think about as compared with freelancers. They will have to pay their staff as well as the other fixed costs they will entail. The drawback in hiring a freelancer, however, is the possibility of delays and late submissions. If this happens, then the schedule of the project will be severely affected. Affiliate companies, however, offer stability and may assign more than one contractor to work on your project.

Another important consideration is the resources that may be needed for your project. Will your contractors for call center service be telecommuting or will they need to work on site? For onsite kinds of job, an affiliate company would be more reliable because of their capability to assign more than one personnel to work on your project. A freelancer on the other hand may be more flexible in terms of visiting the site, especially, if the project becomes his priority.

In determining the nature of the project, the list of skills also needs to be listed down so that the contractor will be able to fulfill every requirements of the project. If an affiliate company will be contacted, they will be able to offer a wider range of skills and expertise while a freelancer may only offer a limited range of skills. This is one of the limitations of a freelancer. Furthermore, if the freelancer that you will contact is highly skilled and is capable to deal with a greater degree of complexity and problems, chances are his rates will also be more expensive.

Technical skills, however, are only half of the picture. Another thing needed is the sensitivity and flexibility of your chosen contractor in completing your requirements. Without such flexibility, it might be more difficult for you to maximize the skills of the freelancer. Also, an affiliate company can be more easily traced and made accountable. Just ensure that the freelancer or the affiliate company that you will contact has good track record.

Home-Based Agents Don't Degrade Quality

Contact centers are not quite as "central" as they used to be. The old cliche of a big room full of representatives handling phone calls is starting to come apart, thanks to technological developments and to the critical need for new sources of labor. Remote agents and virtual centers are a small but growing component of the industry, especially in the more mature markets.

The fundamental platforms in contact centers have turned so quickly to IP that the availability of remote agents has grown faster than the actual adoption of that staffing model. One reason for the delay is the cultural hesitation among contact center managers about assuring the quality of customer interactions, and the ability to actively manage the staff from afar. In practice, it turns out that these fears are largely unfounded: managers see into each transaction and each agent's performance just as well as they could in a traditional brick-and-mortar center. There is not as much tension between adopting a remote staffing model and maintaining quality as many thought there would be.

To a large degree, remote agents depend on the presence of an IP-ACD infrastructure to connect them to the mother organization. A recent research study pegged the portion of IP-enabled seats in contact centers at just short of 50%, and expected to cross that important threshold in the next few years. The research has found at the same time, multi-sourcing, that is creating a mixed environment including multiple outsourcers or a mix of outsourced and in-house agents, will rise as IP adoption makes contact center virtualization easier to accomplish. Such virtualization will lead the growth of remote agents within enterprises, picking up significantly by the end of the year . The population of remote agents - agents who are part of a call center's infrastructure but don't work inside the walls of the center – is currently between 100 and 150 thousand people.

There are three compelling business cases for setting some part of the agent pool off-site, either in small virtual centers or fully remote.

First and foremost is cost control. Evidence shows that agents stay longer in their jobs, and have higher satisfaction levels, when there is flexibility in how they are deployed. In some very large companies, they have built their entire customer contact workforces out of remote agents because agents who work from home are clearly more vested in maintaining their jobs and their employment status. And as you reduce turnover, you can retain your most able and motivated staff and your costs for new-hire training and recruitment go down.

The second business case is continuity. Remote agents aren't affected when your physical center becomes unavailable; this is a benefit that's often discovered after the fact, rather than factored into the initial decision to decentralize the agent pool.

A third benefit, often neglected is the acquired quality improvement from using a single queue irrespective of the many separate call handling locations. Contact center managers can basically administer the setup from any location with a virtual model. Customers have a much more constant interaction than they do on centers are operating semi-independently under different metrics and management.

Multi-Channel Customer Service

Multi-channel customer service means service consistency across channels. A high-value customer with a high service-level effectiveness, who received top priority in the phone call center (for example, a hold time of less than one minute), would receive the same high priority in email processing (for example, a response within thirty minutes). Furthermore, service agents, regardless of channels and sourcing model (in-house or outsourced), would have access to the same customer profile, the same knowledge content, and the same, unified history of communications across those channels. This approach would guarantee that customers get the same answers to the same questions across channels, agents, and even service modes (self-service or assisted service), and get the right service levels across channels.

Are you finding that a multi-channel approach in the contact center industry is better meeting your customer's various needs? As technology progresses, will the phone be but one of many mediums used?

Yes, this is mandatory but the technology should be very easy to use and comparable with traditional e-mail accounts or have better features other than detailed statistics. A multi-tiered highly targeted approach allows for personalization that increases resolution rates, encourages loyalty and leads to additional up sells and cross sells. Most definitely as our customers and competitors alike are moving forward so quickly that we feel offering a multi channel approach gives us the edge. Our customers’ requests for handling multiple channels is growing every day and we feel that with our ever increasing pool of talented, specialized staff we are now able to utilise their skills to the optimum levels. Innovation is crucial in our business and we find that by providing this service offering that we are always striving to be the best.

It’s better for a small group of customers. However, the bulk of customers prefer the phone. To make this a full success the customer needs support, education and encouragement to use different channels of support. One sales example: there was a mix-up in customer communication when a sales agent tried responding to a call at the same time as a chat request. The phone call log was affected worse than the chat, though both issues were addressed.

Communications channels are changing people, which they are no longer using the phone to achieve resolution to customer service issues. We have seen a steep rise in other 'channel' communication and expect these to rise further. In today's fast paced society, individuals want access to information quickly and they want access to this information using the medium of their choice. The storm multi-channel contact center allows customers to do just that, providing a better customer experience. We have different folks from different demographics that include rural, urban, older and younger generations. They all tend to do things differently and we are here to meet them and their needs.

Choosing the Best CRM Business Solution

Today, companies are seeking ways to ensure that they will realize a valuable return on investment from their CRM system. To achieve this, companies must have a clear understanding of what information they want to gather and how the CRM system will be used to capture and analyze data to make further improvements in customer service.

Most companies understand at some level that a CRM is not really about "managing" customers but rather about putting the customer at the center of the organization. Customer loyalty increases and business benefits accrue in many tangible ways, in providing additional value to customers from increased sales to customer continuity. Companies should seek a comprehensive overview of how a CRM can benefit the corporation, including how it interrelates with other initiatives. The planning and installation processes of a CRM system are of critical importance. All customers touch points and their supporting business processes should be incorporated into the system. This involves not only linking with the call center but also integrating with other applications, such as e-business and back office applications including financials, production, shipping, logistics, and corporate databases. Merging with other applications provides the opportunity to leverage existing technology investments while promoting a true 360-degree view of customer interactions across the entire organization.

Choosing a Business Solution

In choosing a solution, taking serious consideration should be given to how quickly, easily, and seamlessly integration with other applications can be achieved. Some CRM systems provide better ways of integrating third-party back-office applications through an integration module. By using the module, integration time can be reduced by as much as 80 percent.

A module not only allow to view information from third-party or custom applications, but also the system administrator and to create and modify records from these databases directly into the CRM system. A few simple steps are required – links are created by logging on to a database, choosing the unique fields (such as account numbers) that will be the same in both systems, and selecting the fields that users will see in custom folder tabs. Data can then be viewed and manipulated in real time, avoiding the need for cumbersome import and export routines or other costly and time consuming custom solutions. By enabling the consistent linkage between applications and the CRM system, employees can click a folder tab to access information from integrated back-office applications such as order management, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, finance, logistics, or other verticals. Also the automated data set updates to back-office applications considerably reduce unnecessary duplicate data entry and facilitate data consistency with disparate applications throughout the enterprise.

Whether your customer service and support representatives are responsive, courteous, and accurate will influence not only your customers’ decision of whether to buy from you in the future but also the feedback and recommendations they provide to their friends and business associates. Customer interaction is very important and impacts their attitudes toward your company and resulting buying decisions, so it is important to enable your employees to be knowledge-workers.

In order to be embraced by employees, the CRM system must make operational sense, fitting in with sales and customer care staff tasks and processes rather than requiring meaningless external predetermined business processes. However, CRM initiatives provide an excellent opportunity to step back and evaluate business goals, objectives, and the business processes that support them and to implement important changes to better meet your company’s changing needs.

Selecting a CRM vendor requires a clear vision and key metrics of what needs to be accomplished through a CRM initiative. Although not the only approach, an integrated CRM suite provided by one vendor will definitely help reduce the chaos of implementing multiple vendors with disparate solutions. An implementation comprised of well-integrated CRM components regardless of which type of approach is taken will achieve the promises of a customer relationship management initiative.

The Versatility of Speech Analytics

Speech analytics has become the next step for contact centers looking to supplement their quality monitoring solutions with more powerful technology. Contact centers in today's economy provide an essential differentiation point for competitive industries as customers decide between companies with similar products based on the level of customer service and the ability to resolve seemingly intractable problems in one interaction. Speech analytics helps meet customer expectations as by increasing awareness of agent interactions and resolving potential problem areas before they spread and create lasting damage. The power of speech analytics can be evaluated in two major areas: the breadth of its impact on contact center operations and the nature of its implementation.

The Scope of Speech Analytics

Speech analytics increases control and knowledge of contact center operations for larger organizations by assisting the analyzation an otherwise unmanageable number of conversations. It can address critical issues such as achievement of campaign goals, script adherence and agent skills. Management can set an indicator for key performance for agents and use speech analytics to evaluate their fulfilment.

In addition with measurement of agent output improvement, speech analytics can also evaluate customer input such as opinions of the company’s products, frequently asked questions and other reoccurring issues. Speech analytics can also help to evaluate the overall success of a campaign and help management make adjustments in a timely manner. The powerful nature of speech analytics derives from its ability to automate categorization of calls, but its overall capability varies depending on the form of speech analytics used.

Types of Speech Analytics

The system of speech analytics can be divided into the three technologies used to categorize calls. The most fundamental, keyword spotting, is dependent on the words or phrases selected by contact center managers as essential to evaluating customer interactions. These words can be used to find relevant calls for best practices training or to evaluate almost any issue spotted by certain specific phrases. Set up and configuration of keyword spotting is generally affordable for medium-sized contact centers and will quickly generate a positive return on investment. Phonetic indexing provides a more powerful form of speech analytics, but it requires more detailed processing to create a database of phonemes. It uses much more disk space, but it allows faster and more extensive searches once the translations have been compiled. Finally, speech-to-text transcription symbolizes the most sophisticated type of speech analytics. The system must be trained to recognize specific words, and it requires a high level of accuracy. This makes for an expensive set-up period, but once the technology has been implemented, it allows ongoing text mining as your needs evolve.

One day, speech analytics will include even more powerful features such as age or gender spotting. But for many organizations, it is essential today to streamline customer service and provide a competitive edge.

What are BPO Services?

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the process of hiring another company to handle business activities for you. It is a subset of outsourcing that involves the operations and responsibilities of specific businesses processes to another service provider. BPO that is contracted based in another country is called Offshore Outsourcing, and BPO on nearby country is called Nearshore Outsourcing. BPO is also categorized as IT-enabled services. Some sub-segments of business process outsourcing industry are KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) and LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing).

BPO is a type of outsourcing that focuses on hiring a third-party service provider to do IT-related operations, typically categorized into back office outsourcing – such as application management and development, data center operations, and also includes internal business functions like human resources, accounting and finance, and customer related services.

In the beginning, Business Process Outsourcing generally consisted of outsourcing processes like payroll, and then it grew to include employee management. Now it covers more functions that are considered ‘non-core businesses’ to the primary business strategy. Now it is common for organizations to outsource financial and administration processes, human resources, call center and customer service activities, accounting and payroll.

BPO is also frequently referred to as ITES (Information Technology-Enabled Services). Since mostly it includes business processes on some form of automation, which performed services are enabled by IT. The derivative of BPO is KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing), which is considered by some to be a subset of BPO, KPO includes those activities that require greater skill, knowledge, education and expertise to handle. For example, whereas an insurance company might outsource data entry of its claims forms as part of a BPO initiative, it may also choose to use a KPO service provider to evaluate new insurance applications based on a set of criteria or business rules; this work would require the efforts of a more knowledgeable set of workers than the data entry would. The current definition of KPO encompasses R&D, product development and legal e-discovery, as well as a number of other business functions.

Also coming into use is the term BTO (Business Transformation Outsourcing). This refers to the idea of having service providers contribute to the effort of transforming a business into a leaner, more dynamic, agile and flexible operation.