Published 20th October 2015

What is a BPO?

As a job board we work with a many agencies that state their client is a BPO. But we often hear ‘’what is a BPO?’’ – Ask and you shall receive.

Business Process Outsourcing

That is what BPO means: in other words this basically means that company A looks after a process for company B usually on the premises of company A. In case that is not clear company A does the customer service or technical support or billing administration etc. for company B.

But why do companies need Business Process Outsourcing?

Simply put there are 2 main reasons. Outsourcing your customer service, technical support etc. to a BPO is either cheaper or the BPO provider is just better at providing the service. A cost saving example could be to centralize all individual customer service operations across Europe in a country where the cost of living is cheaper and therefore employing people in this location will save a large amount of money. That is why you might want to start considering to work in Portugal!

The other reason companies outsource is the fact that a BPO might just be better in providing this particular service. For instance large E-commerce providers might be superb at creating online platforms, increasing traffic and great online customer journeys, but their offline activities like a customer service or billing support is lacking. So what do they do? The best way is to keep core activities in-house and outsource activities they may not be the best at to BPO’s. 

So what are the benefits of working for a BPO?

First of all BPO’s have SLA’s (Service level agreements) with their customers. One of them is usually that the need to have X amount of people by a certain date and therefore BPO’s like to have quick interview processes and short turnaround times. So if you are looking to find a job abroad tomorrow perhaps start working for a BPO. Furthermore BPO’s that take on projects because they are often better at providing this take on customers who are still growing and therefore need BPO’s that can help them grow. Join these BPO’s and you could grow from customer service agent to Teamleader very fast.

Are there any downsides to working for a BPO?

The jobs are exactly the same whether they are in-house or outsourced, all targets will be the same as well, so no downside there. However should you wish to start in customer service and then move to online marketing for instance this might not be possible if the BPO you apply for has a strong focus on customer service processes and therefore all internal promotions might be related to this.

So if you are looking for that language job abroad apply with a Multilingual BPO today!