What Is a BPO Call Center? How BPOs Work and Where AI Fits

A BPO call center is a third-party company that handles customer calls and other conversations on behalf of another business. BPO stands for business process outsourcing, and call center work is one of the most common services BPO providers offer.

Below, we'll cover what BPO call centers do, how they differ from in-house call centers, the main types, the pros and cons of working with one, and how AI is changing the way BPOs operate.

What is a BPO call center?

A BPO call center is an outsourcing provider that handles inbound and outbound customer conversations for other companies. The BPO supplies trained agents, management, and the technology to run them, while the client business sets the goals, processes, and quality standards those agents follow.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) more broadly means contracting a third-party provider to run part of your operations. That can include payroll, accounting, IT support, or data entry. Call and contact center work is one of the most visible forms of BPO because the provider's agents speak directly with your customers.

What does a BPO company do?

For a call center engagement, a BPO provider typically:

• Recruits, hires, and trains agents for your account

• Staffs shifts to match your hours, time zones, and expected volume

• Runs or connects to the contact center software agents use for calls, chat, email, and messaging

• Monitors quality, coaches agents, and manages day-to-day performance

• Reports results back to you against the metrics in your service level agreement (SLA)

BPO vs. call center: what's the difference?

A call center is a function: a team that handles customer calls. A BPO is a type of provider: a company that runs business functions, including call centers, for other organizations.

That means a call center can be either in-house or outsourced. An in-house call center is staffed by your own employees. A BPO call center is staffed and managed by a third party working on your behalf. Many businesses use both, keeping some conversations in-house and sending others to a BPO partner.

The terms "call center" and "contact center" are also often used interchangeably. A contact center covers digital channels like chat, email, text, and social messaging in addition to voice, and most BPO providers today offer both.

Types of BPO call centers

BPO call centers are usually described by the kind of work they do and where their agents are located.

Front office and back office

Front-office BPO covers customer-facing work, such as customer service, technical support, and sales calls. Back-office BPO covers work customers don't see, such as order processing, billing, data entry, and claims handling. Many providers offer both.

Inbound and outbound

An inbound call center answers calls customers initiate, usually for support, account questions, or orders. An outbound call center places calls to customers and prospects, usually for sales, lead qualification, surveys, or follow-ups.

Onshore, nearshore, and offshore

Onshore BPOs operate in the same country as the client. Nearshore BPOs operate in a neighboring country or a similar time zone. Offshore BPOs operate farther away, often at lower labor costs, with more coordination needed across time zones. The call center outsourcing decision usually weighs these trade-offs against cost, language needs, and how much control you want.

Pros and cons of working with a BPO call center

Working with a BPO can be a good fit for some contact centers and a poor fit for others. These are the trade-offs to weigh.

Pros

• More flexible costs: You avoid many of the fixed costs of an in-house team, such as workspace, recruiting, and onboarding, and pay for capacity as you need it.

• Extended coverage: BPOs with teams in multiple time zones can help you support customers outside your business hours.

• Staffing handled for you: The provider recruits, schedules, and replaces agents, which can take a time-consuming process off your plate.

• Specialized experience: Some BPOs focus on industries like healthcare, insurance, or retail, or on functions like technical support or outbound sales, and bring trained agents with them.

Cons

• Training and knowledge transfer: Agents need to learn your products, policies, and brand voice, and keeping that knowledge current takes ongoing effort from your team.

• Less direct control: You manage outcomes through the SLA and regular reviews rather than day-to-day supervision.

• Data security: A BPO will handle customer information on your behalf, so you'll need to confirm how they protect it and meet any regulatory requirements that apply to your business.

How BPOs are using AI

AI is changing both how BPO agents work and what clients ask BPOs to handle. A few shifts stand out.

Real-time guidance for agents

BPO agents often support several clients and products, which makes ramp time a constant challenge. AI that surfaces talking points, policies, or answers during live conversations can help new agents get up to speed faster and keep experienced agents consistent when a client's policies change.

Quality review across more conversations

Traditional QA relies on reviewers listening to a small sample of calls. With AI transcription and scoring, BPOs can review far more conversations, spot coaching opportunities earlier, and report quality to clients with more evidence behind it.

AI agents for routine requests

AI agents can now resolve many routine, structured requests, such as order status, appointment scheduling, and account updates, without a person on the line. As clients automate more of that volume, the work they send to BPOs may shift toward complex conversations, specialized queues, and overflow, and some engagements may move toward outcome-based pricing.

An example: MarketStar

MarketStar, a global sales and marketing outsourcing company, runs outbound sales teams for its clients on Dialpad. Its reps use AI Live Coach Cards, which surface talking points during live calls based on preset trigger words, and managers use call histories, transcripts, and sentiment to coach reps more effectively.

"We are building much more efficient and scalable sales teams for our clients with the help of Dialpad Sell. Historically, onboarding new sales reps has been time and resource intensive. Since implementing Dialpad Sell, we've been able to ramp employees quicker, get them on prospect calls sooner and produce enhanced results for our clients."

-Keith Titus, CEO & President, MarketStar

How to choose a BPO call center partner

If you're evaluating BPO providers, these are the areas to compare:

• Scope: Which channels, request types, hours, and languages the provider can cover for you.

• Location: Whether onshore, nearshore, or offshore agents best fit your customers, budget, and time zones.

• Specialization: Experience in your industry or in the function you're outsourcing, such as technical support or outbound sales.

• Security practices: How the provider protects customer data, controls access, and meets the regulatory requirements that apply to you.

• Technology: The contact center platform agents use, how it connects to your CRM, and how much visibility it gives your team into live and recorded conversations.

• Service levels: The metrics in the service level agreement, how often results are reported, and what happens when targets are missed.

Once you've shortlisted providers, the next decisions in contact center outsourcing are how to scope and price the engagement, and how AI agents will fit alongside your in-house and outsourced teams.

Managing in-house and BPO teams together

Many businesses don't hand over their entire contact center. Instead, they keep a core team in-house and use outside or overseas agents for overflow, after-hours coverage, or specialty queues. That model works best when every team runs on the same platform, with shared routing rules, reporting, and customer context.

Service Today, a plumbing and home repair company in Australia, takes this approach with contact center teams in Australia and the Philippines. Calls go first to its Australia team, and overflow routes to the Philippines team, which lets the business keep its core service close to home while managing costs as it grows.

When teams are spread across locations or providers, visibility matters. In Dialpad Support for contact centers, supervisors can view live calls with real-time transcripts and sentiment, then listen in, whisper to an agent, barge in, or take over a call when needed. AI Scorecards and contact center analytics help managers review quality and performance consistently, whether agents are in-house or with a partner. And with Dialpad AI Agents handling routine requests, escalations pass the transcript and context to whichever human agent picks up the conversation.