What is a Call Center?
What is a call center?A call center may refer to a physical center where an outsourcing company conducts various customer contact services that act as a front line to customers.
Call centers comprise a team of agents who are trained for the product or service being offered.
A call center may also refer to a type of BPO setup where a client gets a remote team to handle its customer service hotlines and attend to the client's customers on its behalf.
In call centers, agents often do inbound or outbound call handling. The former talks about customer service, order processing, or technical support.
The latter focuses more on telemarketing, promotions, or selling. In this setup, it is the call center agent who initiates the call to potential customers.
Call center outsourcingA call center employs agents who act as representatives on their client's behalf to deal with questions, concerns, and complaints of the customers.
Aside from that, call centers can also function as sales hotlines and telemarketing teams. Outsource Accelerator provides you with the best call center outsourcing companies in the Philippines, where you can save up to 70% on staffing costs.
Call center vs. Contact centerCall centers and contact centers have almost the same functions and processes. However, their distinction lies in various factors, such as communication channels, skillsets, and volume of handled data.
Call centers focus on offering customer service through phone calls. While many call centers now use non-voice options such as email and chat, their priority still lies in handling incoming or outgoing calls.
Contact centers, meanwhile, provide their services in a wider range of communication channels.
They create an omnichannel approach to their functions, giving clients more flexibility in how they can reach a business. This is why a contact center is also called a "modern call center."
Types of call centersBelow are some of the types of call centers today:
Inbound call centerInbound call centers focus on handling incoming calls daily. Each customer service agent is responsible for answering inquiries and concerns about a firm's products and services.
Outbound call centerOutbound call centers handle outgoing calls to leads and customers of a business.
Agents in this call center type reach out to people for lead generation, appointment confirmation, payment reminders, and other related functions.
Automated call centerIn an automated call center, agents use call center technology to handle some or all of their responsibilities.
Some of their functions include appointment setting, sending shipping updates, and automated transaction confirmation.
Virtual call centerLastly, virtual call centers handle inbound and outbound calls through the cloud. Compared to a traditional call center, virtual call centers don't need a physical space and in-house agents to accomplish their work.
Offshore outsourcing definition
What Is Offshore Outsourcing? Definition and ExamplesOffshore outsourcing is the practice of contracting business functions to a third-party provider in a distant country — usually to cut labour costs, tap specialised talent, or extend operating hours. The word "offshore" signals the geographic gap, often a different continent and time zone.
It sits inside the broader outsourcing family but is not the same thing. Domestic outsourcing keeps the work in the same country. Nearshoring sends it to a neighbouring market. Offshoring moves it far away, typically from a high-wage economy to a lower-cost one.
The model became mainstream in the 1990s as fibre-optic networks made it cheap to route calls and data across oceans. Today it powers everything from a London bank's overnight processing desk to a Sydney startup's first product designer in Cebu.
You'll see the term used loosely. Some firms mean a captive office they own abroad. Others mean a BPO contract with an external vendor. Both fit, so long as the work crosses a border and lands in a distant country.
How it worksA buyer in one country signs a service agreement with a provider in another. The provider hires, trains, and manages the staff locally. The buyer keeps the customer relationship, owns the IP, and pays a monthly fee that bundles wages, overheads, and the vendor's margin.
Three engagement shapes dominate:
Model
What the buyer rents
Best for Project outsourcing
A fixed-scope deliverable
One-off builds, migrations Managed services
A team plus the process
Long-running functions like payroll Staff leasing Named seats under buyer direction
Embedded teams, gradual scale-upCosts typically land 50–70% below equivalent in-house roles in the United States, United Kingdom, or Australia — depending on the destination and skill level. Manila and Cebu sit at the deeper end of that range for English-led customer service. Bengaluru and Hyderabad lead on enterprise software.
Contracts usually cover service levels, data security, exit terms, and IP ownership. Mature buyers also write in a "right to audit" clause and a plan for how knowledge transfers back if the deal ends.
ExamplesConcrete cases make the model easier to picture.
JPMorgan Chase runs major back-office and technology hubs in Manila and Bengaluru, employing tens of thousands across both. The bank uses these sites for transaction processing, application support, and analytics work that runs overnight relative to its New York desks.
Canva, the Sydney-based design platform, has built one of its largest engineering and support footprints in the Philippines since around 2018. It uses the offshore team for product engineering and 24/7 customer support, not just low-cost ticketing.
Google operates a Manila office focused on advertising operations and trust-and-safety functions for the broader Asia-Pacific region. It is a captive offshore site rather than a vendor contract, but the model is the same.
Smaller buyers use the same playbook on a smaller scale. A 40-person law firm in Melbourne might offshore document review and bookkeeping to a Source Boost partner in Manila — freeing local solicitors to bill more hours on advisory work.
Related terms Business process outsourcing (BPO): The parent category. Offshore outsourcing is one geographic flavour of BPO. Nearshoring: Same idea, but the provider sits in a neighbouring country rather than a distant one. Onshoring: Keeping the contracted work inside the buyer's home country. Reshoring: Pulling previously offshored work back home, often for resilience or policy reasons. Captive center: An offshore site the buyer owns and staffs directly, instead of going through a vendor. Staff leasing: A contract type where the buyer directs named offshore seats day-to-day while the vendor handles employment. Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO): Higher-end offshore work like research, legal analysis, or actuarial modelling. FAQ Is offshore outsourcing the same as offshoring?Not quite. Offshoring just means the work moves abroad, which can be to a captive office the buyer owns. Offshore outsourcing adds a second condition: a third-party provider does the work under contract.
Why is the Philippines the largest destination?The country's IT-BPM sector employs around 1.9 million people and generates roughly USD 40 billion a year, according to IBPAP. It pairs strong English proficiency, ranked 28th globally by the EF EPI 2024, with cultural affinity to Western markets and lower labour costs.
What functions are most commonly offshored?Customer service, finance and accounting, IT support, software development, virtual assistance, and back-office admin. Higher-end work like legal research, actuarial analysis, and creative production has grown faster than the older call-centre base over the past decade.
How much can offshore outsourcing actually save?Buyers typically see 50–70% off fully loaded salary costs, with the deeper savings on entry-level roles and the shallower end on senior or specialised hires. Real savings depend on attrition, training time, and how much management bandwidth the offshore team consumes.
What are the main risks?The honest ones are communication gaps, data-security exposure, regulatory friction across jurisdictions, and dependence on a single provider. The World Bank flags digital-economy regulation as a moving target buyers should track in any destination market.
Should small businesses consider it?Yes, and many already do. A two-seat virtual assistant arrangement in Manila or Cebu is a common first step for owner-operators in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States who want to claw back their evenings without hiring locally.
If offshore outsourcing might fit your roadmap, browse our BPO directory to shortlist providers by country, function, and team size before you book a discovery call.
What is First Response Time (FRT)?
What is First Response Time?First response time (“FRT,” also referred to as “first reply time”) is the amount of time between the moment a customer submits a ticket/issue and the moment the customer service representative responds to the customer to provide an initial response. This metric is measured in business hours.
The shorter the first response time, the better. FRT is the acknowledgment to the customer that their concern is being looked into, and keeping it low lessens the possibility of the customer getting even more frustrated from waiting for a response.
About first response timeYour customer service team’s first response time sets your customers’ expectations on the quality of the customer service experience that you provide. An early response to a customer’s concern means that you’re attentive of what they need and willing to get it resolved as soon as possible. Longer response times may make the customer that they need to get your attention in a different way, and may cause them to post a negative review on social media for everyone to see.
What is What is business process outsourcing??
What is business process outsourcing (BPO)?Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the practice of contracting a third-party provider to run a defined business function such as customer support, payroll, accounting, or IT helpdesk. The provider takes ownership of the people, process, and technology, and bills you on a per-seat, per-transaction, or fixed-fee basis.
BPO sits at the intersection of labour arbitrage and operational focus. You hand off a non-core function to a specialist that can run it cheaper, faster, or better, and your in-house team gets to concentrate on what actually moves the business.
The category covers everything from a 4-seat phone team in Cebu answering after-hours calls for a US plumbing firm, to a 5,000-seat captive in Manila handling global claims processing for a Fortune 500 insurer. Same idea, very different scale.
If you've used Apple support, ordered from Amazon, or paid with Wells Fargo, you've talked to a BPO provider — you just didn't know it.
How it worksA BPO engagement runs in three layers: contract, transition, and steady state. You scope the function, sign a service level agreement that locks in response times, quality thresholds, and pricing, then transition the work through documented playbooks and parallel runs before the provider takes the keys.
Pricing usually falls into one of four shapes:
Model
How you pay
Best for Per FTE (seat)
Fixed monthly rate per agent
Steady-volume work like inbound support Per transaction
Set fee per call, ticket, or invoice
Variable-volume back-office tasks Outcome-based
Tied to a KPI like CSAT or collections
Mature processes with clean metrics Hybrid
Base FTE rate plus variable bonus
Long-term partnershipsLocation choice drives most of the savings. Sending work to the Philippines or India (offshoring) typically cuts loaded labour cost by 50–70% versus a US in-house team. Sending it to Mexico or Colombia (nearshoring) trims 30–50% while keeping you in roughly the same timezone. Keeping it domestic (onshoring) protects timezone and language fit but barely moves the cost needle.
The provider absorbs the recruiting, training, real estate, tech stack, and compliance burden. You absorb the vendor-management overhead and the risk that comes with handing a function to an outsider.
ExamplesThe global BPO market hit roughly USD 347.95 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow at a 10.05% CAGR through 2035, according to Precedence Research. That growth is concentrated in a handful of hubs and a handful of named buyers.
Google has used Philippine and Indian BPO partners since 2016 for content moderation, ads review, and customer support — a quiet workforce that scales with each product launch. Meta contracts Accenture and TaskUs in Manila for content moderation; the work pulled enough scrutiny in the early 2020s that Meta eventually broadened its provider base across multiple regions. Wells Fargo has operated a Manila back-office hub since 2011, handling mortgage processing, AML checks, and treasury operations for the US parent. JPMorgan Chase runs large captive and outsourced operations in India and the Philippines for KYC, trade settlement, and analytics.The Philippines remains the standout English-language hub. According to the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines, the country's IT-BPM sector generates roughly USD 40 billion in revenue and employs about 1.9 million people, with growth targets pushing past 2.5 million by 2028.
Related terms Outsourcing: the umbrella term; BPO is the back-office and front-office slice that runs whole processes rather than one-off projects. Offshoring: moving work to a distant country (e.g. US to Philippines). A location choice, not a contracting choice. Nearshoring: moving work to a nearby country (e.g. US to Mexico) to keep timezone and culture closer. Knowledge process outsourcing: KPO handles judgment-heavy work like legal research or equity analysis, not transactional tasks. Call center: one delivery format inside BPO, focused on inbound or outbound voice. Back office: the non-customer-facing operations layer that BPO most commonly absorbs. Service level agreement: the contract clause that defines what "good" looks like in a BPO deal. FAQ What is business process outsourcing in simple terms?BPO is paying another company to run a piece of your business for you, usually a repeatable function like answering support calls, processing invoices, or managing payroll. You keep the brand and the strategy; they run the operation.
What is the difference between BPO and outsourcing?Outsourcing is the broad category — anything you contract out, including one-off projects. BPO is the subset where a provider runs an ongoing, defined business process end-to-end, typically with its own staff, systems, and SLAs.
Is BPO only about cost savings?No. Cost is the entry argument, but mature buyers cite access to specialist talent, 24/7 coverage, faster scaling, and freeing in-house leaders to focus on growth as bigger long-term wins. See the directory of vetted providers on Clutch for how the market positions itself today.
What functions do companies outsource most often?Customer support, IT helpdesk, finance and accounting, payroll, HR administration, content moderation, and data entry top the list. Higher-judgment work like legal research, equity analysis, and medical coding has shifted to KPO providers over the last decade.
Which countries dominate the BPO industry?The Philippines leads voice and customer experience, India leads IT and analytics, and Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica) leads nearshore work for North American buyers. Eastern Europe serves Western European clients on similar terms.
How do I choose a BPO provider?Match scale to your volume, check for relevant compliance (ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2), ask for two reference clients in your industry, and pilot a small scope before committing to a multi-year contract. Walk away from any provider that won't share agent attrition data.
Ready to scope a BPO partner? Outsource Accelerator lists 4,000+ vetted providers across the top global hubs — use the directory to shortlist, compare pricing, and book intro calls without paying a referral fee.
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