BPO Glossary & Vocabulary
Browse our comprehensive index of BPO metrics, compliance standards, and operational terms to align your service targets.
AHT (Average Handle Time)
The average duration of a customer support call or chat session, including hold times and administrative work.
View Definition →AI Triage
Using AI to automatically classify, prioritize, and route an incoming call, chat, or ticket to the right queue or agent before a human ever looks at it.
View Definition →API Integration
Connecting two software systems — such as a client's CRM and a BPO partner's ticketing platform — so they can exchange data programmatically instead of requiring manual re-entry.
View Definition →ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
Monthly Recurring Revenue annualized (MRR × 12), used as the standard growth benchmark for subscription and contract-based businesses.
View Definition →Accounts Payable (AP)
The back-office function that processes and pays a company's outstanding invoices to its vendors and suppliers.
View Definition →Accounts Receivable (AR)
The back-office function that tracks and collects payments owed to a company by its customers.
View Definition →Address Verification
Confirming that a customer's stated residential or business address is accurate and current, often through document checks or third-party database lookups.
View Definition →Agent Copilot
An AI assistant that suggests responses, relevant knowledge-base articles, or next-best-actions to a human agent in real time during a live interaction, without replacing the agent.
View Definition →Analytics Engine
The backend system that processes raw operational data — call events, ticket logs, agent activity — into the metrics and trends shown on dashboards and reports.
View Definition →Answer Rate
The percentage of outbound calls that are answered by anyone (not necessarily the target contact), out of total dial attempts.
View Definition →Attrition
The rate at which agents leave a team or company over a given period, usually reported monthly or annually.
View Definition →Audit Trail
A chronological, tamper-evident record of who accessed or modified a piece of data or a system, and when.
View Definition →Automated Transcription
Software that converts call audio into searchable text automatically, without a human transcriber.
View Definition →B2B Lead Generation
The overall function of identifying and engaging potential business customers to build a sales pipeline, distinct from the SDR role that typically executes it.
View Definition →B2C Support (Business-to-Consumer)
Customer support delivered directly to individual end consumers, as opposed to B2B support delivered to business accounts.
View Definition →BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline)
A lead qualification framework that scores a prospect on their Budget, decision-making Authority, business Need, and purchase Timeline before passing them to sales.
View Definition →BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance)
BFSI is an industry collective term representing commercial banks, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), fintech startups, and insurance carriers.
View Definition →BI Portal (Business Intelligence Portal)
A self-service reporting portal that gives a client direct access to pull and customize their own reports across the engagement, rather than waiting on scheduled deliverables.
View Definition →BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)
Outsourcing routine operations (like customer support, data entry, or sales) to a specialized partner.
View Definition →Back-Office Support
Administrative and operational work that supports the business but doesn't involve direct customer interaction — data entry, document processing, reconciliation, reporting.
View Definition →Billing Support
Customer support focused on resolving invoice questions, payment failures, plan changes, and billing disputes.
View Definition →Booking Support
Customer support specific to travel, hospitality, or reservation-based businesses — handling new bookings, changes, and cancellations.
View Definition →CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
The total sales and marketing cost divided by the number of new customers acquired in a given period.
View Definition →CAPA (Corrective and Preventive Action)
A structured process for investigating a quality or compliance failure, fixing the immediate issue (corrective), and changing the process so it doesn't recur (preventive).
View Definition →CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
Software databases used to manage client contacts, interaction logs, and pipeline details.
View Definition →CRM Routing
Rules-based automatic assignment of leads or tickets within a CRM to the right rep or queue, based on criteria like territory, product line, or lead score.
View Definition →CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)
A primary service metric measuring how satisfied customers are with a specific transaction, support interaction, or product purchase.
View Definition →Call Center Outsourcing
Call center outsourcing is contracting a company's phone-based customer conversations, inbound, outbound or both, to an external provider whose agents handle the calls under agreed service levels, scripts and quality standards. Most providers also handle chat, email and messaging alongside voice, so the work is often called contact center outsourcing.
View Definition →Call Distribution (ACD)
The automatic routing of inbound calls to the next available or best-matched agent, based on rules like skill, language, or queue priority.
View Definition →Call Recording
The practice of recording customer calls for quality assurance, compliance evidence, and agent training purposes.
View Definition →Cart Abandonment
When an online shopper adds items to a cart but leaves the site without completing checkout.
View Definition →Chatbot Triage
A chatbot handling the first stage of a chat conversation — gathering context and resolving simple requests — before handing off to a human agent only when needed.
View Definition →Churn (Customer/Revenue Churn)
The rate at which customers cancel or fail to renew a contract within a given period, usually expressed as a monthly or annual percentage.
View Definition →Claims Processing
The end-to-end handling of an insurance claim, from initial submission and document verification through adjudication and payout.
View Definition →Clean Desk Policy
A workplace security policy prohibiting agents from writing down, printing, or physically storing sensitive customer data at their workstation.
View Definition →Cold Calling
Cold calling is the practice of phoning a prospect who has had no previous contact with the seller, to introduce a product or service, find out whether the prospect has a relevant need and, if so, arrange a next step such as a meeting or demo. In B2B sales, sales development representatives (SDRs) usually make these calls.
View Definition →Collections Support
Outreach focused on recovering overdue payments from customers while preserving the relationship, distinct from aggressive third-party debt collection.
View Definition →Compliance
Compliance is adherence to statutory regulations, industry standards, and data protection mandates governing business and operational practices.
View Definition →Concierge Support
A high-touch, white-glove support model where a customer works with a dedicated point of contact rather than a rotating queue of agents.
View Definition →Contact Rate
The percentage of outbound dial attempts that result in an actual live conversation with the intended prospect, rather than a voicemail, no-answer, or wrong number.
View Definition →Continuous Optimization
The ongoing practice of using performance data from daily, weekly, and monthly reviews to make incremental process improvements, rather than treating a program as "set and forget" after launch.
View Definition →Conversion Rate
The percentage of prospects or leads that complete a desired action — booking a meeting, making a purchase — out of the total number contacted.
View Definition →Daily Reporting
A short, recurring end-of-day summary of volume, SLA status, and any flagged issues, shared with a client's operational stakeholders.
View Definition →Dashboard
A live visual display of key operational metrics — SLA status, volume, AHT, CSAT — used for at-a-glance monitoring of a program's performance.
View Definition →Data Privacy
The set of practices governing how personal or sensitive information is collected, accessed, used, and protected from unauthorized disclosure.
View Definition →Database Management
The ongoing work of entering, updating, cleaning, and maintaining accuracy in a company's core operational or customer database.
View Definition →Deduplication
The process of identifying and merging duplicate records in a database or CRM so the same contact or company isn't tracked as multiple separate entries.
View Definition →Dialer
Outbound calling software that automates the process of placing calls from a contact list, ranging from simple preview dialers to advanced predictive dialers.
View Definition →Data Enrichment
The process of appending missing details — company size, industry, verified contact info — to a raw lead or contact record from third-party data sources.
View Definition →Escalation
The formal process of routing a customer issue to a higher support tier, specialist, or manager when it cannot be resolved at the current level.
View Definition →FCR (First Contact Resolution)
The percentage of customer support requests resolved on the very first contact, without follow-ups.
View Definition →FTE (Full-Time Equivalent)
A standardized unit representing one full-time worker's hours, used as the billing and staffing unit in most BPO service contracts.
View Definition →First Response Time (FRT)
The elapsed time between a customer submitting a support request and receiving their first reply from an agent.
View Definition →GCC (Global Capability Centre)
A Global Capability Centre (GCC) is an offshore unit that a multinational company owns and runs itself to deliver work for the parent company, such as technology, research and development, finance, analytics or customer support, instead of contracting that work to an outside provider. GCCs are also called captive centres.
View Definition →GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
The European Union's data protection law governing how personal data of EU residents is collected, processed, and stored.
View Definition →Governance
Governance is the operational management framework of policies, reviews, and escalations ensuring alignment and accountability between a client and an outsourcing partner.
View Definition →HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
A US federal law setting security and privacy standards for handling protected health information (PHI).
View Definition →Helpdesk
A centralized support function that logs, tracks, and resolves customer or employee technical issues through a ticketing system.
View Definition →ISO 27001
An international standard specifying the requirements for an organization's Information Security Management System (ISMS).
View Definition →IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
An automated phone system that routes callers to the right department or self-service option using voice or keypad input before a human agent is involved.
View Definition →Identity Validation
Confirming that a person is who they claim to be, typically by matching submitted ID documents, biometrics, or database records against the applicant.
View Definition →Invoice Matching
The process of verifying that an invoice, purchase order, and delivery receipt all agree before an invoice is approved for payment.
View Definition →KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable metrics used to evaluate how effectively an operational team or partner achieves business objectives.
View Definition →KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing)
Outsourcing complex, information-heavy business tasks (such as credit analysis, research, or auditing).
View Definition →KYC (Know Your Customer)
A mandatory verification process to verify the identity and address credentials of customers.
View Definition →L1 Support (Tier 1 Support)
The first line of technical or customer support, handling common, well-documented issues using standard scripts and troubleshooting guides.
View Definition →L2 Support (Tier 2 Support)
The escalation tier handling issues L1 agents cannot resolve, staffed by specialists with deeper product or technical knowledge.
View Definition →LTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
The total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account over the full duration of the relationship.
View Definition →Lead Scoring
A method of ranking prospects by assigning point values to attributes and behaviors (job title, company size, website activity) to predict how likely they are to convert.
View Definition →MBR (Monthly Business Review)
A recurring monthly meeting between a BPO partner and client to review SLA performance, volume trends, and open issues.
View Definition →MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
The predictable revenue a subscription business collects every month from active customer contracts.
View Definition →Managed Services
An outsourcing model where the BPO provider owns the process end-to-end — staffing, training, quality control, and reporting — and delivers against agreed outcomes rather than just supplying headcount.
View Definition →Multilingual Support
Customer support delivered across multiple languages, either by hiring language-specific agents or through certified translation-assisted workflows.
View Definition →NCPR (National Customer Preference Register)
India's official do-not-call registry — formerly known as NDNC (National Do Not Call) — that lets consumers block unsolicited commercial calls and SMS by category.
View Definition →NPS (Net Promoter Score)
A metrics index evaluating customer loyalty and their likelihood to recommend a company to others (scored -100 to +100).
View Definition →Nearshoring
Outsourcing business operations to a service provider in a nearby country, typically sharing a similar time zone, rather than a distant offshore location.
View Definition →Occupancy Rate
The percentage of an agent's logged-in time spent actively handling calls or tickets (talk time plus after-call work), excluding idle time between interactions.
View Definition →Offshoring
Outsourcing business operations to a service provider in a distant country, usually to access lower labor costs or specialized talent pools.
View Definition →Omnichannel Support
A support model where voice, chat, email, and social channels are unified into one system so an agent has full context on a customer regardless of which channel they used to reach out.
View Definition →Onboarding (Client Onboarding)
The structured process of setting up a new BPO engagement — training agents, integrating systems, and configuring workflows — before an account goes live.
View Definition →Onshoring
Outsourcing business operations to a service provider located within the same country as the client, as opposed to nearshore or offshore delivery.
View Definition →Outsourced SDR (Outsourced Sales Development Representative)
An outsourced SDR is a sales development representative employed and managed by an external provider who researches, contacts and qualifies prospects on a client's behalf, then books qualified meetings for the client's own sales team. The client sets the target market and qualification criteria; the provider supplies the people, training, tools and supervision.
View Definition →Outsourcing
Contracting a business function to an external specialized provider instead of performing it with in-house staff.
View Definition →PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)
A security standard that any business handling credit or debit card transactions must comply with to protect cardholder data.
View Definition →Pilot Phase
A limited-scope, limited-duration trial period at the start of a BPO engagement, used to validate performance before committing to full-volume staffing.
View Definition →Predictive Dialer
Outbound calling software that automatically dials multiple numbers at once and connects an agent only when a live person answers, based on predicted agent availability.
View Definition →Process Automation
Using software to handle repetitive, rules-based tasks — data entry, status updates, routing — without manual human action.
View Definition →QBR (Quarterly Business Review)
A higher-level quarterly meeting between a BPO partner and client leadership focused on strategic trends, capacity planning, and contract-level outcomes rather than day-to-day metrics.
View Definition →Record Verification
The process of confirming that submitted documents or data (identity, income, address) are authentic and accurate before they're used to approve a transaction.
View Definition →Refund Management
The process of evaluating, approving, and processing customer refund requests according to a company's policy.
View Definition →Renewals
The process of securing a customer's continued subscription or contract at the end of a billing or policy term.
View Definition →SDR (Sales Development Representative)
A sales specialist focused on prospecting, outbound cold outreach, and scheduling qualified appointments.
View Definition →SLA (Service Level Agreement)
A contract parameter defining the minimum service metrics a vendor must meet (e.g., first response under 15 minutes).
View Definition →SLA Breach
A failure to meet a contracted service level, such as missing a response-time or resolution-time commitment.
View Definition →SOC 2
An independent audit standard evaluating a service provider's controls around data security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.
View Definition →Sales as a Service
Sales as a Service is an outsourcing model in which a provider runs part of a company's sales function as an ongoing managed service, typically prospect research, outbound outreach, lead qualification and appointment setting, using its own trained staff, tools and management. Clients pay for a staffed team or agreed outcomes instead of building that capacity in-house.
View Definition →Salesforce
Salesforce is an enterprise cloud Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform used to manage sales pipelines, customer interactions, and operational reporting.
View Definition →Scale Phase
The stage of a BPO engagement after a successful pilot, where headcount, hours of coverage, or scope expands to full contracted volume.
View Definition →Sentiment Analysis
AI-driven detection of a customer's emotional tone — positive, negative, or neutral — from the text or audio of a support interaction.
View Definition →Show Rate
The percentage of booked meetings or appointments where the prospect actually attends, out of all meetings scheduled.
View Definition →Shrinkage
The percentage of paid working time lost to breaks, training, meetings, absenteeism, and other non-productive activity — time an agent is scheduled but not actually handling customer work.
View Definition →Staff Augmentation
A staffing model where outsourced personnel work as an extension of a client's existing internal team, under the client's direct process and management, rather than as a fully managed independent function.
View Definition →Steering Committee
The standing group of senior stakeholders from both the client and the BPO partner — not a meeting cadence itself, but the group of decision-makers who own strategic direction for the engagement.
View Definition →TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India)
The Indian government body that regulates telecom services, including the rules governing outbound calling, SMS, and telemarketing registration.
View Definition →Tax Filing Support
Back-office assistance with preparing, organizing, and submitting the documentation needed for regulatory tax filings.
View Definition →Technical Support
Support focused on diagnosing and resolving product or software issues, typically tiered into L1 (common issues) and L2 (specialist) levels.
View Definition →Telemetry
The raw operational event data continuously captured from systems in use — call start/end times, click events, status changes — before it's processed into reportable metrics.
View Definition →Ticketing System
Software that logs every customer or internal support request as a trackable "ticket," recording its status, owner, and history until resolution.
View Definition →Underwriting
The process of evaluating the risk of insuring or lending to an applicant, and setting the terms accordingly.
View Definition →Utilization Rate
The percentage of an agent's total paid time (including breaks and training) that is spent on productive, billable work.
View Definition →VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
Technology that carries voice calls over the internet instead of traditional phone lines, the standard infrastructure behind modern call center operations.
View Definition →Webhook Trigger
An automated, event-driven notification that fires from one system to another the instant a specific action happens — such as a new lead being created — without either system needing to be manually checked.
View Definition →Weekly Alignment
A recurring weekly sync between the BPO delivery team and client stakeholders to review short-term trends and resolve open operational issues.
View Definition →Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service and support ticketing platform enabling omnichannel communication across email, chat, voice, and social channels.
View Definition →Zero Trust (Security Model)
A security approach that verifies every user and device on every request, rather than automatically trusting anything already inside the network perimeter.
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