When people hear the words “customer service”, they immediately assume that it has something to do with headset-wearing call center agents answering phones all day long. And why not? Indeed, most customer care agents are stationed at the frontlines, taking care of customer needs.
But did you know that this isn’t always the case? Customer service can also come in the form of back-office based contact center and BPO team members? That’s right, even those who aren’t heard or seen are likewise part of the entity that takes care of client needs. In fact, without them, the team isn’t “complete” and may not function properly.
So, what does the back office team do? What do they have to do with customer service?
The one thing that the back-office boys and girls do is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) work. This essentially means that a lot of companies delegate certain tasks to these guys. This workload includes graphic design, website design and development, copywriting services, accounting, legal processing, data entry, message transcription, and the like. These “experts” handle such tasks all day and night. They keep business going, while you look for other opportunities to enable your business to grow.
Apart from “taking care of business” via the aforementioned tasks, the back office team can work on processing customer requests. Such requests include order management and fulfillment, credit card processing, issue resolution, debt collection, and the like. They “fix” whatever is “broken” to ensure that clients get the satisfaction (and fixes that they are looking for).
And of course, they can do such work as research, updating and maintaining databases, looking for the latest technology trends and gadget “tricks”, and other things that can help customers who call in for just about anything and any service which the company offers. In other words, they are the “force” that helps the call center agents do their job. They help keep the company going, along with those folks who represent the firm.
So the next time you hear “back office”, don’t scoff. Remember that they are just as important as the call center agents themselves. They can help take care of customers as well—even behind the scenes.