The BPO Industry is made up of many different types of services. Some are customer-facing and others are back-office services where little communication with the client is required. Every type of BPO employment offers great opportunities for learning and career growth.
The 4 main types of contact centres in South Africa:
- Domestic captive contact centre
- Domestic outsourced contact centre
- International captive contact centre
- International outsourced contact centre
| Local companies | |
| Domestic captive contact centres | Service their own customers in-house Examples: Sanlam, SARS, TFG |
| Domestic outsourced contact centres | Service local & international customers for other companies Examples: AskOska, Nimbo Collections (Service local & International customers ) Anton Richards & Associates (service local customers only) |
| International companies operating from South Africa | |
| International captive contact centres | Service their own international customers in-house Example: Amazon |
| International outsourced contact centres | Service international customers for different companies Example: WNS |
There are 2 main categories of work:
1. Voice: agents offer services by phone
2. Non-voice: Where agents use technology such as web chat, email, and social media
Voice-driven services have traditionally played a dominant role in South Africa’s BPO industry, but a large part of the industry is moving towards MULTI-CHANNEL service delivery.
Multichannel services means allowing customers to have conversations on their terms, at their convenience and using the channels – phone, email, chat, text – that make the most sense to them.
This means that BPO agents have more and more flexibility to use voice, email, chat and social media to deliver services.
Voice and non-voice services are used in:
Inbound contact centres (customer facing) (link to JD’s)
Examples: enquiries, reservations, customer care, customer experience, order taking, technical support hotline, event coordination. Click here for Job Descriptions
Outbound contact centres (customer facing)
Examples: sales, surveys, lead generation, promotions & activations, contract selling, appointment setting, database enrichment, and other data services. Click here for Job Descriptions
Back Office services (non-customer facing)
This is a fast-growing section of the South African BPO industry.
Local and international companies outsource some of their business departments to contact centres.
Examples: back office admin, document management, editorial processes, data analytics, research, human resources, virtual management, design, animation, debt collecting, fraud reporting, and more. Click here for Job Descriptions
Inbound, Outbound and Back office services in South Africa provide important support to companies in a number of different countries and industries. They employ people who have experience, skills and/or training in those specific business areas, including (but not limited to):
- Banking & financial services
- Insurance
- Legal
- Healthcare
- Retail
- IT technology and communications, application development, big data & artificial intelligence
