BPO Glossary
A working glossary of Business Process Outsourcing terms: RFPs, SLAs, QA scorecards, WFM, shrinkage, RACI, nearshoring, hypercare, SOC 2, and more, each linked to the lesson that defines it.
A
- Adherence
- A workforce metric showing how closely agents or staff follow their assigned schedules, including start times, breaks, and planned availability. Read the lesson →
- AHT
- Average Handle Time. A contact-center metric covering talk, hold, and after-call work time for a customer interaction. Read the lesson →
B
- BCP
- Business Continuity Plan. The documented approach for keeping critical services running during disruption, including staffing, systems, comms, and fallback processes. Read the lesson →
- BPA
- Business Process Automation. The use of systems, rules, and workflow logic to automate repeatable business activities. Read the lesson →
- BPM
- Business Process Management. The discipline of designing, improving, measuring, and governing business processes over time. Read the lesson →
- BPO
- Business Process Outsourcing. Contracting a third-party provider to run a defined business process with agreed scope, controls, pricing, and performance expectations. Read the lesson →
C
- CCaaS
- Contact Center as a Service. Cloud software used to run contact-center channels, routing, agent desktops, and related service workflows. Read the lesson →
- CES
- Customer Effort Score. A customer-feedback metric focused on how easy or difficult it was for the customer to get help or solve an issue. Read the lesson →
- CSAT
- Customer Satisfaction. A direct customer-feedback measure showing how satisfied customers were with a service interaction or experience. Read the lesson →
- CX BPO
- Customer Experience BPO. Outsourced support or service delivery designed around the wider customer journey, not only isolated call or ticket handling. Read the lesson →
E
- Escalation Matrix
- A visible map of who handles which issue types, priority levels, and client-vendor escalations at each stage of an operation. Read the lesson →
F
- FCR
- First Call Resolution. A service metric showing whether the customer's issue was resolved in the first contact without repeat follow-up. Read the lesson →
- FTE
- Full-Time Equivalent. A staffing unit used in pricing and capacity planning to describe a standardized full-time workload. Read the lesson →
G
- GDPR
- General Data Protection Regulation. The EU data-protection law that shapes how personal data can be processed, transferred, and governed. Read the lesson →
H
- Hypercare
- The heightened support period immediately after launch or transition, when both client and vendor closely watch defects, stability, and readiness. Read the lesson →
K
- KPI
- Key Performance Indicator. A metric used to judge whether a process, team, or account is performing as expected. Read the lesson →
M
- Managed Services
- A delivery model where the provider owns an outcome or service area, not just staff capacity, under defined scope and performance expectations. Read the lesson →
- MBR
- Monthly Business Review. A recurring governance review focused on broader account performance, risks, trends, decisions, and improvement actions. Read the lesson →
N
- Nearshoring
- Outsourcing to a provider in a nearby country, usually to balance cost, timezone overlap, language fit, and management convenience. Read the lesson →
- NPS
- Net Promoter Score. A customer-loyalty metric based on whether customers would recommend the brand or service to others. Read the lesson →
O
- Occupancy
- A contact-center workload metric showing how much logged-in time is spent actively handling contacts versus waiting for work. Read the lesson →
- Omnichannel
- A service model designed to keep customer context and continuity consistent across channels like chat, email, phone, and social. Read the lesson →
P
- PII
- Personally Identifiable Information. Data that can identify or be linked to a specific person, such as names, contact details, account numbers, or IDs. Read the lesson →
Q
- QA Scorecard
- A weighted evaluation form used to review interactions or tasks for quality, compliance, process adherence, and resolution effectiveness. Read the lesson →
R
- RACI
- A responsibility model that marks who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for an activity or decision. Read the lesson →
- RCA
- Root Cause Analysis. A structured way of identifying the deeper cause of a service failure, not just the visible symptom. Read the lesson →
- RFP
- Request for Proposal. A structured sourcing document used to compare vendors on scope fit, transition, controls, pricing, and operating approach. Read the lesson →
- RMA
- Return Merchandise Authorization. A tracked approval or reference used to manage product returns, refunds, and exchanges in ecommerce operations. Read the lesson →
- RPA
- Robotic Process Automation. Software bots used to perform repetitive rules-based tasks across systems. Read the lesson →
S
- Shadowing
- A transition step where the incoming team observes the incumbent or client team doing the work before taking ownership. Read the lesson →
- Shrinkage
- The share of paid time that is not available for productive work because of breaks, training, meetings, coaching, leave, or unplanned absence. Read the lesson →
- SLA
- Service Level Agreement. A defined service commitment with a metric, target, measurement method, exclusions, and usually review or remedy logic. Read the lesson →
- SOC 2
- An assurance framework and report type used to assess how a service organization manages controls around security, availability, confidentiality, and related trust criteria. Read the lesson →
- SOW
- Statement of Work. The contract document that defines what work will be done, how it will be delivered, and what assumptions or boundaries apply. Read the lesson →
- Staff Augmentation
- A delivery model where the buyer adds external people into its own workflow and management structure instead of outsourcing full process ownership. Read the lesson →
T
- TCO
- Total Cost of Outsourcing. The full cost view of an outsourcing model including vendor fees, transition work, tooling, governance, change, and hidden operating friction. Read the lesson →
U
- Utilization
- A measure of how much available capacity is being turned into productive work, often used more broadly than occupancy in BPO and back-office settings. Read the lesson →
W
- WBR
- Weekly Business Review. A recurring operating review focused on short-term service performance, risks, actions, and execution follow-through. Read the lesson →
- WFM
- Workforce Management. The forecasting, staffing, scheduling, intraday control, and adherence-management discipline used to keep service capacity aligned to demand. Read the lesson →
Keep going
Most terms in this glossary are defined fully inside a lesson in the BPO course. Start there if you are new, or open the templates and tools hub to go straight to the operator tools built around these concepts.