AI for BPO Call Centers: How Can You Gain a Competitive Edge?

You’ve got the talent and the trust—now you need the tech to prove it. Your BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) call center already has skilled support teams and businesses eager to work with you. 

What’s missing? 

The right technology to demonstrate you can handle a high volume of inquiries and deliver quality results while you do it.

Valued at $302.62 billion in 2024 and projected to grow nearly 10% annually through 2030, the global BPO market is booming. Industries like retail, IT, telecom, and healthcare are pouring resources into BPO partnerships. To win their business, you need more than people—you need a platform that backs them up.

Your clients expect customer service that provides:

• Speed
• Efficiency
• Quality
• Price optimization
• Reliable technology

From resolving tickets before they ever reach a live agent to delivering real-time coaching and personalized support, next-gen AI empowers BPOs to elevate the customer experience and outpace the competition. From new businesses to established call centers, AI enables them to compete with the biggest brands in the market.

In this article, we’ll walk through:

• What organizations are looking for in modern BPOs
• How BPOs are using AI
• How AI can give your business a competitive edge

Let’s dive in!

What’s the role of BPOs in customer service?

BPOs play a key role in customer service, especially for inbound services, by handling:

• Customer inquiries
• Support requests
• Service issues on behalf of other companies

Outsourcing customer support, telemarketing, dispatching, and technical support to BPO contact centers helps companies serve customers more efficiently and reach people across different time zones and languages. 

Many companies recognize the need for fast customer service. As much as 90% of customers expect an immediate response when contacting a company about an issue. Think of it this way: if you manage a large fashion e-commerce store like H&M, it’d require a complete restructuring of the company to handle all the customer requests, such as:

• FAQs
• Shipments
• Dealing with local delivery companies and manufacturers
• Returns and refunds

That’s where BPO centers come in. Organizations are looking to businesses like yours to support them across:

• Creating consistent service across channels: BPOs ensure customers receive the same quality of service, whether they reach out via phone, chat, or email, creating a unified brand experience. Customers can interact with BPO agents in their native language and reach them during local business hours.
• Providing human agents with resources to improve accuracy: Specialized BPO centers equip agents with tools like knowledge bases and real-time guidance to give correct answers faster, boosting customer satisfaction (CSAT).
• Enabling seasonal BPO teams to ramp up faster: With streamlined onboarding processes and pre-trained systems, BPOs can quickly scale teams for busy periods without long training times. We’re talking days, not weeks.
• Automating repetitive and manual tasks: Many BPOs offer their clients automation technology within their services. AI handles routine tasks behind the scenes, like documenting calls and transferring information between systems, saving time and reducing costs. With repetitive tasks out of the way, agents can handle customer requests with ease and more attention.
• Improving overall customer experience and KPIs: By enhancing speed, accuracy, and satisfaction, BPOs boost call center optimization and help improve key metrics like first call resolution (FCR), average handling time (AHT), and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT).

However, to deliver all of these services and benefits to your clients, you have to leverage not only your human staff but also technology. 

How BPO call centers are using AI: 5 use cases you can try

Leading customer care companies expect call volume to increase in the coming years, with the average spend per employee in the BPO call center market projected to reach US $115.46 in 2025. Even for BPOs with large support teams, it becomes more difficult to handle the growing number of customer interactions and ensure:

• Fast resolution times
• Helpful attitudes
• Cost optimization

That’s why many BPO centers are either building their own AI teams or outsourcing to white-label solutions like Capacity. AI tools have come a long way from the typical robotic answers in website chats. Now, your business can use AI at every customer touchpoint—from handling large amounts of inquiries to acting as the right hand to your team.

1. Agent assist

Your agents deal with countless customer support questions daily. They can’t always be ready for every request or question that comes their way. For example, when a customer requests a return, your agent might not be sure whether a refund is allowed or not. It’d take them at least a few minutes to find relevant information. With AI, that’s no longer a problem.

Agent assist is a tool that uses AI to give real-time suggestions during customer interactions, helping agents respond faster and more accurately. By integrating with systems like help desks and CRMs, it can pull in relevant customer data and recommend actions to streamline workflows and reduce handling time, and even manage the post-call documentation.

For example, Capacity automatically types up notes after each call. Your staff no longer needs to spend five or more minutes after a call writing post-call summaries. 

The Capacity AI assistant automatically:

• Transcribes the entire interaction
• Summarizes it
• Attaches it to your CRM 

Agents can go straight to helping the next customer instead of wasting time writing up what just happened. 

2. Agent coaching

Agent coaching for BPOs uses AI to deliver real-time feedback and performance insights to agents during or after calls. This helps them continuously:

• Improve their skills
• Resolve issues faster
• Reduce handle times by learning what works best in each interaction

This is particularly useful in a field where staff turnover is high and there are many seasonal or part-time employees. According to McKinsey’s findings, most call centers have around a 60% annual turnover rate, increasing the resources necessary for new employee training.

Instead of spending a lot of (and expensive) time training each new employee, BPOs delegate this task to AI agents. And it’s not just the onboarding stage, AI can support agents at every stage of their work. 

Let’s say an agent spends more time than average per ticket. An AI coach will give feedback to help the agent optimize their response time and improve the speed of their service. On top of that, agents can use readily available information and interact with AI to assist customers more efficiently.

3. Conversational AI

One of the most common use cases of AI in BPO call centers is conversational omnichannel AI software. Instead of customers going straight to calling your agents, they can resolve their routine questions through a conversational chat. 

Advanced AI chatbots go beyond simple yes-and-no questions. Based on:

• Business information
• Historical data
• Previous interactions
• Customer behavioral cues

Conversational AI chatbots adjust their tone and personalize conversations to the customer. For example, if a customer wants to know where their order is, an AI chatbot can interact with them, review their account details, and send a tracking link. The same chatbot can conversationally handle customer complaints if their order is late. All of this happens without the need to involve your human agents, because AI sounds just as friendly and competent.

Zara, the clothing retailer, outsources its customer support to a BPO call center that uses conversational AI chatbots. These bots handle specific queries and respond in a conversational tone that matches that of a human agent.

4. Sentiment analysis

83% of customers feel more loyal toward companies that respond to and resolve their complaints. One of the best ways to achieve a high CSAT is by matching customer sentiment.

Sentiment analysis uses AI to detect the emotional tone of customer interactions, such as frustration, satisfaction, or confusion, in real time. This helps AI agents respond more empathetically and transfer customers to human agents if the issue escalates.

For example, if a customer is frustrated because their package is missing, an AI agent can suggest a small discount on the next purchase to de-escalate the situation or direct them to a relevant department to speak with a human agent.

4. Self-service 

Self-service allows customers to resolve common issues on their own using tools like:

• FAQs
• Chatbots
• Interactive voice response (IVR) systems

Reports show that AI-powered self-service tools can handle around 80% of routine customer questions. This reduces the need for agent support, speeds up resolution times, and empowers customers with quick, convenient solutions.

Many customer interactions don’t require human assistance. Questions like:

• “How much does express shipping cost?”
• “How long does it take to deliver an order to France?”
• “Where can I find my tracking information?”

can be handled by AI agents, reducing wait times, call and ticket volume, and optimizing costs. AI BPO solutions catch customer behavior cues and keywords to provide only relevant information, instead of automatically sending them to the help center resource page.

A great example is Verizon, the telecommunications company. They use interactive AI chat to personalize customer service and help users perform routine tasks like reviewing billing or finding a new device to buy.

4 Ways AI gives your BPO a competitive edge

Your main goal is to make sure your clients and their customers are happy with the service you provide. 

This means:

• Fast delivery and ticket resolution
• Personalized and conversational service
• Optimized costs and reduced spending

All of this can be easily achieved with modern AI automation tools. Let’s look at how AI could help your business thrive.

1. Lower costs for customers

AI shifts BPO pricing models toward outcome-based billing, meaning clients pay for actual results, like successful resolutions, rather than just activity. 

Without AI, BPOs are typically paid based on:

• Number of interactions per hour
• Staying under certain call time limits
• Number of agents on board

This doesn’t always reflect customer satisfaction or issue resolution. 

With AI agents, BPOs often charge clients per resolution, not per hour. That means clients pay only when the AI actually solves something, such as finishing a chat, email, or voice inquiry. It’s efficient, measurable, and better aligned with outcomes. This way, you can offer your customers an optimal price-to-quality ratio.

2. Ability to compete with larger BPOs

As more BPOs invest in AI to power their business, small and mid-sized centers need to pay attention. The largest companies have the resources to build internal AI teams. But white-label solutions like Capacity’s AI for BPOs level the playing field by giving growing BPOs access to advanced tools without the need for large tech teams or heavy R&D investment. 

You don’t need to build your own internal AI team. With tools like Capacity, you can:

• Move faster
• Deflect more inquiries
• Support your customers more effectively

Offering AI-powered capabilities in your RFPs gives you a competitive edge. You can reduce operational costs while managing clients with even higher volumes—thanks to AI’s ability to deflect a large number of inquiries and help train your teams faster.

3. Faster employee training

AI tools like agent assist and real-time coaching reduce the need for extensive upfront training. Instead, they guide agents during live interactions. 

This:

• Shortens ramp-up time
• Lowers training expenses
• Helps new employees perform at a higher level from day one

Your clients care about how quickly your team can learn and use information about their business and product. When call center workers change quickly and you need to onboard hundreds of new employees every few months, you struggle to provide exceptional service. New hires might struggle to assist your clients’ customers and provide helpful and relevant information. 

With AI customer service tools, you can automate employee onboarding and help them get the gist of clients and products by themselves, just by interacting with AI. Faster employee training means:

• Optimized costs
• Higher FCR
• Lower AHT

4. Accurate data on each interaction

BPO automation tools like Capacity go beyond communication automation. They integrate seamlessly with your business processes and workflows, providing you with unified data about your operations.

For example, after each call, the system automatically transcribes the conversation and summarizes post-call notes, which it can upload directly to your CRM system. Agents save time by skipping paperwork and can take more calls per hour.

You also get information about interactions, including:

• How long each interaction was
• Transcripts
• Client reviews
• Related products and services

Using this data, you can better evaluate staff performance and optimize service. 

Win a competitive advantage with advanced AI tools for BPOs

Gone are the days when small and mid-sized BPO call centers couldn’t compete with the big players. With the growing outsourcing opportunities, you can offer your customers not only your team but also the missing piece: advanced technology.

Integrating AI into your operations:

• Speeds up service
• Reduces costs
• Makes your human agents more efficient
• Increases customer satisfaction

If this sounds like something you’d like to bring into your business, book a demo with us to see how AI can make your BPO more efficient.

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