The call center back office handles administrative, support, and secretarial tasks, such as maintaining records, managing debts and credits, and order execution. It may also be involved in the order fulfillment process and accounting. Disruptions to back office functions can greatly affect the call center’s operations.
The back office of a call center is the part of a call center dedicated to various types of administrative, support and secretarial activities essential to the function of the company. Like any back office environment, this area of a call center operation will address issues such as maintaining company records, managing debts and credits associated with the operation, and even handling basic secretarial tasks that they help promote communication between departments and with customers. When the call center operation involves taking orders from customers, the call center back office will typically also handle the tasks associated with order execution.
Most of the functions associated with a call center back office are the same as with any other type of business operation. A good example of these functions has to do with the accounting process. This part of an office will include an accounting department charged with handling the debits and credits of the operation, including creating and issuing invoices to clients and receiving payments from those clients. Depending on the type of call center involved, the accounting effort may focus on preparing and sending invoices to other companies that outsource certain functions to the call center or work with the accounting department of the company that owns and operates the call center to on its own internal purposes.
It is not unusual for a call center back office operated solely for the benefit of a specific business to be involved in the order fulfillment process. Here, the call center receives an order and forwards it to the fulfillment center. From there, the products are prepared for delivery to the customer, including packing the items and scheduling them for shipment with a courier service or other type of shipping entity. The details are then forwarded to the accounting department, who can invoice the order and shipment in a timely manner.
The exact range of functions handled by a call center back office will depend on the nature of the business involved and how the company is structured. For the most part, any type of administrative and support activity conducted by the center will be considered a back office function. When one of these functions is disrupted for any reason, the effect on call center center and front office operations can be significantly affected, causing great difficulty for the operation as a whole.
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