Accounts and Lines of Business (LOB)

In the BPO world, the "Account" is the brand that hired the call center. It is the Client. When you walk into a BPO building, you will see different areas secured by badge access. One room might be the "Bank of CallCenters" account, and the room next door might be the "Callsflix" account. A call center can manage several clients/accounts/logos.

Agents usually identify themselves by their account. "I work for the Callsflix account."However, agents from one account cannot see the data of another account. They are completely separate operations under the same roof.

But accounts are only a portion of the story. Every account can have internal departments specialized in different functions, for example, billing, collections, customer service, or tech support. An LOB (Line of Business) is a specific division inside the Account. LOBs might also be called campaigns.

Let's review an example with three fictional companies:

1. Account: Apex Tech.
1. LOB 1: Customer Support (General questions, invoicing, and payments).
2. LOB 2: Tech Support (Fixing tech issues).
3. LOB 3: Sales and Renewals (Selling internet plans).
2. Account: OmniRetail.
1. LOB 1: Order Management (Procurement and invoicing).
2. LOB 2: Returns and Refunds.
3. Account: Zenith Health.
1. LOB 1: Patient Services (Scheduling, prescriptions, and billing).

Agents are normally trained specifically for one LOB. If a group of agents works in the "Billing LOB," they might not know how to fix a technical issue because they were never taught that skill.

As we saw on a previous lesson (How Operations Normally Works?), each operation has a structure composed by agents, team managers, QAs, and an operation manager. Each operation is also assigned Trainers, who are specialized in each client, to train new agents or create refresher sessions for the current staff.

But now, with the introduction of the LOB concept, that structure needs to be escalated to cover the multiple processes that a single Client can run.

Let´s see an example using the companies we mentioned above, and define their internal structure.

• Account: Apex Tech (1 Operation Manager).
• LOB: Customer support.
• Agents: 300.
• Team Managers: 20.
• Sr. Team Managers: 2.
• Assigned QAs: 10.
• Assigned Trainers: 3 (shared with the other LOBs).
• LOB: Tech Support.
• Agents: 50
• Team Managers: 3
• Assigned QAs: 2
• Assigned Trainers: 1 (Shared with the other LOBs).
• LOB: Sales and Renewals
• Agents: 20.
• Team Managers: 2 (Ratio 1:15).
• Assigned QAs: 1.
• Assigned Trainers: 1 (shared with the other LOBs).

• Account: OmniRetail (2 Operation Managers and 1 Sr. Operation Manager).
• LOB: Order Management.
• Agents: 1200.
• Team Managers: 80.
• Sr. Team Managers: 8.
• Assigned QAs: 40.
• Assigned Trainers: 5.
• LOB: Returns and Refunds.
• Agents: 400
• Team Managers: 25
• Sr. Team Managers: 2.
• Assigned QAs: 15
• Assigned Trainers: 2.

• Account: Zenith Health (1 Operations Manager)
• Agents: 70.
• Team Managers: 5.
• Assigned QAs: 5.
• Assigned Trainers: 1 (shared with other LOBs).

Different LOBs often have different salaries or incentives, as in cases such as sales or collections.

Sometimes, an agent is trained in multiple LOBs (cross-training). This makes them more valuable because they can handle "overflow" calls from different departments.

Let's see a visual representation of how Accounts and LOBs work: