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Models
BPO vs dedicated hire
BPO vs dedicated hire is the naming fight at the start of a Philippines search. A BPO (business process outsourcing) company sells a process: a team, a floor or a WFH roster, a service-level agreement, and a.
Also called BPO versus dedicated seat, shared floor vs named hire
The Philippine IT-BPM industry is the large version of the first model. IBPAP has put recent employment near 1.8-1.9 million people and export revenue near $38-40 billion, with the United States still the main buyer. That industry trained a huge share of the English-speaking workforce you will interview. It is also the reason U.S. founders say “I don’t want a call center” when they mean “I want one person who knows my customers.”
How it works
BPO contract: you buy hours and an SLA. First response in 60 seconds. CSAT above 85. The vendor staffs to those numbers. You may never meet the third agent who took a Tuesday ticket. Price is a monthly production cost. Attrition is the vendor’s problem until quality drops.
Dedicated hire: you buy a search and then an employment relationship (yours or an EOR’s). You meet three people. You pick one. If they leave in month two, you have a replacement clause or you run another search. Price is loaded cost for one FTE plus a fee. Quality is a person, not a queue metric.
Example: 200 chat tickets a day is a BPO problem. One founder inbox plus calendar plus a weekly investor update is a dedicated-hire problem. Putting the inbox on a BPO floor gets you night coverage and a new name every quarter. Putting 200 tickets on one dedicated hire gets you a backlog by Thursday. The failure is the object, not the country.
How it differs
Labor-only contracting is the illegal thin version of supplying workers to a principal. A legitimate BPO is a real employer with capital, supervisors, and its own methods. A dedicated hire can sit inside an EOR and still not be a BPO. Overnight coverage can be sold either way. On a BPO floor, overnight is a shift bid. On a dedicated seat, overnight is a locked-hours clause in one contract.
Common errors
Using “BPO” as an insult for any Filipino teammate. Most strong EAs you will hire have BPO years on the resume. That is training history, not the model you are buying. Paying BPO production rates for a named EA and expecting agency bench coverage. You did not buy a bench.