Voice vs Non-Voice Process

What counts as voice and non-voice

The terms are used most in Indian and Philippine BPO hiring, where job ads often say "voice process" or "non-voice process" in the title.

Voice process examples: inbound customer care, technical support helpdesks, outbound sales, collections, insurance renewals, appointment booking and survey calls. Agents spend most of the shift on the phone with real-time handle time and service level targets.

Non-voice process examples:

• Chat process: live chat or messaging support, often handling two or three conversations at once
• Email process: written replies to customer tickets within a set turnaround time
• Back office: data entry, order processing, claims adjudication, KYC document checks, invoice processing, content moderation
• Semi-voice: mostly back office with occasional calls, for example calling a customer to confirm missing details

A BPO program may combine both, especially as more support shifts to chat and messaging channels.

Skills to screen for

The hiring profiles overlap less than people assume.

Voice candidates need spoken clarity, listening, quick thinking and composure with irritated callers. A voice and accent assessment checks pronunciation, fluency, grammar and comprehension, and a short mock call shows how the person handles pressure.

Chat and email candidates need fast, accurate typing (a common floor is 30 to 40 words per minute at high accuracy), clean written grammar, the ability to switch between conversations and good judgment on tone in writing. A writing sample replying to a real-looking complaint tells you more than a grammar quiz.

Back-office candidates need attention to detail, consistency over long repetitive tasks, comfort with spreadsheets and systems, and the discipline to follow procedures exactly. Accuracy tests on sample documents work well.

Some people who struggle on calls are excellent in chat or back office, and the reverse. Good recruiters redirect candidates between processes instead of rejecting them outright. Our call center recruitment page covers the wider funnel.

Pay, shifts and career paths

In most offshore markets, voice roles pay more than non-voice roles at entry level, often with a night shift allowance when serving US or UK clients. The premium reflects the stress of live calls and the smaller pool of candidates with strong spoken English. Non-voice roles are more often day shifts, though chat processes covering US hours run nights too.

Career paths differ as well. Voice agents tend to move into team lead, QA, training or workforce management roles. Back-office agents more often move into process specialist, subject matter expert or analyst roles.

A worked example

A 400-seat center in Pune supports a US retailer: 250 agents on voice, 100 on chat and 50 in back office handling returns and refunds. Recruiting runs one funnel with a branch after the first screen. Candidates take a spoken English assessment and a typing test together. Strong speakers with average typing go to voice; strong writers with fast typing go to chat; candidates with very high accuracy but weaker spoken English go to back office. Before the branch, the center rejected about half of applicants. After, it places a further 15% of applicants who would previously have been rejected, which cuts sourcing cost for the non-voice roles.

Common mistakes

Hiring chat agents with a voice interview, and voice agents with a written test, is the most common. Test the skill the job uses. Another mistake is calling a role non-voice when agents will in fact make regular calls. Candidates who chose non-voice to avoid the phone will quit when the first call queue appears, so describe the work honestly in the job ad and interview.