LOB: Line of Business

What it means

A line of business is a distinct client program or queue inside an operation. One client can have several: English and French support, billing and technical, tier 1 and tier 2. The line of business, not the client, is usually the real unit of scheduling, quality and reporting, because requirements differ between two queues belonging to the same brand.

Why it matters

Multi-client operations live or die on getting this level right. An agent can be certified on three lines of business across two clients, and every schedule, scorecard, permission and report has to respect that. Systems that model only a flat client relationship force the operation to rebuild the distinction in spreadsheets, which is where most reporting disputes with clients begin.

Common mistakes

• Modelling the client but not the line of business. It collapses two different programs into one set of numbers and neither client recognises their own performance.
• Assuming an agent belongs to exactly one. Concurrent multi-line assignment is the normal case in outsourcing, not the exception.
• Letting quality scorecards be client-level. Two lines of business under the same brand often score entirely different behaviours.

Related

See also

• BPO: Business Process OutsourcingA firm that runs contact-centre operations on behalf of other brands.
• Multi-tenantOne platform that serves many isolated clients, each seeing only its own data.
• Captive centreAn in-house contact centre a brand runs itself rather than outsourcing to a BPO.
• QA: Quality AssuranceThe program that scores and reviews agent interactions.