Article

Call centers and BPO: get paid for your records

By TrustPast

Updated November 7, 2026

This page is for the owner of a contact center or a business process outsourcing firm. You run inbound support, outbound campaigns, collections, chat queues or back-office processing, for your own brand or for clients. You have seats, shifts, supervisors and a QA team, and you have probably had all of them for years.

Here is what most owners in this business don’t know they have. The value is not the calls. It is the written trail around the calls: the script and every revision of it, the QA scorecard and the coaching note, the escalation that went to a team lead, the disposition code and the note under it. That trail shows how a problem got handled when the script ran out. A buyer pays to license records like these to train AI models, and the trail is the part it pays for.

We wrote the long version of what a buyer looks for in what data buyers want from a trade business. A contact center isn’t a trade, but the rule there holds here: the buyer wants how the work was done, not who it was done for. This page applies it to a floor of agents, with micro1 as the buyer.

The records a call center keeps

These are our examples, not a buyer’s list. They are what a contact center or BPO usually produces as it works, year by year.

The script library. Every programme has a script, and every script has versions. Version one went live in March. Version two added a line after a run of complaints about the cancellation policy. Version three cut the upsell because handle times went over target. The version history is a record of what the floor learned about callers, one edit at a time.

The call disposition and the wrap-up note. At the end of each call the agent picks a code and types a line. “Billing dispute, credit applied, customer accepted.” “Technical, escalated tier 2, callback booked.” Millions of those over ten years are a map of what people call about and how each kind of call ends.

The QA scorecard. A reviewer listens to a sample of calls and scores them against a form: greeting, verification, empathy, resolution, compliance lines. The scorecard says what “good” means on your floor. The comments beside each score say where an agent missed it and why.

The coaching log. The supervisor’s note after a one-to-one. “Rushed the hold explanation twice; practised the bridge line.” It is the record of how you turn a new hire into someone who can take a hard call alone.

The escalation trail. The ticket that moved from tier 1 to tier 2 to the client’s own team, with each person’s note. This is where a problem was diagnosed. The first agent thought it was a password reset. The second saw the account was locked by a fraud flag. The third found the flag was a false positive and wrote the workaround into the knowledge base.

The knowledge base and the call guides. The pages agents open mid-call. Most of them exist because a question came in often enough that someone wrote the answer down.

The CRM. For a BPO that sells its own services, the CRM holds every bid, every pilot, every renewal and the reason a client left. For a center that works the client’s CRM, the notes field is where the agent’s reasoning sits. Our page on CRM records goes through which parts of a CRM show how the work was done.

The internal chat. The floor runs on chat. The team lead’s channel where an agent asks, mid-call, whether a refund over the limit needs approval. The workforce management channel where the schedule got rebuilt the day a storm took out half the morning shift. The client channel where a new policy was argued over before it reached the script. Our page on chat archives in Slack and Teams shows which channels carry that kind of reasoning.

Put together, those records show how a contact center actually works. How a script became a programme. How a complaint became a script change. How a supervisor decided a call was a coaching problem and not a policy problem. That is the how, and it is written down because a floor of a hundred people can’t run on memory.

See your estimate

What counts, in the buyer’s own words

micro1 publishes who it is looking for. On its data partnerships page: “We’re looking for established companies with 30+ full-time employees, mature business operations, and substantial historical operational data.” The next sentence names the kinds of data: “This can include internal communications, SOPs, project histories, CRM records, support tickets, and other business documentation.”

Read that list against your own systems. Internal communications is the floor chat. SOPs are your call guides and QA forms. CRM records and support tickets are the core of what a contact center does all day.

micro1’s page doesn’t name call centers or BPO firms as a category. It does have a heading that says “Operational data from every industry can contribute”, and its referral page lists “All industries” under the company requirements. Under that heading, one of its examples is customer support, described as “Support documentation, ticket workflows, QA processes, customer operations, and knowledge management.” Another is sales and CRM: “CRM data, sales processes, playbooks, customer lifecycle documentation, and revenue operations.” Between those two lines sits most of what a contact center keeps.

On what it values most, micro1 says: “We are looking for data that reflects how work is actually performed within an organization.” And: “The most valuable datasets capture real operational expertise, decision-making processes, and repeatable workflows”. A QA scorecard is a repeatable workflow. An escalation trail is a decision-making process. A coaching log is operational expertise, written down by the person who has it.

Two more lines matter for this business. “Data should be primarily in English.” Many contact centers run Spanish or French queues next to English ones, so count the English share before you apply. And on location: “current demand is strongest for companies based in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.” A BPO with delivery sites abroad and a US headquarters should say both on the application.

What is never included

Say this first, because it is the first thing a contact center owner worries about. Callers’ names, phone numbers, account numbers, addresses, card numbers and anything said during identity verification are not what a buyer is paying for. Neither are the personal details of your agents. Our page on what is never included shows where each of those hides in a company’s files.

micro1 doesn’t publish a list of records it excludes. As our own advice, three kinds of record in a contact center need care before anything moves.

The call recordings. A recording is a person’s voice, often with a card number or a date of birth read aloud. micro1’s published list doesn’t mention recordings. Ask micro1 about them directly, and expect the written trail to be the part that counts.

Payment and health details. A collections queue hears bank details. A healthcare client’s queue hears symptoms and plan numbers. Those sit under their own rules. Our page on health, payment and other regulated data shows where they hide and how to keep them out.

The client’s records. Most BPO work is done in the client’s systems, under the client’s contract. The script may be yours or the client’s. The tickets may sit in the client’s tool. Only the contract says which is which, and anything a client owns stays out. Our page on client-owned work and NDAs goes through what to look for in those contracts.

One rule is worth knowing about. The Federal Trade Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule, in 16 CFR 310.5, says “Any seller or telemarketer must keep, for a period of 5 years from the date the record is produced unless specified otherwise,” a set of records relating to its telemarketing. The list includes “A copy of each substantially different advertising, brochure, telemarketing script, and promotional material.” For an outbound center, that is one reason a five-year script library exists at all. What the rule allows you to do with those records is a question for counsel, not for us. Ask counsel before any of them leave the building.

How de-identification works

You don’t scrub the records yourself. micro1’s page asks the question directly, “Does my company need to anonymize its data before transferring it?”, and answers: “No, micro1 has processes for de-identifying and transforming sensitive information.”

The published protections come in four parts. micro1 says that before any participation, the two sides confirm “U.S. and allied buyers only”, “Data segregation”, “De-identified before sharing” and “Defined retention periods”. On the third, the wording is: “Personal and identifying information is removed or transformed before your data is shared with third parties.” On the fourth: “Raw data is deleted according to an agreed schedule.”

micro1 also says that “certain datasets may undergo synthetic rewrites that preserve workflow structure while reducing direct ties to original records.” For a contact center, that is worth reading slowly. An escalation trail rewritten that way keeps the order of events (the reset attempt, the fraud flag, the false positive, the workaround) and loses the link to the caller.

On access, micro1’s page says “access is restricted to a limited number of authorized team members, and customer data is processed through isolated pipelines that prevent it from being commingled with other engagements.” And “companies have the opportunity to review representative samples before use.” For a BPO, that sample review is the moment to check that no client’s name survived in a ticket title. The full walk-through is on how de-identification works.

What decides the price

micro1 publishes three tiers on its data partnerships page. The first is $100K-500K (indicative, not an offer), described as “Qualified Enterprise Data Partnerships”. The second is $500K-3M (indicative, not an offer), for “Large-scale operational datasets or ongoing participation across multiple teams and business functions”. The third is $3M+ (indicative, not an offer), for “Highly unique, proprietary operational data”. Its four-step process says it pays “with payments typically ranging from $100K to over $3M” (indicative, not an offer).

What moves a company within those tiers, in micro1’s words: “Factors considered include dataset size and volume, workflow complexity, data quality, domain expertise represented, and the uniqueness of the operational knowledge contained within the dataset.” Its estimate page adds: “Final payout is determined based on data sources, volume, quality, access terms, and due diligence.”

Here is how those factors read on a contact center floor, as our own reading.

Volume is rarely the problem. A center that has run for eight years has more wrap-up notes than anyone will ever read. Workflow complexity is where centers differ. A single-queue password-reset desk is simple. A multi-client operation with tiered escalation, collections, retention offers and a chat channel beside the phones is not. “Across multiple teams and business functions” is micro1’s phrase for the middle tier, and a BPO with several service lines is built that way.

Quality is the completeness of the trail. A QA scorecard with comments beats one with scores only. A ticket with three handoff notes beats one that just says “resolved”. Domain expertise shows in the queues that need it: technical support, insurance claims intake, healthcare scheduling.

On years, micro1 says: “Companies with several years of records across multiple business systems are generally a stronger fit.” On the minimum: “There’s no fixed minimum number of files, documents, or terabytes.” More on each factor is on what decides the price. micro1 prices each company; a published tier is not an offer.

Which programme fits

Our rule is simple. Companies with 30 or more people, now or at peak, go to micro1, and so does a company of any size outside the US. micro1’s own published line is “30+ full-time employees”. Count everyone, across every shift and every site. The estimate asks how many people work at the company and names the programme that fits your headcount; the programme page for 30 or more people explains where the line sits.

If the center has closed, or lost its anchor client and wound down, micro1 has a programme for that too. Its referral page describes a “Defunct Company Data Partnership” with the line “We are acquiring data from companies that are no longer operating.” The requirements it lists are “30+ employees”, “10+ Countries”, “English” and “All industries”, with company compensation of “$100K-$3M+ for approved data packages” (indicative, not an offer). For a closed center, the question is who still holds the systems and who can sign for the company. Our page on closed companies starts there.

A software company runs the same support queue from the other side of the ticket. Software companies keep the bug tracker that a tier 2 escalation ends up in, and the chat where the fix was argued. Biotech and life sciences labs share the habit of writing every deviation down, the way a QA team writes down every missed compliance line. And hedge funds and quant firms live under a recordkeeping rule as an outbound contact center does, which shapes what they kept and for how long.

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Questions and answers

Does micro1 want our customers' call recordings?

micro1 doesn't name call recordings. Its data partnerships page lists support tickets, CRM records, internal communications and SOPs, and says personal and identifying information is removed or transformed before data is shared with third parties. Ask micro1 about recordings before you apply.

We handle work for clients. Whose records are they?

That depends on each client contract, and only the contract says. As our own advice, anything a client owns under contract stays out, and counsel reads the contracts before you sign anything with micro1.

Do we need to strip the names out first?

No. micro1's data partnerships page answers that question with: “No, micro1 has processes for de-identifying and transforming sensitive information.”

How many people do we need?

micro1 publishes that it is looking for established companies with 30 or more full-time employees, mature business operations and substantial historical operational data. A contact center usually clears the headcount line long before the records line.

What does micro1 pay?

micro1's data partnerships page lists payments typically ranging from $100K to over $3M (indicative, not an offer). It says each partnership is evaluated individually.

Do we keep using our own systems?

Yes. micro1's page says companies retain ownership of their underlying data. The floor keeps taking calls on the same CRM and the same ticketing system.