Last week, Teleperformance sent shockwaves across the customer experience BPO space, striking a $185MN deal with Microsoft to release a proprietary contact center generative AI tool.
The TP GenAI tool leverages Microsoft Corp’s Azure OpenAI to automate simple low-value tasks for customer service teams.
While reports do not go much deeper, these tasks likely include auto-summarizing customer conversations.
Yet, the tool likely goes significantly further than auto-summarization alone, with Teleperformance’s handle times dropping 25 percent post-implementation.
Those gains enabled the BPO’s team to reduce email response times by 20 percent.
According to Reuters, Teleperformance also achieved the following results:
A 90 percent improvement in accurately addressing customer needs, a 35 percent increase in sales conversions, and near real-time insights on customer interactions.
However, perhaps most interestingly, Teleperformance now predicts it will automate 20-30 percent of its processes with the help of TP GenAI over the next three years.
As the BPO market remains primarily a space of outsourcing the role of live agents, expect a considerable drop in headcount when outsourcers mechanize 20-30 percent of the work.
That brings many possible benefits, including potential cost savings for clients – which may give Teleperformance an edge over its competitors in the short term.
Yet, Chris DeLambo, Advisory Council Member at GLG, adds a caveat in Teleperformance working with Microsoft to build TP Gen AI.
“We know that companies use BPO firms to outsource work, gain flexibility and spread the work over several vendors,” he said.
When you start using “proprietary” tools with one BPO, you may be stuck with them when you need to make a change.
Justin Robbins, Founder and Principal Analyst at Metric Sherpa, would also like insights into the solution’s impact on other metrics.
“I’d be curious to see the trendline on repeat contacts,” he noted.
“It mentions a 90% improvement in accurately addressing customer needs, but unclear how that’s measured.”
There is also vital context missing in terms of the tasks Teleperformance now plans to automate with the TP Gen AI.
If those include simple, low-value customer interactions – should they have already passed through self-service anyway?
Yet, despite these questions, Teleperformance seems confident in its go-forward plan – appointing president of transformation Bhupender Singh as deputy chief executive earlier this month.
The business also has expanded rapidly in recent times, moving to roll up Marjorel in April to increase its annual revenues to €12BN – making it the sector’s “biggest actor” – as per Reuters.
