In an exclusive interview with CX Today, Founder and former CEO of Playvox, Oscar Giraldo, discussed why he decided to step away from the organization, and why he believes his new company, Oversai, has the AI-powered decision-making capabilities to pick up the slack where legacy vendors fall short.
Having founded the company back in 2012, Giraldo was acting CEO until August of 2021, when he took up a new role as Chief Innovation Officer.
While Giraldo also retained his position as a member of the board of directors during this time, he decided to completely part ways with the company in March of this year.
Playvox has, of course, made news lately due to speculation surrounding a potential NICE takeover of the company.
Although Giraldo was not able to speak about the rumored acquisition, he did open up on why he decided to step away from the company that he founded over a decade ago.
Having started the company from “very humble beginnings,” Giraldo explains how the rapid expansion of Playvox led to the organization having to raise money from a private equity firm that eventually took control of the business.
At this point, as Giraldo puts it, “everything changed.” He didn’t feel that the company was heading in a direction he believed in, and decided to leave rather than continue working in an environment where he was no longer happy.
“In 2021, I stepped down from my CEO position at the request of the board of Playvox, and moved into a Chief Innovation role.
Over the next few years, I observed a lack of vision in the company, which led me to resign from the board in March 2024.
“In my view, the company no longer aligned with my values or the strategic direction needed to navigate the AI shift and changing market conditions.”
Oversai
Given the way that his time ended at Playvox, Giraldo would have been forgiven for resting on his laurels a little. Perhaps sipping a cocktail, or two on a beach or taking up a new hobby while deciding what to do next.
But the former CEO had other ideas.
Less than five months since leaving Playvox, Giraldo has officially launched his new company, Oversai.
In a nutshell, Oversai is a tech and services firm focused on improving operational efficiency.
Giraldo explains how he came up with the idea for the company during his time at Playvox where he noticed the challenges that many companies face in managing operations.
He details how effective operations management often comes down to making decisions –even micro-decisions – that can determine a company’s success or failure.
With this in mind, the former Playvox man unpacked precisely what goes into the decision-making process and came up with three key elements:
To make a decision you need three things. You need data, you need logic or your criteria to make that decision, and then you need to take action – that’s how humans make decisions.
These three elements form the basis for Oversai’s company ethos. But how does the organization plan to translate this idea into effective tech solutions?
The Oversai Tech Stack
Like many recent innovations in the customer service and CX tech space, AI is crucial to Oversai’s tech stack.
Giraldo discusses how AI technology can enable smarter decision-making, which is why Oversai is an “AI-first” company.
The platform currently has the following pre-built applications ready for deployment:
- Oversai Real-Time Monitoring
- Oversai Quality Assurance
- Oversai Workforce Productivity
- Oversai Process Mining
These apps are available from within Oversai’s Operations Intelligence Platform, where users can also build tailored operational apps that can be deployed to address “specific challenges,” such as performance tracking, real-time monitoring, optimizing workflows, and gaining customer insights.
Giraldo claims that the company’s decision-making capabilities will boost efficiency and empower operations teams.
Moreover, he believes that Oversai’s AI-first strategy will also set the company apart from legacy vendors that struggle to adapt to modern market demands.
He explains how these vendors are often rigid because they focus on specific use cases. So, when customers need changes, these vendors can be slow to respond, leaving customers to build their own solutions.
“The reason we are able to do this is because we started the company right now, during this period of transformation, instead of legacy vendors that are tied to tech from 10 or 20 years ago. And I think that’s why we are going to win,” Giraldo said.
Customers need to realize that if they want to be competitive, they need to move on from those [legacy vendor] platforms and adopt new technologies that are built for AI. And that’s what Oversai is all about.
