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.