The spring of 2004 seems like a long time ago. I was poking around online, trying to learn more about a company by the name of SR Teleperformance, one of many providers of customer care business process outsourcing (BPO) services.
And then suddenly it was last week… late October, 2019... some fifteen years later… and I was walking into Teleperformance’s new Innovation Experience Center (TIEC) in Silicon Valley in order to check-in on an initiative that aims to present in one location the accumulated experience and considerable ambitions of an ever-changing global organization.
Teleperformance (TP) is now the largest provider in its space. And last week’s visit highlighted just how far it has travelled over these past fifteen years, morphing into an entity determined to meet the new customer experience (CX) requirements of our new economy. Specifically, the company is positioning itself to align with an increasingly digital customer environment of eServices. Consider that the share of new economy TP client revenue has grown from 5% in 2013 to 19% in 2018, encompassing retail, transport, leisure, travel agencies, consumer goods, and social media companies.
I found two topics from last week’s visit to be particularly noteworthy:
U.S. Healthcare: Disruption = Opportunity
Some estimates show that waste in U.S. healthcare spending under our current system might be as high as 25%. At the same time, approximately 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day, and customer interaction channels will need to evolve so as to maintain a high level of customer engagement.
As healthcare reform movements gain political momentum in the United States, and new economy players such as Amazon and Google dip into this shifting space, it seems inevitable that the structure of the healthcare industry will change radically.
Indeed, according to Miranda Collard, TP Chief Client Officer, demand continues to change more in the healthcare industry than any other sector. As such, it may be the industry most primed to benefit from the digitally integrated business services model that TP is now adopting.
Meanwhile, TP also sees healthcare industry opportunities in other geographies outside the U.S. as well, many of which are dominated by government legacy healthcare providers. All the while, going forward the work-at-home (WAHA) delivery model (ie, homeshoring) will almost certainly play an ever more important role in servicing healthcare clients globally.
Content Moderation Services: Human Moderators & AI Join Forces
Dave Rizzo, TP President Asia Pacific, and Saurabh Mohanty, TP EVP & Global Lead, Trust & Safety Operations, spoke about how the increasing access to digital products is creating new opportunities for abuse across the world. And it’s not just happening through the likes of Facebook, Youtube, and Google – it concerns any company with an online presence.
As a result, content moderation is a significant growth channel for TP globally. The company already has thousands of content moderators operating in over 30 languages. But it’s important to note that TP believes in a synergistic relationship between human moderators and AI in the tracking and removal of fraud and abuse (roughly 50% - 90% of automated classification outputs appear to require significant human intervention to disrupt online abuse).
Revealingly, competition in this space is comprised of a different set of players than TP typically competes with, ranging from names such as Genpact and Wipro to Cognizant and Accenture.
Fifteen Years Gone
Today the business landscape is in a state of digital flux. Technological innovations are indeed changing the way customers interact with brands. And precisely one year after the October, 2018, acquisition of Intelenet, Teleperformance is integrating AI-embedded software and automated procedures that include data analytics and robotics that are geared toward the digital transformation of companies across sectors. This digital and omnichannel integration aims at both more efficient and more fluid management of client interactions.
In essence, by combining business-critical processing service experience and know-how, TP is broadening its service offerings and moving up-market, responding to clients with integrated transformation solutions across the entire supply chain.
Clearly then, this is not the Teleperformance of 2004. Today's version of the company is adapting to a shifting BPO landscape, and to the unfolding drama of a rapidly changing digital economy.
