CX Providers must shift to digital integrated business services – Teleperformance’s TAP framework shows them how

Customer experience is becoming the key differentiator for companies’ competitiveness. HFS recently attended Teleperformance’s India Analyst Day event in Mumbai and learned how this service provider is pivoting its business from pure customer experience (CX) engagements to providing digital integrated business services to help its clients differentiate. In this PoV, we highlight some of the key initiatives and client engagement details of Teleperformance and recommend pathways that other service providers must follow to thrive in customer experience space.

Technology is shaping the future of customer experience

As the Teleperformance leadership team highlighted during the day, technology-driven customer experience transformation is fast becoming the key theme for all services organizations:

• Technology innovation: Capabilities and solutions portfolios around emerging technologies such as RPA, AI, cyber-resilience, and security are becoming mainstream differentiators, along with digital channels such as visual IVR and video chat. For example, Teleperformance has developed a TAP framework (based on technology, analytics, and process excellence) that enables it to support clients’ digital transformation initiatives. Some of its advanced technological investments are on voice biometric authentication, compliance auditing, risk management technologies, and anti-fraud technology.
• New age customer experience: Every customer interaction is unique, and this experience should consider human aspects such as respect, care, and trust. For example, Teleperformance is blending emerging digital technologies with human empathy, referred to as the high-tech–high-touch approach, to deliver enhanced customer engagement.
• Digital transformation services: The new services capabilities demand and mandate the emergence of strong and innovative collaboration ecosystems among the industry, customer experience, and technology experts to deliver digitally-enabled interactive solutions that further integrate front and back-office processes, stitching a seamless experience for clients. Toward this end, Teleperformance globally started the shift over a year ago to becoming a digital integrated business services (DIBS) provider, which brings innovation through digital transformation and automation for its clients, across all industry verticals.
• Differentiated talent management: Newer and fast-growing working models like work-at-home-agents (WAHA) for client engagement models enable firms to access a large pool of talent across the globe and recruit multilingual and native-speaking professionals with the flexibility to address seasonal volume spikes.

How has Teleperformance leveraged Intelenet capabilities to deliver transformation-enabled services to its clients?

In 2018, Teleperformance acquired Intelenet for $1 billion from Blackstone to start its pivot from CX to DIBS. Intelenet was a global business process solutions company with capabilities in customer management services, industry-specific solutions, and knowledge services for clients across the banking and financial services, travel, healthcare, and retail verticals. The Intelenet acquisition provided the platform that Teleperformance needed to drive further transformation across its operations spanning 80 countries and combined 330,000-employee base. Over the 18 months since the acquisition, Teleperformance has driven synergies by leveraging the erstwhile Intelenet capabilities and replicating them around the world to deliver integrated business services to its clients, along with value-added services such as design thinking, advanced analytics, and AI through its center of excellence (CoE) in India.

A leading global banking organization and an airlines company have transformed customer-facing services, using emerging tech-enabled services, with an eye on business results

Teleperformance is engaged with a leading global bank for managing several activities, including customer on-boarding, customer care, and loan disbursement. This engagement has been a long-term relationship (10+ years) that received several excellence awards, including a high CSAT score.

It has also been closely working for more than five years with a leading airline company to manage customer care operations (refund processing for flight cancellations, customer inquiry, etc.). This engagement also evolved over the years, resulting in an increase in scope and number of resources.

These engagements implemented the customer experience functions described in Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 1: The engagements demonstrated Teleperformance’s capabilities in traditional back-office processes and new-age customer experiences 

Source: Teleperformance

Clients must focus on the key differentiators around customer experience

Based on our discussions with the Teleperformance leadership team, customer engagements, and demos, we identified five differentiating factors that clients and potential players in this field must consider while evaluating their service partners:

• Footprint among the new set of customers. Capabilities in working with both legacy and new age internet companies (related to technology, sharing economy, etc.) across both back and front office areas, have to be well balanced. The ability to engage with both sets of clients for both voice and non-voice support is a requirement.
• Positioning as a “knowledge service partner.” Knowledge services (enabled by consulting, automation, AI, etc.) are increasingly becoming critical for process re-engineering and automation to support strategic initiatives and tactical business requirements with lean methodologies, digitization, and design thinking to support creating customer journeys. Knowledge services are often value-adding services that enable clients throughout their digital transformation journey to manage the entire change management cycle, including business modeling and customer experience design.
• Focus on digital technologies. Digital technologies, such as RPA, AI, and cybersecurity, are no longer optional. They are mandatory for achieving competitive service quality, operational excellence, and enhanced customer experience; for example, leveraging analytics to analyze customer interaction data to transform the customer experience. Teleperformance’s approach is a move from IT’s cost-based big data to a business ROI-driven attitude.
• Human-centric design. An experience that combines emerging technologies along with process excellence and customer experience is a strategic imperative for client success. The rich experience of service partners and their understanding of customer behavior across industries enable the service providers to develop a human-centric design for interaction and experience.
• Virtual staffing model. Flexible working solutions allow recruiting work-at-home agents, expanding the talent pool, and reducing attrition. This hiring strategy also results in increased productivity, more customer satisfaction, and a reduction in overall cost.

The Bottom Line: Focus on continuous improvement in customer experience through technology-enabled transformation to stay ahead of the curve

Customer experience is the biggest differentiator in the digital age. Traditional IT and BPM companies, not just customer engagement focused companies, are also taking several initiatives to redefine the customer experience space. With changing customer needs, service partners like Teleperformance leverage their experience and continue adapting new-age digital technologies to help you transform the customer experience journey.