How AI is Transforming the BPO Industry

The duality of combining the precision of machines with the ingenuity of humans will define the future of BPO.

- BY AYUSHMAN BARUAH

The Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) industry has undergone a tectonic shift from traditional call center operations to an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven approach delivering high-value services to clients. There is a clear transition from voice to value with a conscious obsession towards customer experience (CX).

Squadstack is one of those new-age BPO companies that don’t fit into the traditional definition. It uses data and AI at its core to build superior outcomes for its enterprise clients.

“One of the biggest pain points we are addressing for our clients is generating sales leads and drive better conversion and doing it with 100 per cent data capture,” shares Apurv Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO of Squadstack. It aims to bring the best of human and AI working in tandem with each other. Kanika Jain, Co-founder and Product Head, Squadstack, quirkily says they are somewhat like the Iron Man character. “Anecdotally, Iron Man inspires us as he is also a man plus machine and driving and changing the world. Even our thesis is how do you enhance a human with all the tech, with all the AI to actually deliver better outcomes for the customers that we have.”

Squadstack uses AI to hyper personalize. “Typically, it’s one CRM, the same pitch goes to everyone, and there is no personalization. AI helps us to hyper personalize interactions so that we know who to serve when and how. It’s about being able to use AI where AI is great, but use human where human is great,” says Agrawal. “It could be a particular escalation scenario or a typical use case where maybe you started off with an AI bot and then quickly you realize that this is beyond the bot’s scope and you transfer it to a human,” says Jain.