AI, fraud or opportunity for CRM and BPO? Teleperformance, Concentrix and Freshworks in custody

When the world's No. 1 and No. 2 call-centre companies (Teleperformance and Concentrix) plummet on the stock market, is it because they have been slow to embrace AI or because their business no longer has a real future, precisely because of advances in AI? Is missing out on AI and conversational assistants, for example, synonymous with ‘custody’ for insufficient results? Only 13% of French SMEs have already implemented solutions to automate their sales or customer service processes. Can they do so with software packages tailored to their size and specific problems?

For the 3rd meeting they are organising together, an Afterwork on the Rue de Londres on 8 October, Ino Global and Google Chrome OS have decided to put their foot down. Is AI a stowaway in call centres, turned away at the door, or a performance accelerator in terms of personalisation? If the latter, who is leading the way, with what tools and ROI?

This fascinating issue will be debated, with documented contributions from Securitas, Evernex and Callity, as well as an analysis of a successful hoax, that of Klarna and its callbots, which are said to be effective in replacing a large number of customer service agents.  

When you're managing a hotline, if you use AI correctly, you can better predict the flow of contacts and therefore secure your service level, or QS. At the same time, a conversational assistant will be able to handle the most frequent requests, with responses in natural language. Olivier Coudert, head of telephone technical support at Securitas Technology, will be sharing his experience of these issues.

When you've been managing IT assets for forty years, you can and must take on board solutions that are sustainable, secure and innovative. Has AI enabled us to make major advances, or is it Chrome OS that is making a contribution, enabling us to take care of the employee experience and performance issues? Emmanuel Roland, Chief Digital Officer at Evernex, will share his convictions and his experience of working with Google.

When conversations are considered to be the black gold, the uranium of contact centres, can we automate the summarisation of conversations, the analysis of key elements of sales or the voice of the customer? Nicolas Panel, founder of Callity, will explain what his company has done for the many BPOs and ETIs that have adopted the French platform.

How can we avoid being kept in the dark?
The debates will be moderated by Manuel Jacquinet, editor-in-chief of En-Contact magazine, the number 1 source of verified information on customer experience and BPO.

‘Whether it's necessary and relevant to onboard AI and anything else that can help simplify and personalise the customer and employee experience is no longer a question, but who to do it with according to your size and timescale is. Option 1 is to rely on the dope vendors, as one SME boss I was interviewing recently called them: Freshworks, Salesforce, Oracle, ServiceNow and the rest. The share prices of these companies have all risen in the last six months, with the exception of Freshworks. But not for the world's No. 1 and No. 2 BPO companies, Teleperformance and Concentrix.

Software publishers are adept at selling and telling stories to the financial market, which is their real customer. It is not certain that these companies can really help entrepreneurs to digitise and simplify their operations. In my view, these solution providers are more suited to large companies. And they're run by executives who are effective mercenaries: Freshworks' European Director, Gabriel Frasconi, previously worked at HP, Avaya, Salesforce, Zendesk and Slack. In the long term, are his interests aligned with those of an owner of a company with 200 employees? These are questions worth asking’.

Mystery shopping among software vendors
In order to provide the answers that will drive the debate, the editors of En-Contact asked for quotes and explanations from six software publishers promising an AI-enabled omnichannel platform to automate sales and customer service. The use case involved equipping one call-centre with 30 workstations and another with six. We asked to speak to a French customer of the solution, an SME already equipped.

Extracts from the results. A request for information for a SaaS lease of 6 licences equipped with Einstein, from Salesforce, by contacting 0805082131. ‘The Sales team identified our needs quickly and efficiently, from their Dublin centre. The sales proposal was made almost immediately, and came to €1,500 per month for 6 licences. Our contact recommended the involvement of an integrator to configure Einstein. We'll be listening to a recording of this instructive sales conversation on 8 October’.

The event is open to registered participants who are in charge of CX, AI or customer experience issues within companies. It will be held at Google's French headquarters on rue de Londres on 8 October from 6pm to 9pm. Vendors who are competitors of the organisers may not be invited.

To register, click here.

To find out more.

The share prices, over one year, of a number of publishers of solutions or service providers for improving the customer experience and CRM:

Genesys: +88.74%. 
Oracle: +56.65%. 
ServiceNow: +56.18% 
Medallia: +40% 
Salesforce: +32.97% 
Verint: +7.82% 
Nice System: -4.14

Nice System: -4.14% 
Teleperformance: -19.28% 
Concentrix: -36.55% 
Freshworks: -42.18%

At the latest breakfast organised by Freshworks, Refresh Paris, economist Philippe Dessertine spoke about the benefits of AI and CSR, assets which he believes companies have an interest in looking after. 

The use of AI in French SMEs and the equipment rate
For the second year running, France Num has surveyed businesses on their use of artificial intelligence, this year distinguishing between types of solution and use.

13% of VSEs and SMEs indicated that they use artificial intelligence solutions. Although the result is not entirely comparable with the figure for 2023 (5%), as the question was asked differently, the increase is nonetheless significant. The highest take-up rates are in the digital sector (40%) and specialised and technical services (design offices, engineering, architects, lawyers, etc.) (22%). On the other hand, they are lowest in the agri-food industry (6%) and agriculture (4%).

Uses are dominated by generative artificial intelligence (10%), followed by chatbots and assistants (5%). Solutions for task automation, data or document analysis (each at 3%), or quality control and anomaly detection (1%) are less widespread.

The En-Contact editorial team.