Tim ZylaWhile most companies were beginning to tinker with AI tools after ChatGPT’s viral debut in late 2022, iQor already had a 12-year head start.
The global business process outsourcing firm known for managing customer service operations for some of the world’s largest brands didn’t just buy into AI — they built their own. Now, that investment is maturing into a differentiator in a market flooded with commoditized AI dashboards and overhyped chatbot startups.
“We do not want to launch 500 pet projects so we can all feel good that we’re using AI and nothing material happens,” said Prabhjot “PJ” Singh, iQor’s chief digital officer. “We became very focused on delivering an AI strategy where AI can actually benefit us as a business, benefit our clients and ultimately, deliver value.”
At the heart of that strategy is Valdi, a homegrown interaction analytics engine that transcribes and analyzes every customer interaction — phone, chat, email, and text — across iQor’s operations. It feeds the company’s new platform, Insights iQ, which launched at a CCW conference earlier this year.
Rather than focusing on agent performance or generic metrics, the system is designed to answer one deceptively simple question: Why are people calling?
“We already do the really hard job of having to hire thousands of people, train them, manage them,” Singh said. “We just have a lot more execution chops than a software company that is saying, ‘Hey, I have all this data, I added OpenAI, and now look, it’s pretty graphs and diagrams.'”
Singh’s team began building the foundations of iQor’s AI infrastructure over a decade ago — long before ChatGPT, before mass adoption of cloud-based transcription, and before “AI agent” became an industry buzzword.
The original driver? Commercial speech analytics tools were too expensive and offered only 3-5% call sampling.
“We were like, man, the 3 to 5% sampling doesn’t tell you everything,” Singh said. “That’s what led to building this technology from the ground up.”
Today, iQor processes 100% of interactions, enabling real-time insights into not only customer sentiment, but also product issues, policy friction points and new revenue opportunities for its clients.
One standout example: Predictive Net Promoter Score (PNPS), which forecasts customer satisfaction from conversations — even when no formal survey was issued.
“The ops teams started taking that predictive NPS and running it every hour,” Singh said. “They came up with just new ways to run this stuff and use it.”
In practice, this means more accurate coaching for agents, faster policy adjustments, and — in some cases — identification of entirely new service opportunities. Singh recalled one client who discovered a previously unmet product demand just by analyzing call transcripts with iQor’s AI.
“Can I figure out ways to reduce customer pain points… but really, can I tell you something about your business that you don’t know?” he asked. “That’s where the nuggets of value lie.”
The business effect
Despite the broader industry’s push toward AI agents and automation, iQor has no plans to abandon its human-centered BPO roots.
“Every where you look there is a company selling you AI agents. They all claim they are amazing yet none of them have anything compelling or different. It’s an industry that is getting commoditized rapidly and eventually will have to consolidate to survive while many of these companies will fail,” Singh said. “What they don’t want to admit is that AI is nowhere near as capable to handle complex conversations as they want you to believe.”
Singh argues that simple customer queries were automated out of existence long ago. What remains are complex, emotionally charged calls that require human reasoning — something AI still struggles with.
Instead, iQor is using AI to make its workforce faster and smarter. Around 25% of its internal software code is now generated by AI, reducing development cycles and boosting productivity. AI has also sped up hiring, training, and coaching cycles for frontline workers.
“We’re seeing similar things with training, with recruiting … every single person that we already had can now become 30, 40% more productive,” Singh said.
Perhaps most importantly, Singh says AI isn’t just helping iQor cut internal costs — it’s attracting new business.
“Many, many companies are now interested in doing business with us on just the AI and analytics side,” he said. “They started looking at our analytics product and saying, ‘You know what? You guys are innovative and interesting enough that I actually want to shift some of my BPO seats to you.'”
Singh said the company has invested “in the multimillions” in its AI infrastructure — and it’s already paying off.
While he acknowledges the potential of AI agents long-term, he’s skeptical of bold predictions about the end of customer service reps.
“Simpler calls have been going away for the past 20 years,” he said. “The kind of conversations that we’re having are very difficult … You have to make a judgment call. Every brand will make that decision for themselves, do I want my brand represented by generic AI that is somewhat capable, or do I want that differentiating experience that drives loyalty from my customers?”
Earlier this month, Acquire Intelligence CEO Scott Stavretis said he feels the vast majority of BPO-created AI platforms will not exist in three years — as they offer very little in the way of technological advances and instead rely on clever marketing.
Singh agrees with that overall sentiment, saying the platforms are becoming a dime a dozen and cannot compete with ground-up products that companies like iQor provide.
“We’re not selling hype. We’re selling answers,” Singh said. “And that makes all the difference.”
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