How AI-Enabled Debt Collection Operations Are Reshaping BPO | Ep. 283

I really do appreciate you coming on and sharing your insights.

And we've got a we're working more accounts, we're tightening margins, so we have to do more with less. And I think when we can't hire people locally, BPO is that next best opportunity because we can hire those live people in different locations because the whole world is not going to become AI. We're not gonna solve all of our problems with a voice agent. Like that's not realistic. So before we get into all that, Sakette, you know, I want to start at the beginning.

I'd like to hear your story of how you got into the space. So for anyone who has not been as lucky as me to get to know you through the years, can you tell everyone a little about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today?

But the benefit is that, you know, in in all these opportunities, I've had the exposure not just to the operations floor, but also to the boardroom of many of these credit granters, debt buyers, and servicers. Some that were, you know, say sub five million dollars in revenue, and some that were like, you know, 50 million plus in revenue, or in some cases 150 million plus in revenue, right?

So such a broad spectrum of different environments, you know, working with very strategic thinkers, but also down to very strong operating teams and operators that I've come across in this industry. That's really been, you know, the the reason why there's so many people I've had the pleasure of interacting with and also why, you know, we've learned from each other in some way, shape, form, or manner, right? So yeah, I think that's what led to where I am today with Connect BPS.

I think the BPO story has evolved quite a lot in the last two and a half decades. I think uh you are, I'm sure, familiar with this, but a lot of people don't know that the first ever phone call made from offshore into the US was not a technical helpless call. It was not a customer service call. It was a debt collection call. Right? So they did not know that. So the uh offshoring of BPO or the you know of the collection space is you know older than any other type of service, right?

And I think I wasn't really part of that journey in the very beginning because a lot of people who I've spoken to have, you know, given me that perspective of you know what it meant from an offshoring perspective then or from a BPO perspective then. Uh and then having done it myself in several geographical locations around the world in US, Canada, UK, Australia, um, India, Philippines, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, South Africa.

I think probably Antarctica is the only continent that have not been on. Uh that haven't opened a call center yet, right? Uh I guess we could we could get the penguins to start collecting. But no. I mean, I think this is, you know, it's a global thing, right? And people don't realize that globally, I mean, the way I sort of looked at, you know, the Connect BPS value proposition, right? Why I got into it, why when I started my own venture, I thought it would be what it is today.

And so if you look at the global market, which is a little over three hundred billion dollars in revenue uh from a BPO perspective, and of that about I think that is expected to double by twenty thirty three. So that's expected to go over sell say seven hundred million dollars, seven hundred billion dollars. Off that, I think today the three hundred something billion dollar finance and accountant, which is broadly under which collections is you know placed, is about seventy billion dollars.

But only about 14, roughly 14 billion dollars is the US debt collections industry. So even that is a pretty sizable chunk, right? And so in that space, you know, we still have about 5,500 collections businesses that operate in the US, right? So there's a very big gap between the big guns, the big players, the medium ones, and the very small ones, right? And so for us, it was when we founded the company in 2018.

I think I went with one very simple principle that I'd learned, which is that talent and opportunity. So opportunity is not equally distributed around the globe. Talent is. So you can't always, you know, you either bring the opportunity to the talent or you bring the talent to the opportunity, right?

And that's why a lot of you know businesses are global, because you can't always bring the talent to the opportunity because of immigration or many other reasons, but you can always bring the opportunity to the talent.

As we were kind of planning for the call and talking, we're talking a little bit about the different types of debt collection organizations, right? Creditors, debt buyers, agencies, law firms, BPO services. And we were talking a little bit about their adoption of technology, of AI technology, and their adoption of BPO service use cases.

And it was my observation, and I didn't really think about it until um until you kind of started walking me through this, but the use cases for artificial intelligence deployment and the use cases for those same types of organizations from a BPO perspective seem to match up. The law firms are looking at the more administrative services, they're looking at the more administrative technology, the agencies are looking for communications, they're looking in both channels for it.

Have you thought about like have you come across this before? Do you think that that's going to be a continuing trend as we look at the problems that those US organizations are trying to solve through either the use of technology or BPO services?

So very clear demarcation, I think, in the past few decades, where labor arbitrage and cost would be the main concern. So our industry is a very unique industry because we operate under very heavy regulatory as well as economic pressure. So that means we operate with very, very thin margins. I think for most uh industries, they don't even uncomprehend how we make money. And I think there's money to be made.

I think one of the challenges we face is uh, you know, we always try to throw cost solutions, and cost solutions often end up being, you know, looking for labor arbitras, whether it's, you know, domestically or internationally. Right. So that's being that being sort of the the the underlying criteria.

If you look at sort of the again, the global talent in terms of you know, where a lot of development is being done on digital as well as on the AI front, you you've got companies, it doesn't matter now where the company is located. It doesn't matter whether they're in, you know, the Bay Area or they're in Bangalore, right?

So I think that can be used like an underlying use case for most companies, whether it's connection agencies, law firms. But yes, traditionally collection agencies will look at, you know, what is their biggest cost item, which is labor cost, and then you know, throw a cost solution at it and say, okay, how can we make this cheaper? And then for the law firms, it's again, what do you what do you least want to do? Right.

I think it's also a question of what is what is the if I have a problem, how far can I throw it, right? And offshore is the farthest you can throw it. So if you've got a problem, which is usually administrative work, let's throw it offshore. Let's throw it as far as we can.

So you look at the first few debt collection calls made out of uh, you know, companies that I don't think even exist today, like NCO, SI and all of these guys, they all took their lowest risk, highest impact portfolios and sent them offshore. Right. So because I look at the business from a debt power lens as well as from a servicer lens, you know, I don't look at collections simply as making a phone call. It's an operating model.

And an operating model for collections requires you to have two things. It requires you to have an account and it requires you to have an attempt. Right? You can own an account, but that doesn't guarantee collection. You can have the best collectors, but that doesn't guarantee you know collection. So you need to have both. And what they did is they took their least valuable accounts and threw them to their least trained resources.

I think with where we are today, that there's so much maturity that I think that training and that middle management experience that has been developed already offshore. So law firms are finding easy solutions to the problem of the administrative work because again, that can be done easily with a BPO. And then BPOs have evolved significantly to understand the different contact channels and how to use contact channels to the best ability.

And that's why collection companies are looking for that type of work with the BPOs. So I guess what used to be a cost uh solution has now become a value solution, right? Where do you get the most value?

And as I've been writing some research papers on artificial intelligence and the impact, it's become clearer that the best use cases or the most impactful use cases that we've seen full studies done on to this point is those that empower the live agent, meaning it's those co-pilot type tools that are feeding the agent and making them a super agent.

And so when you think about what you have internally in the United States to conduct that and that that same skill set or tool set is transferable to that third-party BPO partnership, I think is really that place where the intersection of the BPO services and the technology capabilities, all the BPOs I'm talking with these days are telling me about their technology stacks. Like they're all really starting to, I think, move more towards being technology providers in some way, shape, or form.

But I see that co-pilot tool set as being kind of that real big opportunity for the future. Have you seen organizations that have deployed that successfully and seen the same results that I've seen in the studies?

And so as we are switching more from the traditional, say banking to the more fintech world, that digital adoption becomes even more prevalent around the world.

But what you know, to to kind of go back to what you were saying, I think it doesn't matter which direction, whether it's the creditors or the debt buyers or the collection firms who are pushing down the digital, or it's the BPOs sometimes that are pushing up the digital, because I think they're seeing that as a more you know stable long-term solution to retain their client base.

Either way, is because sometimes the the creditor is not sophisticated enough or the debt pie is not sophisticated enough, and the BPO has a sophistication or or or the capabilities sets already in in um you know in production that they can bring to their clients. So it doesn't matter which direction, but I think it's going to, you know, it's going to eventually get there. So which is why the, you know, I'll go back to the statement that it is not a you know people or a technology or a process.

It's an entire operating model, right? So how do you make the operating model better? If you're just going to throw a bunch of emails, uh you're gonna just throw a bunch of SMSs, you're just going to make, you know, uh the fanciest AI bots available to your debtors, that's not going to get you the results you're looking for.

So it still has to be strategy meeting execution, but that strategy has to come from all of this available technology, all of the available people resources we have across the globe. And then all the compliance constraints that we have to operate under, right? And then the differentiator. So where I think the BPO industry is going to be is that you have the bigger BPO players. Obviously, Connect BPS is not, it's not there yet and it's never going to be.

I don't think we're ever going to be the size of a teleperformance or a convergent or whatever. You know, we're never going to have like hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, right? What we want to do is we want to be very, very strategic and very focused on the boutique operations. And how do we elevate the operating model of our client, right? And that is how do we take that strategy and then bring in sort of laser-focused execution to it. That's the differentiation, I think.

And his first statement to me, and I'd flown in from uh that time I was based in the UK, I'd flown in from the UK, my first day in the office in the US, and he asked me this question that should we go to India or should we just wait for the next flavor of the month? And I was shocked. I was like, you know what? Uh I didn't expect that question. And so, you know, 20 years later, I think that question is still very relevant, right? Where do you want to go?

Or would you just wait for the next flavor of the month, right? So I think for me, the determination of what destinations to choose has been really m really again focused on where the talent is and what kind of what is the quality of talent that is available. So not only is there the talent, but is that talent really even interested in doing doing this kind of a job? Right.

So for example, where I think majority of our our delivery centers today are in South Africa with over 3,000 people currently that we we employ there. If you look at the labor market statistics, so US, Canada, for example, we're hovering between 4.5 to 6.5% unemployment um in these two markets respectively. And if you look at the latest stats uh for South Africa, the unemployment rate is a little over 30%. Um youth unemployment is even higher. So youth um unemployment is a little over 50%.

Okay. Uh that's bet you know ages 18 to 35. So if you think about kind of what's the labor availability, right? That's number one. Number two, again, very strong base in financial services with South Africa. So it's almost as mature, almost maybe the same age in terms of maturity as India as an outsourcing destination. It's just that the US didn't use it much. The UK and you know, Australia used it a lot more.

So South Africa's evolution or or maturity of the financial services base is very, very high. English speaking, obviously, 100% of the population speaks in English. You've traveled to India, right? I don't think you will find only one language being spoken in India. So as much as people think.

So every all the education is in English, everything is in is based in you know the English language. So that's very strong uh foundation for us. And then for obviously the fact of the distance, we have you know a large Spanish speaking population in the US that we cater to. So we have a near shore operations in the Dominican Republic as well.

Not the same in South Africa, but there is a lot of government push to grow because of the unemployment situation, right? They want to grow the offshore industry. So in the last six years since we started the company in South Africa, you know, w the the overall growth has been about 150,000 seats in South Africa. And it's expected to be around half a million seats in South Africa by early twist.

So where you have so much potential, I think that's yeah, that's you know, you want to be where the growth is going to be over the next five, six, ten years. So that's how that's how I got to where I got.

But now that I've spent some time there, and you know, also, you know, if you compare it to the Australian accent, New Zealand accent, the South African accent is a little bit different. But the accent actually is quite similar to the UK and is actually quite unique. And we find that a mo majority of our interactions have been where, you know, customer has actually stayed on the phone wanting to find out what that accent is.

You know, they just hear the accent and they want to keep hearing it for a little bit longer. And then by that time they've already, you know, verified themselves. They've acknowledged the the death. But it's not just about the accent. I think accent is one thing that triggers in our in our mind some preconceived notions, right? But also I think accent, one of the things that it relates to. In terms of customer experience, is empathy.

So one of the biggest challenges we face with even if you use very fine accents and you use accent utilization technology, is that you cannot train empathy, right? Empathy is something that has to be it has to be inherent, it has to be cultural, it has to be something that's developed over generations. And so if I compare, say for example, I if if you don't mind, I'll I'll dive into a little small story.

If you've heard of the 2611 terrorist incident or terror incident in India in Mumbai, where a very large five star hotel, I think it's seven star hotel, was under siege for three days.

So at the end of that incident, uh a news reporter asked one of the staff members, and they said, you know, these hundred guests that were in there, you know, it's their probably their first time in the hotel. They only know the way they came in and they left. But you've been there now in this hotel for so long. There are six exits out of this hotel. Why did none of the 500 staff leave? And you know the answer they gave? Who would have taken care of the guests?

That is not something you can train in even the best you know, hospitality management schools in the world. You can be become the best chef in and go to the best hospitality, but that is not a trait that you can train. That is cultural. That comes from the experience of your guest is your god, sort of a thing, right?

And so similarly, empathy is something that I think, again, we find in South Africa is something that's a very cultural, it cuts across all layers of society and all like socioeconomic strata, where I think that simp, you know, that sort of empathy in the tone, the communication, the language is very unique. Right.

And even though it's a British accent or a somewhat British accent, and it could mirror something like an Australian or a New Zealand access accent, but you cannot mirror that empathy anywhere in the world, right? So that's something that I think is is what if proper law, you know, rulemaking lawmakers really understand that that's really what is required. I think we'll we'll come out ahead with South Africa.

And this podcast, I think, is is that takeaway for me. It's that idea of the opportunity and the talent and its distribution across the globe. That that's what I'm gonna take home from this conversation today. And I really, really appreciate you taking some time coming on, sharing your insights. This has been a great episode.

And I believe the future is going to be very, very proud. And so I'm looking forward to a lot more of these interactions in the future.

And hopefully I'll get Sakette back here at least one more time to help me continue to create great content for a great industry. But until next time, Sakat, I really do appreciate all of your insights. Thanks.