At less than 1%, complete automation is still in its infancy but projections show a rise to 50% within two years.
Outsourcing was a trend catching up fast during India's IT boom in the 1990s. As tech giants and Fortune 500 companies turned to India, call centres offering well-paying jobs to the educated, English-speaking youth mushroomed all over the country.
Today, as AI-driven customer interactions rise, the sector is being reshaped, revamping the way customer interactions unfold. In line with this shift is SquadStack, one of India's telecalling outsourcing partners that offers AI-driven alternatives to conventional telecalling setups to empower leading businesses.
The company addresses the challenges businesses face in managing customer communication throughout the lifecycle. Often called the BPO or enterprise communication market, this sector is valued at $22 billion in India and $450 billion globally.
In an exclusive interview with AIM, Apurv Agrawal, the CEO & co-founder of SquadStack, said, "Our vision is to enable employment for people, wherever they are and whatever their background. In fact, 70% of our workforce comprises stay-at-home moms."
Agrawal illustrated this with an employee story. His colleague Priya had a tech job in Delhi, but after marriage, she moved to Ludhiana, where opportunities were limited. However, with SquadStack's platform, her skills and potential found a new fit.
"AI has been essential in supporting people like her. Traditionally, companies relied on centralised offices with hundreds of agents managed in person. By integrating AI, we can conduct remote screenings and quality audits, enabling people like Priya to access resources, AI-driven searches, and real-time coaching during customer interactions, even from a smaller town," Agrawal said, adding that AI enhances control and guidance far more scalably than manual oversight, empowering such employees to perform effectively.
According to Agrawal, AI helps streamline tasks like quality auditing, once done manually by agents who listened to calls and graded them -- a monotonous and error-prone task. Now, AI consistently audits thousands of interactions simultaneously without fatigue.
Similarly, AI manages simpler conversations through chatbots, providing instant responses and reducing wait times.
Moreover, unlike human agents limited by availability, AI can scale to handle thousands of concurrent conversations, adjusting to peak hours and scaling down during off-peak times. This scalability is invaluable as AI takes on routine tasks, freeing humans to focus on more complex, high-value conversations.
"This approach aligns with what we call the 'ideal man theory', [which is] using AI where it excels and human talent where it's indispensable. Just as industrial revolutions historically drove efficiency and opened new avenues for skilled roles, AI is enabling our agents to focus on higher-level conversations, resulting in better compensation and job satisfaction," Agarwal noted.
In the BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance) sector, every lead presents a chance for connection and engagement. Imagine a customer receiving a prompt and a personalised conversation through a WhatsApp chatbot ready to handle initial queries in seconds. Often, the bot can tackle basic questions and tasks with ease.
However, when things get complex, a human intervention with a seamless blend of AI efficiency and human empathy is necessary.
Describing the human-AI partnership, Agrawal said, "With our humanoid agent, we can automate processes, ensuring seamless connectivity. Companies have achieved cost savings of 30-50% and increased conversion rates by 50-100% by implementing our system."
He noted that complete automation is still in its infancy, at less than 1%, but projections show a rise to 50% within two years. Hence, SquadStack is focussed on how augmented AI solutions can drive business growth and create lasting impact.
India's growing middle class, rising income, and low insurance penetration make it a prime market for AI-driven customer engagement. SquadStack is tapping into this opportunity by using AI-driven solutions to bridge linguistic and regional gaps in India's telecom sectors.
By blending AI with human support, SquadStack enables streamlined services and enhanced sales through remote teams, positioning AI as a force for millions across 'Bharat'.
On the global level, Bland AI, a San Francisco-based platform, is reimagining phone-based customer interactions. With hyper-educated, infinitely scalable AI agents integrated into companies' tech stacks, Bland provides enterprise-grade stability with sub-1 second latency.
The company has developed 'Conversational Pathways', a programming language that ensures structured and accurate responses to weed out inaccuracies.
After emerging from stealth with $16 million in Series A funding led by Scale Venture Partners, Bland is set to expand its role in automating high-volume customer support, sales, and internal operations, showcasing how AI can elevate customer service worldwide.
