When did outsourcing become so… boring?
Once hailed as a disruptive force, BPOs today often find themselves buried in a haze of metrics no one truly cares about—FCRs, AHTs, CSATs tweaked to the decimal. But here’s the punchline: no customer has ever said, “Wow, that was a low average handle time. Five stars!”
The new era of BPO isn’t about just meeting KPIs. It’s about delivering business outcomes: better brand perception, greater customer retention, viral word-of-mouth, and frictionless loyalty. And the smartest minds in the industry—think Derek Gallimore, Siva Subramaniam, Bryce Maddock, Andy Lark, and Ralph Schafer—are driving this evolution.
Ready for the deep dive? Let’s explore why outsourcing success today looks nothing like the dashboards of yesteryear—and why firms like cxperts.us are ahead of the curve.
1. SLAs vs. Business Outcomes: Derek Gallimore Calls the Bluff
Derek Gallimore’s decades of experience have left him unimpressed with traditional SLAs (service level agreements). His critique? They’re often more about vendor protection than customer experience.
“Hitting a 90% SLA doesn’t mean the customer feels heard. It means someone ticked a box,” says Gallimore.
Instead, he advocates:
Outcome-based outsourcing contracts focused on retention, NPS lifts, and revenue per contact.
Integrated business reviews where clients and providers jointly assess brand KPIs, not just ops metrics.
CX feedback loops that tie customer emotion directly into product and marketing strategy.
That’s not just theory. At cxperts.us, the operational models are built around customer lifetime value and conversion metrics—not just whether a ticket was closed in six minutes.
2. Bryce Maddock’s Cultural Alchemy: Agents as Brand Advocates
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your customers can tell when your support agent is reading a script.
Bryce Maddock, co-founder of TaskUs, flipped the game by focusing on what he calls “cultural transference.” In his view, BPOs don’t just need to understand the client’s brand—they need to live it.
How does that look in practice?
Brand onboarding that mimics internal employee training.
Dedicated client culture leads within BPO sites.
Agent communities that celebrate client achievements and milestones.
This isn’t fluff. Culture-rich agents deliver emotionally congruent service—support that feels native to the brand, not bolted on.
At cxperts.us, you’ll find Slack channels with emojis exploding for client wins. You’ll hear agents referencing TikTok trends their customers follow. This is not your dad’s call center.
3. Andy Lark: CX Ops Meet Marketing Ops
Andy Lark wants BPOs to stop thinking like operations managers and start thinking like CMOs. Why? Because every support touchpoint is a brand impression—and most BPOs are blowing it.
Lark’s approach calls for:
Martech-stack integration—where helpdesk data flows into customer journey platforms like Braze or HubSpot.
AI tone-matching, ensuring an Apple customer doesn’t get a script that sounds like Dell.
Campaign-aware agents, who know what email the customer just received and why they’re suddenly calling about “25% off.”
This approach aligns beautifully with cxperts.us, which builds journey-informed contact centers—where service and marketing speak the same language and answer to the same ROI goals.
4. Ralph Schafer: Design for the Customer Who Doesn’t Want to Talk
Here’s where things get delightfully paradoxical.
Ralph Schafer has a provocative take: the best customer service is invisible. Not because it’s bad—but because the experience is so seamless, customers don’t need to reach out.
“Design for zero-touch, and you’ll find the few human touchpoints you do have will matter ten times more,” Schafer says.
He pushes BPOs to:
Build predictive resolution flows, where support solves the problem before the customer calls.
Design “intelligent deflection” tools, like chatbots that actually work and content that actually answers.
Use agent interactions as UX probes, feeding back into the product to reduce contact rate over time.
This strategy requires a partner like cxperts.us, where the goal isn’t just to staff tickets, but to reduce them meaningfully—turning every contact into a learning opportunity.
The New Mandate: Co-Own the CX
Here’s where all five experts agree: the BPO of tomorrow isn’t a vendor. It’s a co-pilot.
That means:
Sitting in product roadmap meetings.
Shaping digital CX flows.
Co-designing brand voice.
Owning revenue-impacting KPIs.
The BPO model of yesteryear—cheap, offshore, mechanical—is not only outdated, it’s dangerous. Today’s customers expect nuance, humanity, speed, and personalization. If your outsourcing partner isn’t enabling that, they’re holding you back.
Cxperts.us steps up to that new mandate with:
White-labeled teams so seamless, your customers will think they’re in-house.
CX-native leadership with backgrounds in brand, product, and marketing.
Performance models built around outcomes, not just activity.
Get Past the Dashboard
The outsourcing industry needs a collective “Ctrl+Alt+Del.” SLAs, while helpful, are not the destination. They’re guardrails at best.
The real goal? Delight. Retention. Advocacy. Speed. Emotional resonance. Strategic feedback loops. Co-creation.
The kind of results you get when your partner isn’t counting calls—they’re creating value.
And if you’re looking for a partner like that—who lives your brand, grows with your team, and delivers CX that actually means something—well, cxperts.us is already in the future, waiting for you to catch up.
