In today’s global marketplace, delivering a positive customer experience (CX) is critical to the bottom line, no matter what the industry. With a growing number of choices and options available, it is becoming increasingly challenging for companies to keep customers satisfied and coming back. Elevating CX not only increases customer satisfaction, but it also drives customer loyalty and retention, which generates greater revenue.

ibex is an elite outsourcer of CX, seamlessly connecting many of the world’s leading brands with their customers. Not your typical Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company, ibex is at the forefront of the digital transformation in the BPO industry. Its next-generation CX solutions connect the customer lifecycle to drive revenue, reduce costs, and boost customer loyalty.

CIO Bulletin had the opportunity to interview Jim Ferrato, CIO at ibex, and talk about its journey as one of the world’s leading BPOs. 

Q. What is the story of the ibex?

Innovation is a core characteristic of ibex and the foundation upon which it has built a company whose services and solutions are transformational for the industry as well as clients around the globe.

ibex leverages AI-enabled solutions, a highly connected culture, leaned-in management, exceptional employee engagement, and unmatched execution to deliver BPO 2.0 CX solutions for many of the world’s leading companies across retail, healthcare, e-commerce, fintech, utilities, and logistics.

Equipped with its industry leading WaveX technology platform, ibex’s diverse global team of more than 30,000 highly trained agents manages nearly 200 million critical customer interactions annually, adding over $2.2 billion in lifetime customer revenue.

Today, ibex has a strong and growing roster of elite blue-chip and top new economy clients. The company’s strategic decisions and investments in technology, market expansion, and culture have enabled ibex over the last several years to further scale its business model, enter and win in new markets and verticals, and deliver outstanding performances for shareholders.

Since 2021, ibex has added more than 55 new clients that are the leaders in their industries to its impressive client list. In fact, ibex was the best performing stock in its sector on Nasdaq for 2022.

ibex’s success in client diversification and strategic vertical expansion has positioned the company for strong growth in today’s hyper-competitive CX market.

Q. How has ibex grown since its inception to where it stands today?

From a technology perspective, ibex has shifted from developing contact center infrastructure like interactive voice response (IVR) and automatic call distribution (ACDs) to focusing on proprietary solutions that support the agent lifecycle from the time they apply to when they hit the floor to support our clients’ customers.

The use of AI technology is proving to be massively impactful. This technology is helping our agents serve customers more efficiently and effectively.

Q. What are the core values by which ibex operates? How have these values influenced the manner in which the company interacts with its clients and treats its employees?

At ibex, we live our core values every day. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive work environment that promotes career advancement and celebrates the accomplishments of our team. Cultivating a diverse culture where all backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints are respected, valued, and encouraged, is the key to our success.

We are committed to providing a world-class employee experience so our team members can deliver amazing customer experiences for the world’s top brands. ibex Cares is our global philanthropic program that supports local communities, wherever the company operates.

ibex invests in its employees and the communities where they live and work. Employees themselves choose the local charities they want to support and strive to make a difference in the lives of the people closest to them—including friends, family members, and co-workers.

The Women of ibex, which provides a community of women helping women to advance their life and career goals through meaningful discourse, positive encouragement, and continued support, is another integral part of the ibex culture.

We are proud to have been recognized recently as one of America’s greatest workplaces for Diversity and Inclusion by Newsweek. We embrace the differences that each individual brings to the table and understand that our strength lies in our ability to see challenges from multiple perspectives.

Q. What are the solutions offered by ibex? What is it about these solutions that set ibex apart from its rivals?

One of the key factors that differentiates ibex from its competitors is our purpose-built technology solutions, such as our virtual floor management system, which allows us to track and address reasons for agent escalations; our real time sentiment analysis engine, which gives our team managers a view into each of their agents’ interactions; and our custom-built coaching software, which creates customized coaching plans for each agent. These solutions are all components of our award-winning WaveX technology platform.

Q. Can you explain the ibex CX performance platform, Wave X?

WaveX is ibex’s proprietary technology platform that enhances contact center performance to drive optimal CX outcomes. It includes a full range of solutions, from training simulators to AI social media review analytics that provide smart technology for every touch point in the customer journey.

WaveX enables superior operational excellence and innovation for the work-at-home setting and features capabilities that incorporate other ibex customer interaction management components. WaveX also includes: ReFleCX, our survey management and analysis package; SMR, our social media management suite; and ReCX, our AI based chat bot.

Uniting WaveX with our world-class talent and culture enables ibex to provide next-level CX solutions.

Q. Would you like us to highlight something important happening in your company that we may have missed asking about?

ibex’s development team of more than 400 IT professionals has been a leader in integrating AI into many of its agent-facing platforms, such as recruiting, service bots, speech analytics, and sentiment analysis across digital and voice channels. Generative AI models such as ChatGPT represent a significant advancement over previous iterations of AI due to their ability to create original content and simulate human-like responses.

Our strategy is to leverage Generative AI within our operations to enable our agents to deliver a better customer experience, drive greater operational efficiency, and deliver innovative solutions as part of our WaveX technology suite.

Q. What are ibex’s plans for the future?

ibex is focused on helping our clients digitally transform their CX, delivering more automation, channel preference, and customer insights while increasing customer satisfaction. BPO 3.0 is already on our radar, and we are investing in the technologies that will take us and the BPO industry there.

A brief biography of the Chief Information Officer

Jim Ferrato is the CIO at ibex. He is a well-recognized industry leader with more than 25 years of experience in the information technology space. Prior to ibex, he was CIO at ACCENT Marketing, SVP and CIO at Protocol Global Solutions, and VP of Worldwide Professional Services at Aspect Communications

“Our strategy is to leverage Generative AI within our operations to enable our agents to deliver a better customer experience, drive greater operational efficiency, and deliver innovative solutions.”