Contact centers are under pressure. Rising labor costs, customer expectations, and global language demands have made voice support the most costly part of providing excellent customer experiences (CXs).
That’s why, from our day-to-day work and contacts and from our market research, many enterprises see BPO-hosted voice AI as the fastest path to modernization.
In turn, many BPOs view voice AI as a way to strengthen their value proposition. Namely, it helps clients modernize faster while improving efficiency and creating new growth opportunities in an increasingly automated CX landscape.
It’s not just about noise or clarity. Voice AI today spans conversational agents, real-time translation, intelligent call orchestration, and more. But as our 2025 survey of 819 CX leaders shows, the story is more complicated: and the stakes are high.
The Advantages and the Catch
BPOs offer enterprises speed to market. A BPO can spin up AI-driven solutions quickly, offload complexity from IT teams, and deliver results without massive internal investment. That can include everything from deploying digital voice agents to layering in advanced noise suppression.
But the flip side is lock-in. If the BPO is hosting proprietary or generic tools, enterprises risk losing flexibility, paying more, and falling behind when the tech inevitably evolves.
We’ve seen this movie before. A decade ago, many BPOs — and even large telecom carriers — offered hosted CRM, IVR, and contact center solutions as part of their managed services.
For a while, it worked. But as software makers reasserted control with faster innovation, deeper integration, and better economics, those hosted offerings fell behind.
A BPO can spin up AI-driven solutions quickly...without massive internal investment.
Enterprises that tied themselves too closely to BPO-hosted platforms often found themselves boxed in. They faced slower updates, support gaps, and higher costs as vendors and carriers prioritized their own ecosystems.
The lesson isn’t that BPOs shouldn’t host technology. It’s that lasting success comes from partnerships, not platform ownership.
Voice AI and IVR
So, to understand the potential benefits of voice AI for BPOs and their customers, let’s look deeper at it and how it compares with IVR systems.
Voice AI uses real-time machine learning to understand, adapt, and respond to human speech dynamically. It can handle accents, background noise, emotional tone, and multilingual interactions.
IVR systems are rules-based; they recognize pre-defined prompts or numbers and route calls accordingly. Even speech-enabled IVRs rely on fixed trees and keyword matching.
- The key difference: voice AI learns; IVRs follows instructions. Voice AI can engage in natural, multi-turn conversations while IVR redirects or escalates.
- Benefits of voice AI: Higher automation potential, better CX, and deeper insight into caller intent.
- Voice AI downsides: Requires quality training data, thoughtful integration, and clear governance to avoid over-automation or loss of brand tone.
The lesson isn’t that BPOs shouldn’t host technology. It’s that BPOs shouldn’t try to reinvent the tech stack. When BPOs attempt to play software vendor, they inevitably lose ground to companies designed to innovate, scale, and evolve faster.
Will Voice AI Follow the Same Path?
There’s a chance that voice AI follows the same path as the other hosted technologies, like IVR for BPOs, that didn’t strategically pivot. Voice AI is an infrastructure that must continuously adapt.
Some BPOs will repeat the mistakes of the past if they chase generic, homegrown solutions. But others are well-positioned to lead using partnerships with best-in-class vendors to provide enterprises with a faster, safer route to AI adoption.
For enterprises: treat BPO-hosted AI as a strategic route to modernization. For BPOs: don't try to out-build the AI vendors.
The difference will come down to focus, where BPOs that anchor AI rollouts in specific use cases deliver value quickly and avoid the trap of implementing blindly.
Strategic Recommendations
For enterprises:
- Treat BPO-hosted AI as a strategic route to modernization. When paired with the right partners, it offers a fast and effective way to deploy AI while maintaining flexibility to evolve your tech stack over time.
- Demand transparency. Is your provider building closed systems or partnering with specialized AI vendors? Knowing this determines whether you’ll be able to plug into future innovations or remain stuck.
- Ensure you retain optionality to move, scale, or integrate new tools as the market evolves. Optionality protects against rapid shifts in cost, capability, and competitive advantage.
For BPOs:
- Don’t try to out-build the AI vendors. Instead, elevate your offering by integrating proven voice AI platforms. This keeps you competitive without wasting resources on reinvention.
- Differentiate not by owning the stack, but by delivering faster rollouts, better economics, and a modernized outsource platform that enterprises can trust. Your value is in speed, service quality, and adaptability, not software IP.
- Anchor adoption in targeted use cases where AI creates measurable impact, then scale. This ensures credibility with clients and builds momentum without overpromising.
The Bottom Line
The upside is real, but so is the risk of getting it wrong. History shows BPO-hosted platforms have struggled to stand the test of time, but the opportunity is bigger. Voice AI offers transformative upside, but only for those who implement it with the right focus, partners, and pace.
Enterprises want speed. Vendors bring innovation. And the most forward-looking BPOs can fuse the two, modernizing the outsource stack with focused use cases and shaping the next era of CX.