Teleperformance shares plunged 23% on Thursday after the French call center and office services group missed its full-year revenue goal, citing a “volatile economic environment.”
The potential impact of artificial intelligence on their business model has unsettled investors as corporations turn into increasingly more capable of use the technology on to their very own advantage.
Teleperformance shares fell 16% last week after Swedish financial services firm Klarna, in response to LSEG data said Its open AI-powered customer support assistant handled two-thirds of all customer support calls.
However, Teleperformance CEO Daniel Julien said Thursday that AI would have a positive impact on the corporate’s business model – and that it is going to never fully replace the worth of human interaction.
“AI is part of the solutions we offer our customers,” Julien told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
“AI helps increase the accuracy of our employees… that’s great, but ultimately we’re here to reduce friction between the citizen or customer and the companies from which they purchased a product or service .” .”
He emphasized: “It’s not just a transactional relationship, it has a lot to do with reassurance, with trust, with empathy. Therefore, we see AI as an improvement to the work of our human employees, but in no way a replacement for it.”
Teleperformance share price.
Teleperformance reported Revenue up 2.3% to eight.345 billion euros ($9.091 billion) in 2023 as net profit fell year-on-year to 602 million euros from 643 million euros. Diluted earnings per share were 10.18 euros, after 10.77 euros.
In its results, the corporate said it’s working with customers on 250 AI projects, including in the realm of generative AI, and that it has expanded its portfolio with latest partnerships on this area.
“Even the high-tech or AI-involved companies are Teleperformance customers. We decided that there would be complementarity and not separation,” Julien told CNBC, referring to the corporate’s agreement with the tech giant and major AI player Microsoft.
“They are there to provide a solution that increases productivity and increases the quality of information that can be provided to the customer, but at the end of the day the customer is human. The day the customer will be a robot, maybe AI will replace humans.”
