S2E9: The BPO Boss: Humans Are Going Premium | Bryce Maddock (TaskUs)

We sit down with Bryce Maddock, CEO of TaskUs (60,000+ employees, $1B+ revenue), who delivers the most honest take you'll hear about AI's impact on the service industry. As one of the world's largest BPOs navigating the AI transition, Bryce pulls no punches about automation claims, job displacement, and what's really happening behind the headlines.

Bryce exposes the disconnect between public AI claims and private reality:

"I see metrics where it's like, hey, We've automated 60, 70, 80% of our customer support. And I'm in the background being like, well, we still have the same number of humans. So I don't understand how those two things are possible."

This isn't skepticism - it's insider knowledge from someone managing contracts with 200+ of the world's biggest tech companies. TaskUs is literally losing money on purpose to win the AI game:

"Today your per contact price is $2, right? We'll give you an upfront savings. It means we're going to lose money, but we'll charge you $1.50. We'll charge you $1 a contact. We'll lose money for the first year."

They're moving from the traditional "law firm model" where "lawyers were just very, very poorly paid" at $15-20/hour to outcome-based pricing that aligns with AI capabilities.

When asked if all 60,000 employees will survive the AI transition:

"I don't know that all 60,000 are going to make it through the journey. There certainly is going to be temporary dislocation where people are going to lose their jobs. And I think anyone who says differently is not being truthful and doesn't understand the power of this technology."

Don’t underestimate this. Stop and listen - this level of honesty is rare from a public company CEO, but Bryce explains why sugarcoating serves no one. "The next phase is going to be even more impactful for my business and for all BPOs, is beginning to really become an agentic solution where things that took two, three, four, six weeks to train a human being to do, you can now train an agentic system to do. And I think that's where the rubber will meet the road."

Bryce also reveals how media headlines drive bad business decisions: "What's actually happening inside our customers is that there's massive pressure from the board and the C-suite because they listen to podcasts like this or read the headline articles and it's like, hey, know, Klarna doesn't have any humans doing customer support anymore. Why do you?"

"And so it's very easy for that pressure to build and for the C-suite and the board to say, we need to see real change. In the middle of the business, there is a lot of fear."

In another part, Bryce shares how VCs wouldn't fund TaskUs because it "wasn't techy enough" - and why he's now glad they stayed true to their service company roots while embracing AI partnerships. "The irony is this makes it harder for us, because a lot of the context that get escalated to humans become just really pissed off customers who want a human to yell at. [...] The agent can follow the policy and still piss off the customer such that they're like, I want to talk to a human being."

Bryce explains how humans become "premium features":

"Launch a white glove support line where if that customer contacts us, we can pick up the phone with a human being in five minutes and solve their problems. These human agents are much more empowered to actually solve problems."

"Either I'll look like a genius or a complete fool in a few years. So I'll be excited to look back and see which it is."

This episode offers unprecedented insight into how one of the world's largest service companies is navigating the AI transition, with brutal honesty about what's working, what's not, and what's coming next.

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