The ‘AirBNB of Call Centers’ – with Claas van Delden of yoummday

In this week’s episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast, Derek speaks with Claas van Delden, the Chief Growth Officer for the yoummday platform. 

They chat about the yoummday model, the experience of managing a freelancer workforce, and perspectives on the current AI revolution. 

About yoummday

Claas begins by introducing yoummday, which he describes as the “Airbnb of call centers.”

“It’s a technology platform that is structured as a marketplace. 

On one side [is] our talent, [and] on the other side we have our clients. The platform is basically putting together supply and demand.” 

He advertises the fact that they hire freelancers for their talent, which results in large cost savings. 

“We don’t need physical locations [and] we don’t need a lot of third-party software. 

And most of those savings, we pass on to our talents in the form of a higher compensation, which makes working on our platform very attractive and gives us access to a high-quality talent pool.”   

Claas says that in this model, clients pay for output and performance rather than capacity. He also takes this opportunity to explain yoummday’s name. 

“[yoummday] is an abbreviation for ‘you made my day,’ and that’s the feeling you’re supposed to have once you’ve interacted with our company. That’s the quality we want to pursue.” 

Working with freelancers

Claas goes further into their freelancer talent. 

“Although we’re working with freelancers, we are not gig. I think that’s an important differentiation to make because the work we provide is regular, fully trained, permanent, high-quality work. 

So it’s exactly as in a BPO setting. The only difference is our talents work from home, and they choose who they work for and when they want to work.” 

While attrition is a major issue in the industry, it’s not a problem for yoummday due to its current model. “On an annual basis with yoummday, because the work we provide to our talent base is so attractive, [the attrition rate] is much, much lower.”

In return, Claas is confident that the workers will be reliable and deliver high-quality work. 

“The beauty of the model is the combination of work from home with attractive pay and freelancership. 

These talents are entrepreneurs. They really thrive when their client is thriving and they know that.” 

A flexible talent pool

The yoummday platform sources talent from 60 countries, including locations around Europe, South America, and Asia. Claas touts the latter as one of their fastest-growing regions in terms of talent.  

He describes how this works out in their favor.

“Our high performers [choose] their shifts, and then our team managers will take care of all the blank spots. 

And that’s the beauty of the flexibility that the freelancer model can provide compared to standard employment from one location.” 

The vanguard of AI in CX

As has become the norm in the show, Derek asks his guests about their views on AI in outsourcing. 

Claas particularly has plenty to say on the subject, with yoummday even proclaiming itself as the “Vanguard of AI in CX” on its website. 

He says that there’s basically two questions that the outsourcing industry needs to ask:

“[First] is ‘What does that do to the overall outsourcing volume?’ Is it going to go down [or] up?

We think over time, it will certainly have a positive effect on overall outsourcing volume. And that is because there will be accelerated automation for a lot of tasks, especially the simple ones.”

Claas also emphasizes that how the technology is used will be an important factor. 

“The second thing is, ‘How do we apply AI in our setting?’ 

We [should] think of AI as a tool to empower talents, to make them more productive, to take the tedious pieces of their work off them and really let them work on what they’re good at, which is human interactions, showing empathy, and solving complex tasks.”  

Claas even notes that properly adapting AI technology will directly solve their client concerns about efficiency. 

“Most of these [conversations] are not about cost savings but about how we can apply the existing resources in a meaningful way. 

How can we augment the customer experience? How can we have more quality time with the customer instead of using most of the time to identify them and retrieve their information?” 

He doesn’t see automation completely replacing humans in the yoummday platform.

“Technology is getting better every day, and we don’t have the crystal ball either. If there is an opportunity to make it more efficient, we’d certainly be open to that and we would embrace it.

[But] there are certain things that we believe will remain human. That’s why we very much believe in the quality of our talent pool and what they can do for our customers.” 

You may learn more about yoummday via its website and LinkedIn page.