Offshore Customer Support and AI for Tech Businesses - The ultimate unlock!

A few weeks ago on the Exordiom Talent Podcast, I sat down with someone I’ve known and respected for years — Marlene Lee Summers, SVP of Global Customer Support at ECI Software Solutions. Marlene and I worked together at Zuora, and since then she’s gone on to lead support and customer success at Salesforce Zuora, and now ECI.

When you talk to Marlene, you quickly realize she doesn’t treat customer support as a department — she treats it as a calling. Early in our conversation, she said something that stayed with me:

“The meaning of work isn’t complicated. People need something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”

Check out the FULL podcast here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2DFToUw85c

That line captures exactly why building world-class support organizations is so complex — and so rewarding. Because great support isn’t just about process or metrics. It’s about people. And when those people are empowered, trained, and given purpose, the results ripple across the entire customer experience.

That's even more important in the AI-influenced world that we live in today.

Marlene told me a story that perfectly illustrates how global talent has evolved. She once managed a young woman in the Philippines who, at 23, was earning more than her father. That role didn’t just change her career — it changed her family’s trajectory.

It reminded me why so many companies are rethinking their approach to offshore talent. What used to be about saving money is now about unlocking capability.

In both India and the Philippines, customer experience professionals have grown into some of the most sophisticated operators in the world. According to Deloitte's latest Future of Work study, nearly 70% of CX leaders now offshore not primarily for savings, but for access to skilled talent and continuous coverage.

As Marlene said, “It’s not an optional unlock anymore — it’s a requirement.”

That shift from cost to capability has redefined how modern companies scale. Today, even a Series B startup can build a 24-hour support function that delivers enterprise-grade service — powered by global talent that’s deeply invested in customer outcomes.

Naturally, we spent time talking about AI. Both of us remember that “first AI moment” — when you realize how fast these systems can write, summarize, or generate insights. But Marlene brought it back to something more human:

“Support is still about triage. You diagnose, you plan, you act. That kind of judgment comes from experience, not from a model.”

And she’s right. AI can automate repetitive tasks, but it can’t replicate human empathy. Gartner’s 2025 CX outlook found that while 80% of companies plan to integrate AI into support, more than 90% say humans will remain essential for high-emotion or high-impact interactions.

At Exordiom Talent, we’re seeing the best results when AI and humans work together. AI handles deflection, ticket routing, and sentiment analysis. Our offshore teams — often in India and the Philippines — focus on what machines can’t: empathy, context, and judgment.

That combination isn’t theoretical. One of our customers recently saw resolution times drop by 40% and CSAT jump double digits after blending AI automation with performance-sourced offshore agents.

Or as Marlene put it with her trademark simplicity:

“No one’s ever complained that a rep was too nice.”

We also talked about how support has become the backbone of retention. Customers today expect answers instantly — and they don’t care what timezone you’re in.

When Marlene described walking through Manila at 3 AM and seeing cafés full of night-shift professionals helping customers around the world, it painted a vivid picture. This isn’t just a work arrangement — it’s an ecosystem built around service.

In India, it’s the same. You’ll find highly educated engineers and support specialists running complex technical operations overnight, aligned perfectly to U.S. and European customers.

That’s the magic of distributed teams: you can deliver enterprise-grade coverage without enterprise burn. When done right, it doesn’t just extend hours — it elevates the entire customer experience.

What separates high-performing global teams from the rest isn’t geography — it’s accountability.

At Exordiom Talent, we call this performance sourcing. It’s not about filling seats. It’s about embedding offshore professionals into your core operations, measured by the same KPIs, coached by the same leaders, and held to the same standards as any in-house teammate.

When every agent — whether they’re in San Francisco, Bangalore, or Manila — owns the same outcomes, you erase the line between “offshore” and “onshore.” You get one unified team that’s obsessed with customer impact.

McKinsey & Company’s 2024 global talent study found that companies adopting this model see 25–35% higher productivity per dollar spent. But the bigger story isn’t efficiency — it’s loyalty. Offshore professionals who are truly part of the mission tend to stay longer, care more, and perform better.

As we wrapped the conversation, Marlene left me with a thought I can’t shake:

“Support will always need humans. AI will just make the best ones even better.”

That’s the truth I see playing out across our clients every day. The companies that win the next decade won’t be those with the biggest support budgets — they’ll be the ones that combine empathy, AI fluency, and global precision into a single operating model.

And that’s exactly what we’re enabling at Exordiom Talent — helping founders and CX leaders reimagine how high-performance, global support teams are built.

Operational excellence shouldn’t depend on a zip code — and our teams in India, the Philippines, and beyond are proving that every single day.

We're helping some of the fasted growing companies scale out their CS organizations without the headaches of big recruiting teams, long time to hire/give out offers, and the HR/Payroll work! If you're interested in scaling out your CS teams to deliver better customer delight without ballooning your budgets, lets chat!

‍