Luis Barreto of TaskUs Talks About The Outsourcing Firm’s Rapid Success In Colombia

Last month, US-based outsourcing firm TaskUs celebrated the grand opening of its Medellín facility at the Ruta-N business incubator facility on the city’s north side. TaskUs opened its first Colombian facility in Cali during the pandemic, and the facility quickly filled to capacity.

With another 500 seats on tap in Medellín, the company is already looking to expand again, signalling the fast-moving outsourcer’s commitment to the Andean Nation.

Loren Moss, executive editor of Finance Colombia was able to sit down for a few minutes with Divisional Vice President Luis Barreto at the company’s Medellín grand opening celebration to speak about the early success TaskUs is experiencing in Colombia.

Finance Colombia: Luis, thank you for your time today. Congratulations. You guys are having your official grand opening. I know that you guys have ramped up operations here already. We’re in Medellin, at your facility here in Ruta N, these are lovely new facilities that you’ve had. Maybe if you can tell me a little bit about your footprint in Colombia, where you have operations already?

Luis Barreto: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, thank you for the congratulations. It’s taken a while because we’ve been operating for a year now in Medellin. We’ve just gone, you know, we just hadn’t had issues with just getting the right people to be able to celebrate this special achievement. But we’re happy that a year in we’re able to do this because it’s double the celebration. Because we’re not just opening, but we’re celebrating success.

We’ve found tremendous success in Medellin. We’ve been able to ramp to fill the seats and we’ve been able to get some very successful clients who are very happy with the service. So Medellin has been great to us. In terms of the footprint, we currently have three locations in Colombia. We opened up our headquarters in Cali back in 2021 where we currently have about 1,200 teammates, that’s what we call our agents.

We just opened up our second site in Cali. This month was their first operating month and that site has 420 seats. It’s going to have about 600 teammates. Then Medellin, as I said, this site has 400 seats, and it’s going to have about 500. And because everything’s already been sold, meaning we already have committed the space to existing clients from here to the end of the year, we’re already branching out to looking at other options. So we are going to be opening up a fourth location which is going to be the second in Medellin, and then hopefully by Q1 of next year, we’re going to be able to announce our third city for our continued expansion.

Finance Colombia: Oh, amazing. You know, I visited your facilities in Cali a couple years ago. Actually, I think it was still during the pandemic, or when things were just starting to open up. Really impressive. You guys put a lot of thought and effort into making appealing workspaces.

I noticed that that seems to be a key part of TaskUs culture. Maybe if you can tell me, I know that it’s not always apropo to talk about individual clients, but if you can talk about the industries that you’re able to serve out of Medellin, or out of Colombia broadly?

Luis Barreto: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s the great thing about that diversity of professionals that we find in the country. You can service any industry, which is pretty much what we do. We currently have about 25 clients in Colombia, which was for four different industries. Most of them are tech innovation related. So fintech, as an example; we provide service for retail, some of the biggest retail brands, fashion brands in the world are serviced out of Colombia. We also have food delivery apps. So it’s really a blend, and we don’t have a specific target because, you know, through our recruiting process, we’re able to identify skilled skillsets and aptitudes within our candidates to be able to route them into what industry or what program they would do best.

So, because the servicing industry and the BPO industry is so diverse, you do need to be able to have that ability to be flexible in terms of the offering, because you can be in one industry, but that industry requires different skills. So you can use social media management, back office, chat, e-mail; or it could be all voice, customer service, billing, transaction.

So to say that we do one, or that we focus or that we have a strength on one, is difficult because we’re just a very diverse solution-oriented company and we’ve found quick success with being able to service everything out of Colombia. That’s why we keep growing.

Finance Colombia: So you do more than just customer contact, you’re doing back-office services and other types. Well, tell me about some of those other types of services. Aside from voice and aside from chat, what are the other services that you provide to your corporate clients?

Luis Barreto: Yeah. So I think an interesting thing that’s in the industry and, you know, just the level of services that the industry is going to, we’re seeing a lot of growth in the content moderation space, trust and safety space, which is really just protecting the social media platforms from bad intentions. So I would say that that’s one specific area where we’re focusing our growth, and that you’re going to see big growth from us in terms of the percentage of the work that we do currently to migrate into that.

But on top of that, we do back office like you said, we do messaging, we do e-mail, chat work… 50-60% it’s still voice because that’s still the preferred communication channel for most of our clients. But everybody is slowly migrating to more digital channels.

Finance Colombia: Right.

Luis Barreto: Which is a part of our strategy as well. You know, we’re a digital company. We take pride in being able to partner with some of the most innovative companies in the world. And as you know, we have a very entrepreneurial spirit, which means that we’re always going to be happy to work with a company, regardless of the size. If they have a desire to learn of the BPO and how to best service their clients, we’re going to partner, we’re going to put our technology forward, and our experience, to make sure that we build the best customer experience that they need for their companies.

Finance Colombia: I’ve noticed that TaskUs is kind of already a large company, global, you know, you’re in all sectors around the globe. But it still has kind of a startup feel to it. It has kind of a startup attitude to it, you would say.

Luis Barreto: Yes. We do, yeah. Absolutely. And I think it’s: 1—Our founders and CEO and president are very young. So they’re very well up to date with innovation, and they still consider themselves a startup because of the fact that it’s still growing, it’s still growing, still attracting.  And, you know, the fact that we help a lot of startups begin their journey into the CX experience is also the reason why we keep our vision, our mission, and our brand, similar and close to that. So, you know, not to say that we don’t focus on any specific market, but we do gravitate towards companies that are starting up, innovation, tech, instead of the larger, more traditional services like banking or telco. The majority of our footprint is in startups and tech companies.

Finance Colombia: You know, I remember talking to one of the huge traditional customer experience outsourcers one time, one of their top people told me that if it’s under 100 FTE (full-time equivalent seats), their salespeople don’t even get compensated on it.

Luis Barreto: Yeah [Laughs.]

Finance Colombia: Because they only want to talk to the giant—they are a giant multinational, they only want to talk to other giant multinationals. But it’s interesting how I’ve seen companies who start with startups, and some startups are going to fail and that’s just kind of how it is. But some…I know a company that started with Lyft, and they had five seats and now that’s a major client for them, for example. And so I’ve seen where…you know, it’s great to hear that you guys give an opportunity to companies that are scrappy startups and things like that and work. And by the way, I have no idea if you guys have Lyft, that was a company that’s not here in Colombia that I was mentioning. I know that they use multiple outsourcing partners, and so if they use you guys, you know, that was by coincidence, by the way.

Luis Barreto: That’s fine.

Finance Colombia: But that’s an interesting thing, because you see a lot of times these become high-growth companies and also high-potential companies. And that’s kind of part of that entrepreneurial spirit.

And I think Colombia, especially Medellin, has some of that, Ruta N is a business incubator.

Luis Barreto: It is, yeah.

Finance Colombia: They welcome established businesses like you guys. But if we go over across the way into the other tower, you’re going to have startups with a single person and they’ve got something for those people, and they’ve got startups that have gotten their first parts of funding and things like that. And the city’s behind them. And then you also see here, the private sector is kind of behind the city. There’s quite a partnership.

And as you and I both…neither one of us are from Colombia. Tell me about your impression of what you’ve seen in Colombia broadly, as far as the business climate. And then specifically, I don’t want to get you in trouble knowing that you’re, you know, team Cali. So I know you can’t, you know, be too nice, but if you could maybe give your impression of the business climate in Colombia and then let’s say Medellin and Cali.

Luis Barreto: Yeah, absolutely. So first I want to tackle the startup common, which I think it’s… yes, the bigger players tend to have a standard of business size to which they agree to do business with. Part of what we do and we differentiate, because, you know, as I mentioned before, we are considered startup and we love being able to work with startups to build their CX journey. So it’s not that they come with five seats, maybe they have zero seats and they want to build everything from scratch with us. We will take it.

“And what I’ve seen is that the Colombian talent, the infrastructure, the political stability, the need for these kinds of opportunities has been tremendous.” – Luis Barreto

Finance Colombia: Wow.

Luis Barreto: We will partner and we will invest in a long-term relationship because that’s really how you gain long-term relationships, and that’s really how our founders built this business, working with startups like that.

The second is, yes, I’m a foreigner. And I do say that I’m a proud Colombian resident now because I love the country. It’s been tremendously good for me and my family because, you know, the industry, I’ve seen the industry grow so much. And what I’ve seen is that the Colombian talent, the infrastructure, the political stability, the need for these kinds of opportunities has been tremendous. When I first landed in Colombia, it was probably only 10 years (into) outsourcing. And when I mean outsourcing, to the US, because now this is their primary market. Now, it’s insane the amount of growth. And to me, Colombia has been an exceptional success story that is very rarely seen. I mean, at least in LATAM, you don’t see any other story like this. You might see stories, you know, in the Philippines and India, but not like this in LATAM. And I think again, it’s because Colombians are by nature, you know, very towards service, like it’s in their nature, it’s in their blood.

Finance Colombia: Yes. “¡Para servirle!” That’s the saying here.

Luis Barreto: “Para servirle,” yes. “Bien pueda.” It’s like, it’s very natural. So obviously the Tier 1 and just the soft skills that you need to be able to do this business are there from the get go. Everything else, the skillsets and everything, it comes. In other regions, it’s more difficult, right? You have to spend a little bit more time and effort to engrave some, you know, basic skills of communication and engagement, here is very flawless. And then from a city perspective, I think, you know, obviously I don’t have a preference. I think…I live in Cali, my wife and I prefer the city, but every city has its charm and every city has its business purpose. Cali is less mature in the market in regards to BPO. It’s actually relatively unknown for other companies right now.

Finance Colombia: Right.

Luis Barreto: We know TaskUs is the biggest BPO in Cali, which we only were able to achieve because we took a chance, we saw potential and we decided to invest and we’re now taking a lot of benefit from it. Because competitors try to come, they can’t match your offers, they can’t match your benefits. So it’s been great because it’s where we positioned this.

And you know, Cali right now is the headquarters for everything Colombia, and not just Colombia, but regionally, including Mexico, because my responsibility extends to Mexico. And because of the talent and I would say the need for better career opportunities has driven great talent towards our industry in Cali.

Now Medellin obviously, it’s a great success story as well on its own because this one is…I call it a more specialized, more complex work, more, you know, specific targeted clients. So when you talk about innovation, when you talk about these tech higher-paying lines of business, this is a better option. So obviously, we service everything out of all of our sites, but there is some kind of strategy towards what city fits best for the client, and that’s something that we want to build and continue to sustain as part of our strategy growth in Colombia.

Finance Colombia: Got it. You’ve been very generous with your time. And you’re right, Medellin kind of sees itself, it kind of wants to be the Silicon Valley of Latin America. And I think it to a large degree deserves that. There’s competition with places like Costa Rica, places like Uruguay, but really there’s an established tech scene here. I’m always reading about companies or writing about companies that have gotten funded, that have gone on to greater things when it comes to tech and innovation. My last question for you is, I would imagine that a large percentage of your business requires bilingual skills, in terms of the agents. I would imagine that, I mean there’s always some agents that can do everything in Spanish, but I would imagine that TaskUs being a US-based company, a lot of the skills need to be bilingual. How easy or difficult has it been to hire bilingual talent here in Colombia?

Luis Barreto: Yeah. Great question. Obviously, the BPO industry has grown in Colombia mostly because of nearshoring support, we’re supporting mostly companies in the US, which means that it’s got to have an English component. Right now 90% of the work that we do in Colombia is English. We have about 8% Spanish and then 2% Portuguese, French. So we do still have a little bit of a blend now. In terms of the quality and the quantity of the English, it’s been great. I mean, I think the country has recognized the need for English, that English skills is something that needs to be built-in from a younger age. And we’ve seen a lot of the programs that I started hearing about back in 2016, 2017 when I first came, starting to materialize and starting to really give, you know, candidates to our funnel, which is fantastic. So it is a challenge because obviously the industry is now huge. There’s… Over 700,000 Colombians work in the sector, probably 200 – 300,000 work in US work. So the talent pool is reducing. But what’s great is that every single city that I’ve seen, or that we work with and that we partner with, has a clear path towards strategy to help, you know, put candidates and build candidates so that they can benefit from the opportunities of growth, opportunities of a job. So we feel confident that we are going to be able to continue to grow, not by butchering: Meaning, not by going and stealing talent, but by benefiting from the different growth pools that every region is building now. You know, there’s a reason why we’re not involved with that. We feel Bogota is a little bit more complex, a little bit more saturated. It’s a different quality of life. So we prefer the Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, where we’ve found more success or more appealing offers, and attracts the talent that we need.

Finance Colombia: It makes sense. I mean, if you were going to open up a contact center in the US, you probably wouldn’t go to Manhattan or Los Angeles, but you would look at other places maybe, you know, upstate New York or somewhere in Eastern California, of course, obviously the Heartland and different places like that. So that strategy makes sense. You’ve been wonderful with your time. I know that there’s a party going on downstairs and I don’t want to keep you from it and I don’t want to keep myself from it either. So, you guys, the hospitality is amazing. So thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Luis Barreto: It’s been a pleasure, thank you very much for having me.