TaskUs Maximizes Contact Center Teammate Productivity Using AWS End User Computing Services

Founded in 2008, TaskUs has grown to employ over 54,000 people worldwide. The organization provides essential digital services and customer support to major organizations in healthcare, financial services, tech, retail, transportation, and more—helping them boost customer satisfaction scores, increase revenue, and reduce call handle times. To help some of the world’s biggest companies represent, protect, and grow their brands, TaskUs prioritizes a people-first culture, science-backed training, and community service and provides its teammates with cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, TaskUs required most of its teammates to work on site from regional contact centers that are distributed across 12 countries. However, in the spring of 2020, the organization needed to quickly pivot to support a remote workforce.

TaskUs used Amazon WorkSpaces, fully managed virtual desktops, to empower its entire workforce to transition to work from home. And to accelerate this transition, TaskUs engaged AWS Professional Services, a global team of experts that can help realize desired business outcomes. “The AWS team has been very dependable,” says Jay Anaque, director of cloud engineering at TaskUs. “Whenever we had issues, they were always there to help.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, TaskUs has changed its policies to better align with client requirements. “Our leadership team noticed a shift in work habits,” says Anaque. “If one of our clients permits teammates to work from home, we can easily support that using AWS End User Computing services.” As a result, the organization has boosted employee satisfaction and retention among its customer service teammates.

Today, TaskUs uses AWS End User Computing services across multiple use cases, including standing up cloud-based environments for new clients in near real time while waiting to provision hardware from vendors.

For example, TaskUs used AWS End User Computing services to meet the tight deadlines for setting up a contact center in Europe. At the time, TaskUs experienced delays with procuring infrastructure that it needed to meet its client service-level agreement. “Instead of the typical 45 days to fulfill our purchase order, our hardware vendor said that it would take 6 months to deliver because of a backlog of orders,” says Anaque.

To address the challenge, the company’s IT team provisioned the contact center using Amazon WorkSpaces instead of waiting to implement an on-premises solution for virtual desktop infrastructure. “Instead of waiting 6 months, we set up a contact center in 2 weeks,” says Anaque. “The ease of implementing Amazon WorkSpaces was definitely a game changer.”

TaskUs also uses Amazon AppStream 2.0, a secure, reliable, and scalable application streaming service, for customers that don’t require teammates to use a fully persistent virtual desktop.

Regardless of the service provided, security is extremely important to TaskUs. “Our job zero is security of client data,” says Anaque. “Using AWS End User Computing services, all customer data remains in the cloud. Thus, TaskUs can protect the data under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.

In total, TaskUs has deployed 800 virtual workstations globally, and it plans to scale that number as it onboards more clients. “Now, we can build an end user computing environment for our employees to better serve our customers,” says Anaque. “AWS gives our business more options and flexibility.”

TaskUs quickly provisioned virtual workstations for its teammates. “We got all our teammates working from home within 2–3 weeks,” says Anaque. “We were one of the first companies that could serve their clients right away at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when almost everyone was locked down.”

Helping attract and retain top talent, the organization continues to use Amazon WorkSpaces for rapid provisioning when standing up new regional contact centers for teammates working in localities without permanent offices.

TaskUs is also evaluating other AWS End User Computing services to support its customers’ needs. Currently, the organization is testing Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client, which businesses use to reduce costs, simplify logistics, and accelerate deployment using virtual desktops.

In addition, the organization is adopting generative AI to enhance customer service. For example, to speed up application deployments, TaskUs uses Amazon Q, a generative AI–powered assistant for accelerating software development and using companies’ internal data.

“Working on AWS is definitely one of the big differentiators for TaskUs,” says Anaque. “We are one of the first business process outsourcers to announce commitment to AI.”