What You Should Expect From Your BPO in 2026

We’re about to enter 2026, and the expectations for BPO partners have changed dramatically. Online retail brands aren’t just looking for coverage. They’re not just looking for cheaper labor compared to the US market. They want a partner who helps them stay ahead in a rapidly changing CX and ecommerce landscape.

Here are 6 things you should expect from your BPO in 2026.

A More Strategic Partner

Support teams are navigating an entirely new world. Customer experience strategy is evolving. AI is reshaping workflows. Technology is becoming more complex. And most teams don’t have all the answers. They’re actively looking for people who can help them think, not just people who can help them staff.

A BPO is uniquely placed in that unlike Customer Experience Leaders at organizations who may only have their current experience and one or two others to leverage, BPOs are working with and learning from dozens of clients. They should have a thicker anthology of playbooks and decades of cumulative experience on what’s happening in direct-to-consumer CX. 

For that reason, while staffing and training humans and managing service operations is still the core competency, they can and should be contributing to customer experience strategy, recommending AI products and services, and generally sharing what they’re learning across their portfolio. If your BPO still operates in program silos and sees themselves as just the workforce provider, you could be getting more from that partnership or potentially another partnership.

Fewer Reports, More Critical Thinking

Following this same line of thought, your BPO should do more than share data.

Years ago, some of the most valuable things BPOs brought to the table were reports. Weekly and monthly reviews felt like opportunities to learn something new. Your agents had insights that you didn’t have. But today, everyone has access to the same data. With AI pulling dashboards, identifying trends, surfacing anomalies, and packaging these insights together in seconds, the old value of “here are the numbers” has evaporated.

Reporting only matters if it adds something you don’t already know. So you want your BPO to bring a point of view, a story behind the numbers, or a recommendation that wasn’t obvious. If you’re sitting in a review meeting and the deck looks like it was thrown together 20 minutes before everyone joined the call, and you can tell it’s the first time the BPO is looking at these numbers too,  that’s a red flag. In 2026, a BPO’s job is not to show data. It’s to interpret it, contextualize it, and have an opinion on what to do with it. 

More Empathetic, Solution-Oriented Agents

Thoughtful journeys, proactive solutions, robust educational content, and AI and automation are initiatives that have eliminated most of the low-level tasks agents had spent their days on 3-5 years ago. Literally nobody needs their tracking number, or the cost of the product, or the return policy. .

Today’s agents need to be the best of the best. They’re talking to the customer because something has gone wrong. The usual steps did not work. Or they’re particularly upset. Which means agents really need to think. They need to empathize. They need to understand and solve for nuance. And they need to do it in a way that turns the customer’s experience around.

The problem is some BPOs haven’t made any shifts in recruitments or added any additional efforts to upskill the agents they have. If a BPO is still hiring people to do work that AI now handles, they’re recruiting for a job that no longer exists, and they’re not going to achieve what brands needs them to achieve. Modern support requires agents who can navigate complexity, think critically, and represent your brand at a much higher level. 

Ask your BPO how they plan to hire and help train a workforce that is prepared for the job’s demands in a post AI world.

Use of AI in Their Own Operations

Of all the uses of AI in the customer service space, one of the lesser known but highly powerful is AI-powered training simulations. These are the tools that let agents practice with realistic “AI customers.’

No more awkward role-playing.
No more practice questions that feel easy in training but become harder in the real world.
No more overwhelming first days on live channels.

The BPOs I’ve seen use these simulators, use them in recruitment as a way for candidates to explore what the job may really be like, and as a way for recruiters to determine if the candidate has the right skillset. AI training simulators are also being used during onboarding to increase comfort levels on live channels before the official go-live date. Lastly, BPOs have used these to help with continuous learning and up-skilling. If you’ve got extra time, hop on the simulator and keep your knowledge up to date!

Auto QA is another great behind-the-scenes tool. Rather than have your QA listening to 2 tickets per week per agent, they can have a high-level view of how each agent is performing and then hone in on big wins and areas for improvement. 

I expect more BPOs to have resources like this for their clients. Not only does it add to quality and efficiency in service operations, it shows the business is aware of current trends and is innovating. If your BPO isn’t offering you tools like this, ask if they have plans for launching them.

Interactions That Look and Feel Like Your Brand

Tone in customer service is becoming more casual. Many companies aren’t opening emails with formal greetings anymore. “Hi, Jane, thanks for contacting MyCompany. My name is Kristen. It’s a pleasure to serve you!” They’re cutting the fluff and writing like the customer is their friend. “Hey Jane. Yes, we’ll give you a few extra days to send the product back. Have a great day!” They’re also leveraging their brand voice the same way their marketing team does to really immerse that customer into the intended brand experience. 

Historically, achieving this has been really difficult when your service team is outsourced. It’s hard to train anyone on a brand voice, let alone individuals who may not natively speak the language. 

But with so many AI tools supporting the ability to customize tone of voice, the expectation for on-brand tone is growing, and with less forgiveness from brands when it doesn’t happen. In 2026, my expectation for a BPO is that we can work together to find tools to make this possible.

More Pricing Transparency

The cost of living isn’t just going up in the US. It’s going up everywhere. BPOs that used to charge $9 an hour may be up to $12 hour. Some offshore BPOs can be as high as $18 an hour. Nobody is necessarily complaining about the price increases of BPO. All of these wages are still less money than a US-based customer service team member. However, more brands do want to understand how much of their hourly wages are actually going to their agents.

As CX leaders, we know that people who are taken care of, produce better results. We also know that agents who are paid well, tend to stick around. So we want our agents, regardless of where they’re located, to be paid fairly, or even exceptionally.

Most BPOs won’t be willing to provide the exact numbers, but in 2026 they should be able to share how they benchmark those wages, what those wages are in relation to the area’s cost of living, how often they increase their wages, and the amount of attrition they receive related to pay.

Final Thoughts

BPOs are stepping into a new era. In 2026, brands shouldn’t settle for labor alone. They should expect strategy, insight, problem-solving, transparency, and a true partnership that elevates their customer experience, not just maintains it.

Finding the right BPO isn’t always easy. The CX Coach helps online retail brands select and launch the right BPO partner.