Building a Purpose-Driven BPO: How Horatio's Human-First Approach Is Transforming Customer Experience

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When ose Herrera and his co-founders first surveyed the customer support landscape, they noticed something troubling: outsourced partners weren't prioritizing employees or truly embodying their clients' brand values. This gap between what brands needed and what traditional BPOs offered sparked the creation of Horatio, a revolutionary approach to customer experience that's now serving hundreds of U.S. clients from operations in the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
Drawing from his background in finance at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, Jose built Horatio with a fundamentally different philosophy: put employees first, and they'll naturally deliver exceptional service to clients. This isn't just a platitude painted on office walls—it's embedded in everything from their bright, open workspaces (nicknamed "the Google of Latin America") to on-site amenities like daycare, gyms with personal trainers, and yoga rooms. Regular employee surveys and informal conversations ensure this people-first culture evolves with their team's needs.
What truly distinguishes Horatio is their dedicated team model, where resources aren't shared between clients. Each team functions as a genuine extension of the client's organization, authentically representing their brand voice while benefiting from Horatio's technological expertise. This approach has proven particularly valuable in healthcare, where "compliance and compassion" must coexist. By providing both HIPAA-compliant processes and extensive emotional intelligence training, Horatio's agents deliver the empathetic support patients need during vulnerable moments.
Perhaps most remarkably, Horatio achieved this growth without raising outside capital, instead reinvesting profits into operations and talent. As they expand deeper into healthcare and financial services while exploring new Latin American markets, Jose remains committed to the vision that technology should augment human capabilities rather than replace them. In his words, "AI serves as a co-pilot for our agents, not a replacement"—a refreshing perspective in an industry often fixated on automation at the expense of the human touch.
Ready to see how a purpose-driven approach to customer experience could transform your business? Discover what's possible when empathy, technology, and operational excellence converge.

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Chapters

1. Introduction to Horatio and Jose (00:00:00)

2. Reimagining the BPO Industry (00:01:29)

3. Healthcare Customer Experience Evolution (00:04:14)

4. Creating Employee-Centric Workspaces (00:07:55)

5. Bootstrapping a Profitable Business (00:11:09)

6. AI as Co-Pilots, Not Replacements (00:15:30)

7. Future Plans and Client Summits (00:17:13)