Teleperformance: departure of Bhupender Singh, recall of Majorel’s old guard

Teleperformance is reshuffling its staff, following the sudden and announced departure of Bhupender Singh: ex-Majorel Thomas Mackenbrock becomes deputy CEO. Daniel Julien, the 71-year-old founder of the company, and his team believe in the company’s future, despite the impact of conversational AI. 

Recall of the old Majorel guard at Teleperformance, following the sudden departure of Bhupender Singh, the announced successor who was responsible for the group’s digital offering.  
Daniel Julien announced on 28 August that the new board of Teleperformance, the world leader in outsourced customer relations, had been reconstituted. The markets are not convinced by the group’s return to business order, which has been in turmoil for more than two years. Yesterday, the share price fell by a further 6.50%. Is it possible to create new growth with the recipes and teams of the past? That’s the question being asked, not just of Teleperformance, but of all the major players in the BPO sector, whose business has a future and whose production teams have a great deal of talent, but who have failed to repaint shop fronts or create open door operations.

Reported by Les Echos yesterday, the governance of the group founded by Daniel Julien has had to deal with the departure of Bhupender Singh, who had been inducted as the future director by 2026 and had been installed as co-director six months ago.

Majorel’s former management team recalled to the helm
‘To reconstitute a staff, the 71-year-old executive has recalled the former management of Majorel, his competitor acquired last year and integrated into Teleperformance this year. He is taking advantage of this to separate the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors from that of Chief Executive Officer, a fashionable move in the CAC 40. Moroccan businessman Moulay Hafid Elalamy, a former Majorel shareholder and now a Teleperformance shareholder, is taking over as Chairman.

Thomas Mackenbrock, former head of Majorel, has been appointed Daniel Julien’s deputy as CEO, with a view to replacing him in due course. Three other people, including Olivier Rigaudy, head of finance, will strengthen the Group’s executive team. ‘We’re moving from a solo management team to a core team of 5’, explains Daniel Julien. Moulay Hafid Elalamy, a former Minister of Industry, Trade and the Digital Sector during a short decade in the Kingdom, will play the part of the old sage, able to speak the language of financial investors while also knowing the customer relations sector well’.

(..) The company does not expect to suffer from macroeconomic uncertainties thanks to the diversity of its 1,500 customers spread around the world, many of them in the United States. On the other hand, Moulay Hafid Elalamy anticipates a drain on the small service providers in his sector, as the major groups gradually reduce the number of their service providers. And he intends to continue to participate in the consolidation of his sector, with several acquisition projects under consideration. Matthieu Quiret, Les Echos.

Daniel Julien’s new flirtations?
This is not the first time that an announced change in the group’s management has not gone according to plan. In May 2013, Teleperformance announced the appointment of Paulo César Salles Vasques as CEO. The Brazilian was presented at the time as the future successor to the company’s founder. He left the company in 2017.

Irritated, we assume, by the lack of interest in the company’s share price (which has fallen by a factor of four in just over two years), Daniel Julien reportedly even discussed with the journalist the possibility of listing the group on Wall Street, as reported by Les Echos this morning.

A small error in the spelling of Majorel was made in yesterday’s article in Les Echos, which was retitled Marjorel everywhere. Following on from Le Monde a few months ago, which forgot to mention Konecta in its article on the global panorama of BPO players (and has never since corrected this oversight in its digital version), this is a small sign that the BPO industry needs to make itself better known to the media.

This partial lack of knowledge can have repercussions, such as allowing players like Klarna to spread some damaging lies: AI and a few rapidly deployed bots will make it possible to replace thousands of agents.

Well, well, well.

New out of old?
This is a relevant line of work for the SP2C, the association of major contact centre service providers. On 10 September, representatives from Armatis, Foundever, Konecta, etc. will meet to present their annual barometer of customer relations outsourcing for the 8th consecutive year. Two years ago, we were already unconvinced by the study produced by E/Y.

In 2024, on the union’s corporate website, the governance screen showed that more than half of the references, brands and faces were dated or false.

In the legal notices section, the page doesn’t work…

If I were an agent on a customer service platform doing a difficult but exciting job, and discovered that my employer was spending money on meetings with useless and expensive petits fours and barometers, I would understand that it was time to take my destiny into my own hands. If I were an employee of Teleperformance, I would even buy shares in the company, convinced that over the long term, what the teams do and produce is not understood and will ultimately be by the markets. Like, for example, all the moderation, trust and safety activities that the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, who was recently arrested in France, has been criticised for not providing. At Teleperformance, we do moderation, and quite well at that, in Colombia for example. New activities that we know how to provide and produce, and which are taking over from the old ones. Isn’t that what it’s all about: telling people what we do, who we are and why we have a future?

Read here the post on the SP2C’s productions, the impact of conversational AI, etc.

The editors of En-Contact and Manuel Jacquinet.

Bhupender Singh stayed with the group for five years, having joined with the acquisition of Intelenet.

Front page photo: one of Teleperformance’s centres in Colombia, where numerous moderation and trust and safety services are provided © Edouard Jacquinet for En-Contact.