(News Bulletin 247) – The outsourced customer relations specialist has finally decided to continue this controversial activity after announcing initially to stop it. As a result, its action is under pressure on Thursday.

Teleperformance makes a 180 degree turn. The outsourced customer relations specialist, who had decided to stop moderating shocking content on the internet, announced Wednesday evening that he was finally going to return to this activity.

The group “maintains its full offering of content moderation services, including the most offensive segment,” it said in a statement.

The decision to stop this offer fell in November, after a scandal triggered by an investigation by journalists among its employees in Colombia.

The “most offensive” segment

In this South American country where this activity thrives, the investigation of an NGO, the Bureau of investigative journalism, qualified the employees of “legion of moderators of traumatized contents, working ten hours a day”, with objectives which can climb up to to 900 daily videos, some of which are extremely distressing to watch.

Teleperformance had disputed these accusations, which had caused the stock market in Paris to fall by 34% in one session. After a week of internal discussions and consultations with its shareholders, the group had announced “that it had decided to withdraw from the most offensive segment”.

Four months later, management has changed its mind. After an in-depth internal investigation, and “external audits carried out by independent third parties, Korn Ferry and Bureau Veritas”, the conclusion is “that Teleperformance is a reference in the field of content moderation services and that the group is particularly committed to for the well-being of its employees”.

“The latter have shown their pride in carrying out this complex mission of public interest, with the feeling of being well supported by their employer”, reported the company.

“Offering a complete content moderation solution, without excluding any segment of this activity, is in the best interest of the billions of Internet users around the world,” she believes.

Investors who might be frustrated

Teleperformance pledged “to intensify the use of the most advanced artificial intelligence solutions to improve the automatic filtering of harmful content” and “to strengthen physical and emotional well-being programs for moderators”.

Still, this about-face worries the market. This Thursday around 11:20 a.m., Teleperformance fell by 6.5%, showing the largest decline in the CAC 40.

“We view this activity positively from a fundamental perspective, and we understand some of the reasons behind this decision, however, it confuses the overall message and could bring the risk of this activity back to the table, to our opinion,” said Stifel in a note.

“This news follows the announcement in February of lower-than-expected sales in the fourth quarter, which should not favor” the evolution of the action in the short term, adds the research department.

UBS for its part believes that this U-turn could “frustrate investors”. “We can understand that in practice it might be difficult for Teleperformance to only moderate content ‘queues’ that avoid the most sensitive topics (given the inherent unpredictability of online messaging), and to let the rest to the internal teams of the customers”, explains the Swiss bank

“However, we believe investors may be concerned about both the exposure to this work (which can be very taxing for employees and emotional for society as a whole) and the backtracking on the previous announcement, which was seen as a clarification of their position on this issue,” she added.

(With AFP)