Etech’s ETS Labs: A People-First Strategy for AI in Contact Centers

Contact center executives face a pressing challenge. Artificial intelligence promises speed, scale, and savings, yet skepticism lingers. Many pilots never escape proof-of-concept purgatory. Others collapse under the weight of data complexity or employee resistance. The underlying issue is rarely technology alone. It is leadership, trust, and operational credibility.

Etech, through its new venture ETS Labs, is tackling this head-on. In recent conversations with CEO Matt Rocco, President of ETS Labs and Etech CCO Jim Iyoob, and AVP –  Manu Dwievedi, one principle was clear: AI cannot deliver meaningful outcomes without a culture built on trust, servant leadership, and operational depth.

The Origin Story: Building Tools That Operators Actually Use

ETS Labs’ flagship product, QEval, was never conceived as a commercial offering. It started as an internal necessity. Nearly two decades ago, Iyoob and his team grew frustrated with fragmented QA tools.

Traditional programs sampled one or two percent of calls, leaving agents feeling unfairly judged and supervisors drowning in incomplete data.

Rather than settle, Jim Iyoob built his own. When enterprise clients asked to license it, QEval was born.

Today, the platform delivers 100 percent interaction coverage, automated redaction to protect sensitive data, and contextual coaching for agents and supervisors. Its architecture is deliberately pragmatic.

Dwievedi emphasized this point repeatedly: QEval is designed to eliminate bias, surface actionable insights, and keep human supervisors in control. Clients consistently point to rapid ROI, measured in millions of dollars saved, compliance failures reduced by half, and coaching efficiency gains north of 60 percent.

That trajectory aligns with what I’ve seen across the market. Platforms that grow out of solving real operational gaps tend to build faster trust with supervisors and agents than those designed primarily as sales assets.

Leadership Philosophy: Technology as Enabler, People as the Constant

Matt Rocco describes the founding of ETS Labs as an extension of Etech’s long-standing philosophy. “Technology processes are enablers. People are the difference makers.”

This belief is rooted in Etech’s servant leadership culture. Over the past 20 years, Rocco and his leadership team reshaped the company around the principle that organizations grow stronger when leaders focus on developing people. The result: a workforce of more than 4,000 agents in the U.S., India, and Jamaica that views technology not as a threat, but as a tool to elevate human potential.

Matt Rocco acknowledges that employees have concerns as automation expands. His solution is radical transparency. Leadership teams communicate openly about what AI adoption means, what tasks may change, and where human value will deepen. The philosophy is clear: AI complements human effort by removing repetitive tasks, so employees can focus on high-value interactions where trust and empathy matter most.

It’s a perspective I’ve seen resonate in other organizations navigating automation. When leaders set a clear cultural anchor, adoption becomes less about resistance and more about redefining roles.

Domain Expertise as a Differentiator

Jim Iyoob’s background as an operator shapes ETS Labs’ direction. He is blunt about the failings he sees in the market: “Most technology providers have never taken a call. They don’t understand the day-to-day reality of a BPO.”

That gap explains why so many solutions overwhelm supervisors with surface-level metrics while ignoring the root causes of poor performance. ETS Labs insists on starting with the operational pain points executives care about most. Their approach is simple: narrow a client’s problem list to the three most urgent items, solve them rapidly, prove ROI, and expand from there.

This philosophy produces unusually fast time-to-value. Deployments launch within 30 days. ROI is measured against hard baselines rather than inflated internal scoring. Jim Iyoob cited a Fortune 500 client that saved $2.9 million in six months by reducing handle time and identifying systemic coaching gaps. Another banking client cut compliance failures by 50 percent in just 60 days.

Jim Iyoob’s point reflects a broader truth I’ve observed: credibility comes from operator experience. Tools shaped by frontline realities are far more likely to deliver outcomes leaders can validate and sustain.

ETS Labs’ Platform: From Lab Innovation to Enterprise Scale

The August 2025 announcement formalized ETS Labs as a standalone entity. What began as an internal innovation hub now processes more than 1 billion customer interactions annually for over 100 enterprise clients.

Its offerings extend well beyond QEval:

Core Platform:

QEval delivers 100% quality coverage, while ICE provides intelligent omnichannel routing that optimizes customer interactions across all touchpoints.

Operations & Compliance: 

The platform includes automated regulatory monitoring through Compliance AI, predictive scheduling via Workforce AI, and a PII/PHI/PCI protection engine that strips sensitive data before analysis.

Emerging Solutions: 

ETS Labs is piloting advanced capabilities including real-time emotion detection, secure voice biometrics for caller authentication, and process mining AI that identifies workflow bottlenecks automatically.

Autonomous Features: 

Their AI-powered contact agents handle routine interactions, while Legal AI Assistant drives downstream actions and intelligent form processing reduces manual data entry.”

ETS Labs has invested heavily in modern AI foundations, their localized deployments keep client data secure, their explainable AI ensures businesses understand how decisions are made, and their multi-cloud approach provides flexibility.

The result is technology that grows with your needs, whether you’re testing ideas or deploying company-wide. But the differentiator is not the stack. It is the intentional blending of advanced technology with contact center DNA. “Machines replicate well. They do not create,” Jim Iyoob emphasized. Human oversight and feedback loops remain non-negotiable features of the ETS Labs ecosystem.

Trust, Transparency, and Adoption

Executives consistently cite one barrier to AI adoption: lack of trust. Employees fear that AI judgments will replace human coaching. Supervisors worry about being buried in data they cannot interpret. Compliance leaders question whether sensitive customer information is truly protected.

ETS Labs addresses each of these head-on:

• Explainable AI ensures leaders know why a recommendation was made.
• Human-in-the-loop governance gives beyond 90% accuracy from Day 1.
• Inbuilt redaction strips sensitive data before it enters the model, ensuring no third-party exposure.

This combination: explainability, governance, and security, forms a foundation that makes adoption less risky. From my own research, trust has consistently emerged as the single biggest hurdle for enterprise AI rollouts. Any model that addresses it directly deserves attention.

The Executive Playbook: Lessons from ETS Labs’ Approach

Three themes stand out in how ETS Labs frames AI adoption:

• Anchor AI in culture. Adoption succeeds when technology reinforces, rather than undermines, organizational values. Servant leadership offers one path for balancing automation with human dignity.
• Demand measurable ROI early. Case studies suggest executives should expect tangible cost savings, compliance gains, or efficiency improvements within 90 days.
• Prioritize trust through design. Explainability, governance, and data security are not add-ons. They are prerequisites.

Looking Ahead: AI as Catalyst, People as the Constant

When asked about the next three to five years, Rocco, Iyoob, and Dwivedi converge on a common vision. ETS Labs will serve as a launchpad for innovation, experimenting with voice biometrics, compliance automation, and multimodal AI while retaining a foundation of servant leadership. Looking ahead, ETS Labs is expanding beyond traditional contact center AI. Their roadmap includes enterprise-wide deployment of process mining AI, industry-specific models tailored to healthcare and financial services, and fully autonomous customer experience solutions that handle complex inquiries end-to-end.

This approach shows the breadth of their platform while maintaining the narrative flow, rather than just listing features. It also demonstrates how they’re moving from contact center tools to enterprise AI solutions.

The executives believe the future contact center will be defined by two constants: faster technology cycles and enduring human value. AI will accelerate routine tasks, surface predictive insights, and even optimize training materials from screen recordings and multimodal inputs. Yet in every scenario, they emphasized the irreplaceable role of people in building trust and navigating complexity.

Jim Iyoob captured the essence of this balance:

“Enhanced AI coaching can make the world better. Agents will always be here. The question is how we equip them to handle more advanced, meaningful work.”

That perspective aligns with my own view of the industry’s trajectory. AI adoption is accelerating, but the most durable gains will come when organizations keep human development at the center.

The Leadership Imperative

The contact center industry is evolving at breakneck speed. Leaders cannot afford to wait for perfect answers before acting. But they also cannot afford to sacrifice trust, transparency, or culture in pursuit of efficiency.

ETS Labs positions itself as evidence that AI adoption and people-first leadership can coexist at scale. Whether this model becomes standard across the industry remains to be seen.

The organizations most likely to thrive will be those that integrate technology into their culture, measure outcomes relentlessly, and resist the temptation to trade human value for short-term efficiency.