Celebrating 14 Years of Unstoppable Perseverence
MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — itel, the Caribbean’s largest homegrown customer experience (CX) provider, is celebrating its 14th anniversary – a feat that few Jamaican-born CX companies can claim. A decade ago, there was little belief that the Caribbean could be anything other than a tourist destination. The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry was growing but had to go up against far more established competitors and outsourcing destinations, such as India and the Philippines. Yet, after fourteen years, 9 countries, over 15 global industry awards, and 40 international clients, itel has proven the Caribbean’s competitiveness, rewriting the rules for nearshore contact centers and what they can accomplish.
“The company started with humble beginnings,” explains company Founder & CEO, Yoni Epstein, CD. “A small, one-room office in Montego Bay, housing a homegrown call center with just seven employees. But by year two, we were employing hundreds of workers throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, providing long-term, stable careers in a global industry.” itel helped shape a nearshore industry that now employs tens of thousands of people, attracting millions in global investments to the region and giving rise to new opportunities for young workers. Epstein became the Founding Chairman for GSAJ, the first nonprofit trade association representing Jamaica’s outsourcing firms, supporting various projects that would support the industry’s growth, such as the Global Services Sector Project, a 5-year initiative specifically focused on talent up-skilling for the outsourcing sector.
His organization, however, was not a venture without challenges, especially when the COVID 19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. Government lockdowns threatened the entire global BPO industry. Overseas call centers were shuttered overnight, while many U.S. companies turned to the still open nearshore to keep their customer operations running. itel’s success came from their ability to rapidly transition their employees to work from home, while also setting new standards for employee health and safety, building some of the first ‘COVID-ready’ contact centers in the region.
The company also demonstrated its remarkable resilience when last October, a once-in-a-generation hurricane made landfall in Jamaica, impacting over 60% of its BPO sector . It was only through the tenacity and dedication of its operations and leadership team that itel was able to fully recover before many local operators.
itel then became a pioneer of technology when traditional contact center models shifted. Rather than being left behind in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the company developed its own proprietary AI models, trained to understand the unique inflections of Caribbean dialects, while delivering key operational and customer insight that drove greater efficiency and performance.
When critics thought that regional CX companies could not compete against larger international players, itel continued to prove them wrong. Each setback made the organization even more ambitious and eager to prove that the Caribbean can be a global leader in tech forward outsourcing.
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