Afiniti uses applied artificial intelligence and behavioral analytics to pair enterprise customers with the most compatible contact center agents. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Afiniti CEO Jerome Kapelus to learn more.
Jerome Kapelus’ Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Kapelus said:
“I started out as a banker advising technology companies on capital raising and M&A. At some point I realized I wanted to build things, not just advise on them. That shift led me to a series of operating roles at high-growth technology companies.”
“The two that stand out most are TCGplayer and Quartet Health. At TCGplayer I had a broad CFO and operating role where we grew sales by over 400%, navigated COVID, and ultimately sold the business to eBay. At Quartet Health the mission hit close to home. We helped thousands of people access mental health care they might not otherwise have had, and we grew revenue significantly along the way.”
“Three things drew me to Afiniti. The business model was genuinely ahead of the AI curve, with performance-based pricing that puts real skin in the game. I could see the technology foundation was built to thrive in the current AI moment, not just react to it. And the team was exceptional. The talent, commitment, and passion I found across the global organization gave me real confidence we could lead the company through a meaningful transformation.”
Role At The Company
What are your primary responsibilities? Kapelus shared:
“The most important thing I do is find the right people, give them clear direction, and get out of their way. That requires building a culture of genuine accountability, and living by our values rather than just talking about them.”
“Everything else flows from that. With the right team and culture in place, we can focus on what matters most: delivering AI solutions that solve real business problems for our customers and producing measurable outcomes that align with their priorities.”
“One thing I feel strongly about is that the contact center has been undervalued for too long. Most organizations still treat it as a cost center. We see it as one of the most important drivers of retention, loyalty, and growth.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Kapelus reflected:
“Traveling to meet our teams in person, without question. Pakistan, Turkey, Europe, Brazil, the US, Canada. Town halls, individual conversations, Iftars, holiday events. Every visit reminds me how talented and committed this group of people is.”
“Launching our unified AI decisioning platform has also been a real milestone. Over the past 18 months we have been building toward something meaningful, a platform that reflects everything Afiniti has learned from more than 15 years of helping enterprises navigate customer interactions. Watching the team bring that to life, and hearing customers respond to it, has been genuinely rewarding.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Kapelus explained:
“The platform is built around one central idea: every customer interaction matters, and enterprises should be optimizing those moments for long-term value.”
“There are four core capabilities. Afiniti Pairing intelligently matches customers with the agents most likely to drive a positive outcome. Afiniti Intelligence gives leaders a unified view of where customer value is being created or lost. Afiniti Orchestrator acts as the decisioning layer across fragmented systems, optimizing routing, staffing, and journeys in real time. And Afiniti Agents automates complex customer needs while preserving continuity when a human is needed.”
“Together they form a single AI decisioning platform designed to protect and grow customer lifetime value.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector recently, and how did you overcome them? Kapelus acknowledged:
“The biggest challenge in the market right now is the gap between AI experimentation and AI accountability. A lot of enterprises have layered AI into their contact centers through disconnected tools optimized for narrow metrics like call deflection or handle time. The problem is those metrics often have little to do with what actually matters: whether customers stay, spend more, and remain loyal.”
“We have worked through that challenge by doing what Afiniti has always done. We do not treat the contact center as a set of isolated workflows. We treat it as a system of decisions. That perspective, built across hundreds of enterprise deployments over more than 15 years, is genuinely difficult to replicate.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Kapelus noted:
“Afiniti started with AI-powered pairing, matching customers and agents to improve outcomes. That worked well, but over time we recognized it was only part of the equation.”
“Enterprises were operating increasingly fragmented environments with dozens of systems making disconnected decisions. No single layer was accountable for the overall outcome. That insight pushed us to evolve from a point solution into a full AI decisioning platform. Today Afiniti helps enterprises understand what interactions are worth, determine where they should go, orchestrate journeys across systems, and automate resolutions, all while staying accountable to customer lifetime value.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Kapelus cited:
“A few stand out. Proving that AI could meaningfully influence customer outcomes at enterprise scale, years before AI became a mainstream conversation. Helping enterprises across industries deploy AI inside mission-critical environments and showing measurable business impact. And building the team we have today, people who are genuinely shaping what comes next for this company.”
“The launch of our unified platform is the most recent milestone and in some ways the most significant. It brings together everything Afiniti has built, Pairing, Intelligence, Orchestrator, and Agents, into one architecture. We think it represents a defining moment not just for Afiniti but for how enterprise contact centers will be run going forward.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Kapelus highlighted:
“We have worked with leading organizations across telecommunications, healthcare, insurance, and hospitality to improve retention, increase sales conversion, and create better customer experiences through intelligent decisioning.”
“In hospitality, our technology drove a meaningful increase in customer lifetime value. In healthcare, better matching and routing improved telesales performance in measurable ways. The common thread is that our customers are not looking for operational efficiency on its own. They want business outcomes. That is where Afiniti has consistently delivered, and it is what our roughly $2.5 billion in measurable client results reflects.”
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Kapelus assessed:
“We estimate our TAM at approximately $175 billion, but the more interesting story is what is happening inside that market right now.”
“Contact centers were labor-driven for decades. That is changing fast. Seat counts are declining roughly 7% annually while AI and contact center technology spending is growing at around 17.5% CAGR. Spend is shifting from headcount to technology, and that transition is still early.”
“The reason is straightforward. Every customer interaction is a decision point that affects revenue, retention, and lifetime value. Enterprises have stopped asking only how to automate those interactions. They are now asking how to make better decisions across the entire customer journey. That question requires a fundamentally different kind of platform, and that is the category Afiniti has been building toward for nearly two decades.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Kapelus affirmed:
“Three things, and they work together.”
“We are vendor agnostic, unconditionally. Most competitors add value within their own ecosystem or require migration to capture it. Afiniti deploys on top of whatever the customer already has. It is an addition, not a replacement.”
“We have unified intelligence and decisioning in one system. Most competitors offer analytics or routing but stop short of closing the loop. Afiniti does not just surface insight, it acts on it, measures the impact, and improves the next decision automatically. That closed loop is what makes us accountable to outcomes, not just activity.”
“And we deliver predictive AI and agentic capability without the integration burden. Churn prediction, outcome simulation, behavioral pairing, real-time orchestration: one platform, no stitching required.”
“Backing all of that is nearly two decades of enterprise-scale work and roughly $2.5 billion in measurable results. That is not something newer entrants can replicate quickly.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Kapelus emphasized:
“We are focused on continuing to define what AI-powered decisioning looks like for the enterprise contact center.”
“That means expanding the platform, helping more enterprises operationalize AI in ways that are actually accountable, and continuing to prove that personalized customer experience and measurable business outcomes are not in tension with each other. They go together.”
“The next generation of enterprise leaders will expect AI to be accountable for outcomes, not just recommendations. Afiniti intends to lead that shift.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Kapelus concluded:
“One thing that deserves more attention is how enterprises actually measure success in customer experience.”
“For years the industry optimized for efficiency metrics. But if a customer leaves, spends less, or disengages after an interaction, it is hard to call that a success regardless of what the handle time looked like.”
“The conversation needs to shift toward customer lifetime value. The companies that win the next decade will be the ones using AI to strengthen customer relationships over time, not just automate touchpoints. That is the problem we are focused on solving.”
