AI is Making Philippine Call Centre Work More Efficient, For Better and Worse

Rest of World | 26th November 2024

BPO workers say AI tools are monitoring their calls, assisting them with customers, and scoring their performance.

Thank you for calling. … You’re speaking with Renzo. This call may be recorded for — uhm — this call may be re—” Renzo Bahala, a customer service agent for a U.S. credit card company, breaks his monologue. If he were at work, he would’ve earned a demerit.

“I have to say it straight. If I stutter, I have to do it again,” he told Rest of World as he rehearsed the script he uses as a trainee at Concentrix Corporation, a business process outsourcing (BPO) firm that employs approximately 100,000 people in the Philippines.

Bahala says each of his calls at Concentrix is monitored by an artificial intelligence (AI) program that checks his performance. He says his volume of calls has increased under the AI’s watch. At his previous call center job, without an AI program, he answered at most 30 calls per eight-hour shift. Now, he gets through that many before lunchtime. He gets help from an AI “co-pilot,” an assistant that pulls up caller information and makes suggestions in real time.

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