How BPOs adapt to AI

The Philippine business process outsourcing (BPO) industry — our modern-day gold mine — is undergoing a quiet but sweeping transformation. Not from a foreign competitor or sudden labor shift, but from something far less visible: artificial intelligence.

What used to be a 500-seat operation now only needs 150 agents. The rest? Handled by AI — trained on millions of interactions, fluent in customer lingo, and immune to burnout. In 2025, this is no longer disruption on the horizon, but a deployment in progress.

These AI agents don’t take breaks. They don’t escalate complaints. They simulate empathy, respond instantly, and learn from every call. They don’t just support humans — they replace them in basic tasks.

For years, our edge was English fluency and Western cultural alignment. But AI has learned that, too. One engine I observed, built by a Makati-based BPO could switch from a Filipino-accented tone to Australian sarcasm mid-sentence.

It didn’t just understand grammar; it mastered personality. This means Tier 1 calls, password resets, order status, and billing FAQ are being handled without humans. People now enter the conversation only when AI gives up. In fact, try your Gemini on your phone and speak to it in Cebuano, you’ll be surprised that it understands the local dialect.

Rather than fight it, leading firms are reshaping job roles. They’re hiring AI supervisors, not team leaders. They need prompt engineers, not just agents. There’s rising demand for people who train, audit, and manage AI.

These aren’t hypothetical roles — they’re opening now in BGC, Ortigas, and Cebu. In fact, a new BPO role is emerging for someone who doesn’t talk to customers but teaches machines how to. They review chatbot outputs, adjust tone settings, and ensure AI doesn’t hallucinate or offend. A different skill set, so to speak.

While industry races ahead, our policies are behind. TESDA still certifies legacy call center skills, and labor laws haven’t caught up to hybrid AI-human roles. We need to act, or we’ll leave thousands of agents behind. Reskilling is not optional. It’s urgent. The same agents who once learned neutral accents and call-handling scripts must now learn how to prompt AI, analyze call data, and manage machine decisions. It’s not a downgrade, it’s an upgrade.

The government must co-lead the reskilling agenda, funding bridge programs for displaced agents to move into AI support and operations roles. Schools and training centers must update their content — fast.

BPO isn’t just about scripts anymore. It’s systems, models, and ethics. And firms must stop using AI purely as a cost-cutting tool and start viewing it as a productivity partner that needs just as much care as their human workforce.

The AI wave in BPO isn’t here to destroy the industry. It’s here to redesign it. But only those who adapt — from headset-wearing agents to code-aware specialists will thrive in this new era. Call centers aren’t going away. But they’re evolving into command centers, staffed not just by speakers, but by thinkers. Those who can train machines will lead them.

The future of our BPO sector won’t be found in louder voices; it’ll be shaped by sharper minds.