BPO Jobs on a Seesaw as Bots Call the Shots

Voice AI is driving call centres even as hiring grows, but the shift towards complex tasks leaves freshers scrambling for a new career ladder, say Himanshi Lohchab and Shristi Achar.

For decades, a headset and basic English skills offered aspirational workers from tier-2 and tier-3 cities a foothold in the services economy, joining endless rows of agents answering calls at the offices of multinationals. Now, those conversations may not always need a human.

India's $5-billion call centre industry, which employs an estimated 1.1-1.3 million people in pure voice processes, is adopting artificial intelligence to answer customer queries, qualify sales leads and follow up on loan repayments.

The headcount of pure voice-process agents, who speak directly with customers on the phone or VoIP, is also growing, but the pace of hiring is slowing. This workforce grew 2.5-3% in India in the 12 months ended September, compared with 3-4% in the Philippines, which employs about 1.3 million people in similar roles, according to staffing firm Xpheno. Malaysia's workforce of fewer than 100,000 increased 6-7%.

"India is seeing increasing demand for higher-value customer operations, GCC-linked services, analytics and AI-enabled delivery. The Philippines continues to be strongly positioned in voice-led customer experience and large-scale service delivery, while Malaysia is gaining relevance in multilingual, regional and shared-services operations," said Sanketh Chengappa, director at recruitment firm Adecco India.

Voice AI provider Arrowhead, which works with financial institutions including Axis Bank and L&T Finance, sees Indian businesses adopting the technology faster than their Southeast Asian counterparts.

"In India, (call centres and BPOs) are very open and proactive about adopting this. Their question is no longer, 'Why should I use technology?' Their question is, 'Who should I work with and how quickly can I adopt this?' In Southeast Asia, there's still a little bit of scepticism around the technology and its efficacy," said Devyani Gupta, founder of Arrowhead.

Businesses can use bots to handle additional volumes while retaining human agents for complex interactions.

"For the same use case, yes, you are seeing bots take over some of those calls, which means you need fewer human agents for those calls. That doesn't necessarily mean that the human agent workforce itself is reducing," Gupta said. "It's not to say that the workforce itself is reducing. It's to say that the growth of that workforce is reducing."

Arrowhead cited sales operations where bots have expanded monthly calling capacity from 100,000-200,000 leads to 800,000 to a million, passing interested customers to human agents.

In collections, bots handle early follow-ups while human agents focus on difficult repayments. The company estimates up to 60% of inbound customer-support volumes can be automated end to end.

Firstsource is also seeing a shift towards specialised work.

"In the Philippines, we're seeing a distinct shift toward high-end work from all our core industry verticals. This isn't commodity call centre volume; it's specialised, outcome-focused work. India continues to be our anchor market - a mature, diversified hub, with broad vertical penetration," said chief operating officer Sohit Brahmawar.

Voice AI adoption is accelerating. Bengaluru-based cloud communications company Exotel estimates India's voice AI conversations could reach 1.4 billion this year and double to 2.8 billion next year. Venture capital firm Peak XV expects the category to become India's first $1 billion enterprise AI market over the next two years.

Exotel expects to handle about 450 million AI conversations this year, cofounder Sachin Bhatia said. Voice AI now contributes 13-14% of its voice revenue, a share built in roughly a year compared with 15 years for its existing voice business.

Early deployments have improved first-contact resolution rates by 15-25% and reduced customer wait times by 25-35% compared with traditional interactive voice response systems, according to Aditya Sudhindranath, chief strategy officer at Deloitte South Asia.

"Early deployments indicate a modest reduction in support-seat requirements in medium-sized contact centres," he said.

According to Deloitte, the broader conversational AI market is estimated to generate $250-550 million in annual revenue in India, with the total addressable market potentially expanding to $4-5 billion over the same period.