An industry association of business process outsourcing firms said that generative artificial intelligence (AI) would have a positive impact on the local sector in the next two to four years, expressing optimism that it will further drive the growth of the more than P30-billion industry.
The Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) on Tuesday said they see this emerging technology shaping the way information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) firms provide services to clients.
"Generative AI can be used to automate and enhance various aspects of customer interactions. Some examples are chatbots and virtual assistants. There are automated email responses for faster adaptability," said CCAP president Mickey Ocampo.
"To illustrate, in the past, when an agent needed to respond to a customer's call, he had to look at the (customer relationship management software) and backtrack or even go to the knowledge base. Now, these things are automated, further enhancing agent productivity," he added. Generative AI is a type of AI system capable of generating text, images, or other forms of media in response to prompts initiated by humans or otherwise.
Meanwhile, CCAP board member Pushkar Misra said generative AI was actually creating more high-complex jobs, downplaying fears that it will cause massive job losses to the industry.
"It does not really make some tasks obsolete, but instead, it reinforces the need for upskilling and re-skilling of talents, which are already being done across the industry," he said.
Ocampo said further that the contributions of this emerging technology could be reflected in two to four years, noting that it was not factored in the IT-BPM industry road map launched last year.
Under the road map, the Philippines' contact center sector has set an annual revenue target of $59 billion by 2028, $49 billion of which is expected from CCAP-member companies.
The sector has posted an actual revenue of $27 billion in 2022, 84 percent of which accounts for the $32 billion total revenue of the IT-BPM industry.
The road map also projects 2.5 million full-time people employed in the local IT-BPM industry by 2028, nearly 92 percent of which will be in the contact center sector. INQ