South Africa’s business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is at an inflection point as artificial intelligence (AI) adoption gathers pace.

This was the view of delegates who spoke on Tuesday at the BPESA Global Business Services (GBS) and BPO Conference and Alchemy Awards at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

South Africa has, over the past decade, moved from being primarily a local call-centre market to becoming a centre for international global business services. This growth has been driven by the country’s location, education levels, relatively lower costs, and language and cultural advantages.

Outgoing Cape Town Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth James Vos said the sector employed more than 100 000 people in the city, including about 70 000 who service international clients. He said the sector created more than 11 400 jobs in the city last year, with many of these positions being people’s first jobs after leaving school.

“It is for this reason that our city has supported this sector. It provides many opportunities for first-time employment, allowing people to gain work experience and build families and careers,” Vos said. The BPO sector also promotes South Africa internationally as a capable investment destination, he added.

However, the rapid adoption of AI is creating uncertainty in an industry traditionally measured by the number of call-centre seats or hours spent handling customer interactions. AI is being introduced not only by BPO companies but also by their international clients, and it could replace some roles currently performed by call-centre staff.

Harry Folloder, chief commercial officer at Krisp, a company that provides a real-time voice-AI platform for contact centres and outsourcing companies, demonstrated to conference delegates how the platform can enable conversations in 63 languages. This could eliminate the need for foreign-speaking staff in call centres.

Vos said South Africa’s BPO sector was distinguished by its specialised skills and the empathy of its employees. He said AI should be viewed as an opportunity to invest in digital skills and continuously retrain and reskill staff so they could participate in the changing environment.

Hans Zachar, chief executive of Nutun, a South African GBS, BPO, customer-experience and credit-lifecycle management company, said a key future differentiator would be the extent to which consumers adopted new technology. Consumers, he said, were increasingly comfortable with using AI to resolve their issues online.

Zachar said Nutun’s Zoey, an agentic AI collections agent, dealt with more than 100 000 people every day. If 100 people dropped calls in a day or were unwilling to speak to an AI bot, he said, “it is a lot”.

AI was likely to handle more routine work previously performed by call-centre staff, while employees increasingly had to deal with more complex issues, he said.

He gave the example of customers asking for help after receiving incorrect advice from an AI platform such as Gemini. This suggested that call-centre staff would face a different kind of complexity in future, he said.

Geoffrey Smith, chief of staff at Concentrix, one of the world’s largest BPO companies, said the group employed more than 450 000 people, including in South Africa.

He said AI adoption had forced the company to extend its training periods, from an average of three weeks in 2024/25 to eight weeks in 2025/26.

Concentrix was using AI to raise the level and complexity of conversations with customers, Smith said. He added that a defining feature of South Africa’s BPO sector was the ability of its employees to put customers at ease and encourage them to discuss their problems. Delegates also spoke of a need for the education system to better prepare learners for AI adoption in the workplace.

Source: The National