August 27, 2024 • 16 mins
Call centers in the Philippines, the world’s second-biggest outsourcing center after India, are embracing artificial intelligence - and it’s radically changing what it looks and sounds like to work there.
On today's Big Take Asia Podcast, host Rebecca Choong Wilkins demos the Sanas AI app and talks to Bloomberg's Saritha Rai about the industry's rapid transition and what it might mean for workers around the world.
Read more: The World's Call Center Capital Is Gripped by AI Fever — and Fear
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I recently had a conversation that really changed the way
I think about AI, its power, and how it might
be used in our day to day interactions. It started
with a phone call to a company called Sannas.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hello, thank you for calling Sanas Airline. My name is Mozielle.
How can I assist you today?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, I'm Rebecca. I'm trying to cancel my flights to Singapore,
but I'm having problems.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Okay, I'm sorry to hear that, Rebecca, and for us
to proceed, can I have your pickup number?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Please?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It sounds like a typical conversation you might have with
a customer rep. But here's the thing. The sound of Luzille,
the person I'm speaking with, is actually being modified quite
dramatically with AI. Without the AI, here's what our conversation
would actually sound like.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Hi, Rebecca, this is Lucille and I'm from the Philippines
and this is my normal voice and accent.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Wow, raziel that is a wild transformation, both in accent
and in that clarity of that noise. Yeah right, wait,
can you turn on the app again?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Okay, that's a problem, So there you go. The Sanus
appistored on now So Hi Rebecca, nice meeting you.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Wow, that's just wild. The AI company Luzille works for,
Sanas causes technology accent translation. It says it eliminates background
noise and enhances the clarity of voice and speech while
making sure it still sounds natural. And Luzille, who runs
demos for Sanas, says the technology helps call reps when
(01:43):
they use it, fewer customers asked to be transferred to
a different agent that used to happen all the time
during the twelve years she worked as a customer service rep.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
For example, if we answer the call, they actually look
for us represent that they right away instead of trying
us to talk to us. There's already a doubt that
if we are equipped or capable of answering their questions
or resolving their concern and queries.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Sanas says it's AI tools quote eliminate communication barriers and
allow agents to resolve issues faster, which means shorter wait
times for customers. And Sanas is just one of the
many AI companies that are blurring the line between where
the tech starts and the human ends. And while these
(02:36):
tools might make things easier on customer reps. They are
a potential danger to the jobs of those working in
the customer service industry or what's known as the BPO
sector business process outsourcing.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
We will see shrinking in the core of BPO work
as new AI tools get launched every month, they're bringing
in a lot more efficiency.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Bloomberg Sertha Raye covers AI in Asia from India, and
she says, if you want to see this threat up close,
the Philippines, where lou Zille is is a good place
to look. That's because it's considered the world's capital for BPOs,
particularly voice BPOs.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
The industry employee is about one point seven million people
and accounts for about eight percent of Philippines GDP.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And Soesa says what's happening with the industry over in
the Philippines is being closely watched by the rest of
the world.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Entire countries. Economis experts are watching Philippines to see how
it will play out in this country of about one
hundred million people, and that could well show a signal
as to how these technologies move to other countries and
other industries and disrupt or enhance workers' lives.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Welcome to the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
Rebecca Chung Wilkins. Every week we take you inside some
of the world's biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons,
and businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on
the show, the Philippines is at the forefront of AI's
(04:24):
job displacement, and what happens there will say a lot
about what's ahead for white collar workers around the world.
A few decades ago, major global corporations began outsourcing a
lot of their back end work think HR accounting, auditing,
(04:46):
and customer service to countries with lower labor costs, and
Bloomberg's to Read the Rye says one of the top
places these tasks were outsourced to was the Philippines, and
part of the reason for that, she says, is because
of the way people there speak.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
So the Philippines is really one of those countries which
is culturally very aligned with the United States, and people
speak in an accent that is much closer to the
American accent, much more than pretty much most of Asia.
So that is the reason why a lot the BPO
(05:25):
work has increasingly moved towards Philippines and made it really
the call center capital of.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
The world, SOESA tells me. The Philippines started growing it's
back office industry in the two thousands, and today call
centers are the country's biggest source of private sector jobs.
The industry is forecast hit thirty eight billion dollars in
revenue this year, and this industry boom has created the
kind of jobs that have helped transform people's lives.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
These are well tamed jobs. These are jobs where you
can actually be socially upwardly mobile. You can actually get
paid recently and make a change in your lifestyle by
a home, by a car, set up a small business
on the side, set up your family.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
But Ciisa says, in the last eight months or so,
there have been big changes in these jobs that are
raising questions about whether or not they will continue to
be a stable source of income and employment for millions
of Filipinos.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The largest vPOS in the Philippines have rolled out a
variety of AI tools pretty extensively. These AI tools do
all kinds of things, such as assisting agents while they're
on life calls, training the agents, sometimes even making our
bound calls to sell something.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
One of the call centers in the middle of adapting
to this AI transition is twenty four seven. AI Serisa
was given rare access to their call center in Manila
where they using a chat GPT like tool to train
customer service agents. In the test run that Saritha saw,
(07:07):
the AI tool generated different scenarios and took on a
range of personas to help the human agent roleplay with
different types of callers they might get.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
For example, pleasant, irate, tough, hard bargainer, or treat. The
sentiment can be tense, distressed, irritated, or calm. So for example,
somebody can choose a scenario which is a gen z
male irate churned customer or a female a millennial who
is calm but has a real problem.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
What does an irate gen Zai customers sound like?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Very difficult to deal with? I can char I overheard
some of those calls and it was not easy, but
it was tremendous how calmly these agents were dealing with
really annoyed and tough customers.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
At the other end, the idea, Saitha says, is to
prepare the agents to deal with as many different scenarios
and customer personalities as possible. It's also to help train
them to give the most appropriate response and Soretha says
the company told her that the kind of work the
AI is doing to train human agents would take much
(08:24):
longer if it were being done by an actual human trainer.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
You cannot have the trainers go from pleasant to irate,
to a tough bargainer to a distressed customer or within seconds,
whereas the AI can easily do that, which is why
what used to take three times the number of days
to train an agent has now come down to about
a month.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
But with productivity gains and workflow improvements come trade offs.
Soretha spoke to a few people whose jobs came under
threat from the AI revolution in the BAO industry. One
of them is forty seven year old Christopher Bautista.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
He's worked in the BPO industry for nearly two decades.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Christopher told Saifa that for months he'd watched as AI
took on more responsibility where he worked, The AI took
care of customers questions such as general inquiries about products,
what the problem was, and more, before routing calls to
human agents. And then last November, he and others at
(09:29):
the BPO company serving a multinational tech giant were put
on floating status.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Floating status means no work, no pay, but still on
the roads. So you are not jobless, but you are
not getting paid. So that went on for about four
or five months before Christopher quit the company and then
has found a job in an entirely different company.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
So just how many jobs in the BPO industry are
going to come under threat because of this transition and
what will that mean for the Philippine economy which is
heavily dependent on this sector that's coming up after the break.
(10:18):
Over the past year, most of the major players in
the Philippines vast BPO industry have introduced some form of
AI copilot, having algorithms run alongside human operators to make
their work much more efficient, all in real time. And
Bloomberg Saretha Rai says, with these new AI tools, something
(10:39):
that used to give the Philippines an advantage in this industry,
its cultural closeness to America may not matter anymore.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
These AI tools will make it possible for BPOs to
set up anywhere because accent will not be a problem.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So Refa says that could open doors for foreign owned
companies to move their call center operations to places in
Africa like Garana, where it's cheaper to recruit agents and
where the BPO industry is starting to expand, and that
has big implications for the Philippine economy, which has been
transformed by the sector.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Some ten twelve years ago, money law was a different city.
Now most of these slick sky scrapers, these luxurious homes,
these big malls, all of this has been majorly on
encounter BPO industries boom.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
But now one estimate says that up to three hundred
thousand contact center jobs could be lost in the Philippines
to AI in the next five years.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
There is a recognition that you know that there is
change coming, that there will be job losses, they will
be less hiring, and you do not see the kind
of frenzy that used to be the hallmark of the
BPO industry even a decade ago.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Now, Soaretha says, some of the executives in the industry
she spoke to don't see the changes as all about
job losses. They say AI will create different types of roles,
jobs like training algorithms or curating data. As for the
Philippine government, who had been banking on the BPO industry
to help propel its economy, we are Soaretha how they've
(12:25):
responded to the growing presence of AI in the industry.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
There is a recognition that AI can really upend the industry.
The government has been talking about reskilling and training their workforce,
but there is very little yet on the ground that
I see in terms of real skilling initiators or training
(12:51):
initiatives that the government has initiated.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Last month, the government launched an AI research center aimed
at helping her the Philippines into a regional front runner
in the AI space, But so Resa says the government
has yet to put a figure on how much it's
planning to spend.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
There is no real dollars set aside for retraining.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I suppose every technological revolution has ultimately led to some
job cuts, and I wonder if this is any different,
or is this just another one of those key technological
turning points in history.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
In my coverage of the technology industry, I've covered a
variety of disruptions, the latter part of the Internet disruption,
the mobile disruption, or the cloud disruption, all of these disruptions.
But this is different. This is a technology that could,
(13:49):
in fact Rebecca, what you're doing and what I'm doing.
I keep looking over my shoulder to see what different
technologies are doing in terms of writing and in terms
of journalism. I know that there are AI anchors, now
there are AI podcasters. What does that mean for your
job and mind? There's always that little bit of niggling
(14:13):
anxiety at the back of my head as I look
at this technology and I've never felt that before.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Maybe it will be a cheerful Rebecca British accented AI
Avata podcast host. It definitely feels like this story, perhaps
more than some of the other stories that we've brought
it on, we have a little bit more skin in
the game here. I agree to that point. I wonder
(14:42):
does what happens with AI in the Philippines affect the
rest of the world.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
I think the world over governments are challenged with how
to deal with what is called a job displacement tools
that this VIA is bringing in. There is an awareness
that this is happening, but governments around the world are
doing really very little to deal with it. So this
(15:12):
is a bullet train that is really moving very fast,
and does the government have the speed to catch up?
That is a question that I would leave open ended.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
This is the big take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
Rebecca Cheung Wilkins. This episode was produced by Naomi Young
Young and Alex Sugura, who also mixed it. It was
edited by Caitlin Kenny and Emily Cappan. It was fact
checked by Alex Sugura. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso,
(15:48):
Nicole Beemstabor is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is
Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you like our show, please
leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, or
tell your friends it makes a difference. Thank you and
see you next time.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I recently had a conversation that really changed the way
I think about AI, its power, and how it might
be used in our day to day interactions. It started
with a phone call to a company called Sannas.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hello, thank you for calling Sanas Airline. My name is Mozielle.
How can I assist you today?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, I'm Rebecca. I'm trying to cancel my flights to Singapore,
but I'm having problems.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Okay, I'm sorry to hear that, Rebecca, and for us
to proceed, can I have your pickup number?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Please?
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It sounds like a typical conversation you might have with
a customer rep. But here's the thing. The sound of Luzille,
the person I'm speaking with, is actually being modified quite
dramatically with AI. Without the AI, here's what our conversation
would actually sound like.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Hi, Rebecca, this is Lucille and I'm from the Philippines
and this is my normal voice and accent.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Wow, raziel that is a wild transformation, both in accent
and in that clarity of that noise. Yeah right, wait,
can you turn on the app again?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Okay, that's a problem, So there you go. The Sanus
appistored on now So Hi Rebecca, nice meeting you.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Wow, that's just wild. The AI company Luzille works for,
Sanas causes technology accent translation. It says it eliminates background
noise and enhances the clarity of voice and speech while
making sure it still sounds natural. And Luzille, who runs
demos for Sanas, says the technology helps call reps when
(01:43):
they use it, fewer customers asked to be transferred to
a different agent that used to happen all the time
during the twelve years she worked as a customer service rep.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
For example, if we answer the call, they actually look
for us represent that they right away instead of trying
us to talk to us. There's already a doubt that
if we are equipped or capable of answering their questions
or resolving their concern and queries.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Sanas says it's AI tools quote eliminate communication barriers and
allow agents to resolve issues faster, which means shorter wait
times for customers. And Sanas is just one of the
many AI companies that are blurring the line between where
the tech starts and the human ends. And while these
(02:36):
tools might make things easier on customer reps. They are
a potential danger to the jobs of those working in
the customer service industry or what's known as the BPO
sector business process outsourcing.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
We will see shrinking in the core of BPO work
as new AI tools get launched every month, they're bringing
in a lot more efficiency.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Bloomberg Sertha Raye covers AI in Asia from India, and
she says, if you want to see this threat up close,
the Philippines, where lou Zille is is a good place
to look. That's because it's considered the world's capital for BPOs,
particularly voice BPOs.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
The industry employee is about one point seven million people
and accounts for about eight percent of Philippines GDP.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And Soesa says what's happening with the industry over in
the Philippines is being closely watched by the rest of
the world.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Entire countries. Economis experts are watching Philippines to see how
it will play out in this country of about one
hundred million people, and that could well show a signal
as to how these technologies move to other countries and
other industries and disrupt or enhance workers' lives.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Welcome to the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
Rebecca Chung Wilkins. Every week we take you inside some
of the world's biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons,
and businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on
the show, the Philippines is at the forefront of AI's
(04:24):
job displacement, and what happens there will say a lot
about what's ahead for white collar workers around the world.
A few decades ago, major global corporations began outsourcing a
lot of their back end work think HR accounting, auditing,
(04:46):
and customer service to countries with lower labor costs, and
Bloomberg's to Read the Rye says one of the top
places these tasks were outsourced to was the Philippines, and
part of the reason for that, she says, is because
of the way people there speak.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
So the Philippines is really one of those countries which
is culturally very aligned with the United States, and people
speak in an accent that is much closer to the
American accent, much more than pretty much most of Asia.
So that is the reason why a lot the BPO
(05:25):
work has increasingly moved towards Philippines and made it really
the call center capital of.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
The world, SOESA tells me. The Philippines started growing it's
back office industry in the two thousands, and today call
centers are the country's biggest source of private sector jobs.
The industry is forecast hit thirty eight billion dollars in
revenue this year, and this industry boom has created the
kind of jobs that have helped transform people's lives.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
These are well tamed jobs. These are jobs where you
can actually be socially upwardly mobile. You can actually get
paid recently and make a change in your lifestyle by
a home, by a car, set up a small business
on the side, set up your family.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
But Ciisa says, in the last eight months or so,
there have been big changes in these jobs that are
raising questions about whether or not they will continue to
be a stable source of income and employment for millions
of Filipinos.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The largest vPOS in the Philippines have rolled out a
variety of AI tools pretty extensively. These AI tools do
all kinds of things, such as assisting agents while they're
on life calls, training the agents, sometimes even making our
bound calls to sell something.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
One of the call centers in the middle of adapting
to this AI transition is twenty four seven. AI Serisa
was given rare access to their call center in Manila
where they using a chat GPT like tool to train
customer service agents. In the test run that Saritha saw,
(07:07):
the AI tool generated different scenarios and took on a
range of personas to help the human agent roleplay with
different types of callers they might get.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
For example, pleasant, irate, tough, hard bargainer, or treat. The
sentiment can be tense, distressed, irritated, or calm. So for example,
somebody can choose a scenario which is a gen z
male irate churned customer or a female a millennial who
is calm but has a real problem.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
What does an irate gen Zai customers sound like?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Very difficult to deal with? I can char I overheard
some of those calls and it was not easy, but
it was tremendous how calmly these agents were dealing with
really annoyed and tough customers.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
At the other end, the idea, Saitha says, is to
prepare the agents to deal with as many different scenarios
and customer personalities as possible. It's also to help train
them to give the most appropriate response and Soretha says
the company told her that the kind of work the
AI is doing to train human agents would take much
(08:24):
longer if it were being done by an actual human trainer.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
You cannot have the trainers go from pleasant to irate,
to a tough bargainer to a distressed customer or within seconds,
whereas the AI can easily do that, which is why
what used to take three times the number of days
to train an agent has now come down to about
a month.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
But with productivity gains and workflow improvements come trade offs.
Soretha spoke to a few people whose jobs came under
threat from the AI revolution in the BAO industry. One
of them is forty seven year old Christopher Bautista.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
He's worked in the BPO industry for nearly two decades.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Christopher told Saifa that for months he'd watched as AI
took on more responsibility where he worked, The AI took
care of customers questions such as general inquiries about products,
what the problem was, and more, before routing calls to
human agents. And then last November, he and others at
(09:29):
the BPO company serving a multinational tech giant were put
on floating status.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Floating status means no work, no pay, but still on
the roads. So you are not jobless, but you are
not getting paid. So that went on for about four
or five months before Christopher quit the company and then
has found a job in an entirely different company.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
So just how many jobs in the BPO industry are
going to come under threat because of this transition and
what will that mean for the Philippine economy which is
heavily dependent on this sector that's coming up after the break.
(10:18):
Over the past year, most of the major players in
the Philippines vast BPO industry have introduced some form of
AI copilot, having algorithms run alongside human operators to make
their work much more efficient, all in real time. And
Bloomberg Saretha Rai says, with these new AI tools, something
(10:39):
that used to give the Philippines an advantage in this industry,
its cultural closeness to America may not matter anymore.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
These AI tools will make it possible for BPOs to
set up anywhere because accent will not be a problem.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
So Refa says that could open doors for foreign owned
companies to move their call center operations to places in
Africa like Garana, where it's cheaper to recruit agents and
where the BPO industry is starting to expand, and that
has big implications for the Philippine economy, which has been
transformed by the sector.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Some ten twelve years ago, money law was a different city.
Now most of these slick sky scrapers, these luxurious homes,
these big malls, all of this has been majorly on
encounter BPO industries boom.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
But now one estimate says that up to three hundred
thousand contact center jobs could be lost in the Philippines
to AI in the next five years.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
There is a recognition that you know that there is
change coming, that there will be job losses, they will
be less hiring, and you do not see the kind
of frenzy that used to be the hallmark of the
BPO industry even a decade ago.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Now, Soaretha says, some of the executives in the industry
she spoke to don't see the changes as all about
job losses. They say AI will create different types of roles,
jobs like training algorithms or curating data. As for the
Philippine government, who had been banking on the BPO industry
to help propel its economy, we are Soaretha how they've
(12:25):
responded to the growing presence of AI in the industry.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
There is a recognition that AI can really upend the industry.
The government has been talking about reskilling and training their workforce,
but there is very little yet on the ground that
I see in terms of real skilling initiators or training
(12:51):
initiatives that the government has initiated.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Last month, the government launched an AI research center aimed
at helping her the Philippines into a regional front runner
in the AI space, But so Resa says the government
has yet to put a figure on how much it's
planning to spend.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
There is no real dollars set aside for retraining.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I suppose every technological revolution has ultimately led to some
job cuts, and I wonder if this is any different,
or is this just another one of those key technological
turning points in history.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
In my coverage of the technology industry, I've covered a
variety of disruptions, the latter part of the Internet disruption,
the mobile disruption, or the cloud disruption, all of these disruptions.
But this is different. This is a technology that could,
(13:49):
in fact Rebecca, what you're doing and what I'm doing.
I keep looking over my shoulder to see what different
technologies are doing in terms of writing and in terms
of journalism. I know that there are AI anchors, now
there are AI podcasters. What does that mean for your
job and mind? There's always that little bit of niggling
(14:13):
anxiety at the back of my head as I look
at this technology and I've never felt that before.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Maybe it will be a cheerful Rebecca British accented AI
Avata podcast host. It definitely feels like this story, perhaps
more than some of the other stories that we've brought
it on, we have a little bit more skin in
the game here. I agree to that point. I wonder
(14:42):
does what happens with AI in the Philippines affect the
rest of the world.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
I think the world over governments are challenged with how
to deal with what is called a job displacement tools
that this VIA is bringing in. There is an awareness
that this is happening, but governments around the world are
doing really very little to deal with it. So this
(15:12):
is a bullet train that is really moving very fast,
and does the government have the speed to catch up?
That is a question that I would leave open ended.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
This is the big take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
Rebecca Cheung Wilkins. This episode was produced by Naomi Young
Young and Alex Sugura, who also mixed it. It was
edited by Caitlin Kenny and Emily Cappan. It was fact
checked by Alex Sugura. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso,
(15:48):
Nicole Beemstabor is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman is
Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you like our show, please
leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, or
tell your friends it makes a difference. Thank you and
see you next time.
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