Contact Center Outsourcing to the Philippines and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
(Photo : Companies in the United States are increasingly turning to contact center outsourcing to the Philippines to save money while continuing to provide a high-quality customer experience.)

Companies in the United States are increasingly turning to contact center outsourcing to the Philippines to save money while continuing to provide a high-quality customer experience. Although the use of offshore contact centers is not a new phenomenon, the emergence of the Philippines as a world leader in this industry is more recent. The country's lower labor and operating costs, highly skilled workforce, and largely English-speaking population have made contact centers in the Philippines an extremely attractive outsourcing option for many major corporations in the Western world.

The rise of AI technologies over the past few years has further enhanced the capabilities of these offshore contact centers to create better and more seamless experiences for customers. The Philippines remains at the forefront of the industry, now a leader in using innovative AI technology to provide better, smarter, and faster customer service. For BPO companies, this means there is even more value to be gained from moving their customer service operations offshore and utilizing contact centers in the Philippines.

"The benefits that AI can bring to the contact center environment are numerous, and new advances are happening every day. Most of us are familiar with Interactive Voice Response (IVR), in which the customer answers recorded questions to complete simple transactions without the need for a human agent or provide screening information to be routed to the appropriate department. But AI technology goes far beyond IVR to provide a wealth of data and analytics that create actionable insights for companies and numerous benefits for both contact center employees and customers," says Ralf Ellspermann, a leading call center outsourcing provider in the Philippines.

The sheer volume of data that can be collected in a contact center in the Philippines can be overwhelming. AI can help companies analyze, organize, and draw insights that translate to better business practices and processes. Everything from call volumes to key call drivers to average handle times can be tracked and monitored. What's more, by analyzing things like a customer's volume, tone of voice, speech patterns, and cadence, AI can help determine customer sentiment and predict potential problems much faster than a human employee ever could. These insights can be delivered in real-time to the customer service agent and ensure that issues are escalated in a timely manner and callers are quickly directed to the agent who can best assist them.

"Another area in which AI is changing the game for contact centers is in the area of call evaluation. In the past, it was necessary to rely heavily on human observation to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of the agent. This comes with inherent subjectivity and the personal biases of the evaluator, making it less than ideal for large-scale performance analysis. But AI can provide the ability to analyze a large volume of calls in real-time, tracking multiple performance measures simultaneously and providing real-time feedback. This feedback can be used to guide callers to the correct agent more quickly, resulting in shorter call times, smoother interactions, and more satisfied customers," says Ellspermann. 

For all its benefits, AI does not eliminate the need for human customer service agents. In fact, AI is most beneficial when it is used to enhance the work of human agents and enable them to do their jobs more effectively. Agents are not bogged down with handling simple and repetitive tasks that can be automated and are free to focus on more complex issues that require human interaction. This brings us back to the Philippines and its skilled workforce of customer contact agents. The beauty of AI is that these agents are now better matched with the appropriate calls and receive continuous feedback that allows them to keep improving and delivering an even better customer experience. With some of the best contact center employees in the world utilizing the best of AI technology and providing services at highly competitive prices, it's no surprise that contact centers in the Philippines have become a winning formula for companies from around the world.