AI is taking over routine call-centre work in South Africa’s fast-growing outsourcing sector — and leaving human agents with harder problems that take longer to train for, industry leaders said at the BPESA Global Business Services and BPO Conference in Cape Town.
Geoffrey Smith, chief of staff at Concentrix, one of the world’s largest outsourcing companies, said AI has forced it to extend training for new staff from an average of three weeks in 2024/25 to eight weeks in 2025/26. The company is using AI to raise the level and complexity of customer conversations.
Routine work to AI, complexity to humans
Hans Zachar of Nutun said the company’s agentic AI collections agent, Zoey, now deals with more than 100,000 people a day. AI would handle more routine work, he said, while staff increasingly handle complex cases — including customers who come for help after getting wrong advice from an AI chatbot.
Consumers, he said, were becoming more comfortable resolving issues through AI. But scale cuts both ways: if even 100 people a day hung up rather than talk to a bot, “it is a lot.”
Languages no longer a moat
Harry Folloder, chief commercial officer at Krisp, demonstrated a real-time voice AI platform that enables conversations in 63 languages — potentially removing the need for foreign-language agents.
A first-job engine at stake
The sector matters well beyond the industry. Outgoing Cape Town economic growth mayoral committee member James Vos said BPO employs more than 100,000 people in the city, about 70,000 of them serving international clients, and created more than 11,400 jobs last year — many of them people’s first jobs after school.
He said South Africa’s edge lay in specialised skills and employees’ empathy, and urged the sector to treat AI as a reason to invest in continuous reskilling. Smith similarly pointed to South African agents’ ability to put customers at ease.
Zachar argued the market is far from saturated: of nearly 20 million companies outsourcing worldwide, he said, South Africa serves about 100,000.
Delegates also called for the education system to better prepare learners for AI in the workplace.
Based on reporting by Edward West for The National.
