‘It’s like we’ve become robots’: AI is increasing work, stress at call centres in the Philippines

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

“Thank you for calling. … You’re speaking with Renzo. This call may be recorded for – uhm – this call may be re – ” Renzo Bahala, a customer service agent for a US credit card company, breaks his monologue. If he were at work, he would’ve earned a demerit.

“I have to say it straight. If I stutter, I have to do it again,” he told Rest of World as he rehearsed the script he uses as a trainee at Concentrix Corporation, a business process outsourcing, or BPO, firm that employs approximately 100,000 people in the Philippines.

Bahala says each of his calls at Concentrix is monitored by an artificial intelligence programme that checks his performance. He says his volume of calls has increased under the AI’s watch. At his previous call centre job, without an AI programme, he answered at most 30 calls per eight-hour shift. Now, he gets through that many before lunchtime. He gets help from an AI “co-pilot”, an assistant that pulls up caller information and makes suggestions in real time.

“The co-pilot is helpful,” he says. “But I have to please the AI. The average handling time for...

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