CEBU CITY – This city will host the Contact Islands 2024 conference where key leaders and representatives from contact center and business process sector firms, local and national government, the academe, thought leaders, and customer experience officers will discuss the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) and other significant issues affecting local call center operations.
THE Contact Center Association of the Philippines is hosting the Contact Islands 2024 conference from July 24 to 26 in Cebu City. (Contributed photo)
Spearheaded by the 1450-member Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), the event will be held from July 24 to 26 at Fili Hotel Nustar.
Contact Islands 2024 is designed to bring about an unparalleled platform for showcasing innovations, highlighting best practices, and moderating dialogues as member-companies unite in taking the path towards realizing the IT-BPM industry's 2028 roadmap.
Data from global research firm Everest Group showed that the sector posted an annual revenue of $29.5 billion in 2023. That accounts for almost 83 percent of the entire IT-BPM industry revenue of $35.5 billion.
The Philippine Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) industry has set an annual revenue target of $59 billion by the year 2028. The Contact Center Industry is expected to account for about 83 percent of that amount, or around $49 billion.
"We firmly assert that AI will continue to help make our industry become more resilient and generate more revenue, contradicting fears of some concerned parties,” CCAP President Mickey Ocampo said in a statement.
"People may not be fully aware, but AI has already been widely used through the chatbots we encounter online and even through the mobile features and applications we use daily. That usefulness can further strengthen our industry."
Ocampo said that AI could logically boost productivity in the workplace by enabling contact center agents to focus on more important and complex transactions, which could ultimately make the overall experience much better for agents and customers.
Several legislators have called on the national government to regulate or even prevent the integration of AI into the IT-BPM industry.
"Just like how we overcame data privacy challenges years ago, CCAP member-companies are continuously re-skilling and up-skilling our agents to update and upgrade them to the constantly changing demand of our clients and technology,” Ocampo added.
CCAP revealed that employment in the local contact center sector grew 9.4 percent year-on-year in 2023, exceeding the overall growth rate of the IT-BPM industry of 8.6 percent.
About 1.51 million contact center agents were employed in 2023, accounting for 89 percent of the entire IT-BPM employment of 1.70 million full-time employees (FTEs).