With interest rate spikes, rising inflation, and ongoing supply chain disruptions, it’s no secret that 2024 has been a difficult year for businesses.
Many have invested time and effort into finding new ways to cut costs, optimise operations, and remain competitive during economic uncertainty. Business process outsourcing (BPO) has emerged as a key strategy, offering innovative solutions as service providers continue to find and leverage more cost-effective and efficient ways to handle business operations for their clients.
As we enter 2025, several trends are set to redefine BPO operations, and staying informed about these changes can help future-proof businesses and ensure long-term success.
Navigating complexity in a world craving simplicity
Over the years, the traditional BPO model has been using manual, outdated business processes to deliver the BPO experience. Although businesses have thrived with the conventional BPO model, companies have recently witnessed a substantial increase in competition and need for more innovative business solutions. As a result, this model is now shifting as BPOs need to provide value-driven services that cater to the evolving demands of their clients. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are the key drivers of innovation today. Using AI and ML technology, BPO vendors can provide a quality BPO experience with capabilities to obtain real-time analysis and data insights, automating manual tasks whilst most importantly transforming customer service.
With higher complexity tasks, BPOs also need to ensure their staff are equipped and proficient in the use of technologies that support these specialist lines of business. In 2025, we can expect this trend to continue with the deployment of new technologies showing no signs of slowing down. With an increase in agent enablement, we can also expect commercial models to shift increasingly to outcome-based models, which will further drive BPOs to adopt AI and other automation technologies to support transaction or outcome-based pricing models.
How technology is changing the BPO industry
In 2025, contact centres are poised for a transformation that will reshape the customer service landscape. The evolution of customer services has been a journey from traditional brick-and-mortar call centres to omnichannel communication. Next year, the customer service landscape is set to shift towards seamless integration of voice, chat, email, and social media. In fact, modern contact centres are goldmines for customer insights, informing meaningful business decisions and also the advent of AI has also been improving their operational efficiency.
AI will remain the hot topic for 2025 and beyond as the solutions mature and organisations continue to adopt them across their business. AI driven quality assurance and insights are already proving very promising in their ability to review each interaction as well as understand trends across huge volumes of interactions. AI also makes these insights much easier to understand as operation leads can interact with the data in a conversational way while still benefiting from analytical and business intelligence (BI) analysis.
Over the next 12 months, we expect to see significant developments in the use of AI agents. In fact, we’re noticing that credible voice and text agents are now becoming production ready. While still focused on lower complexity tasks, these AI agents provide a low-cost channel where excess workloads can be offloaded. Agent assisting tools that support, and coach agents are already starting to prove valuable in their approach. With the ability to access extensive knowledge bases and customer databases, they are able to supply the agent with critical information in real time as they listen in on the conversation.
Balancing data-driven customer insights with compliance
BPO operations often handle sensitive and confidential data from clients and customers, raising concerns about privacy and security. However, standards and certifications have come a long way, with ISO27001, SOC2 and others providing well-structured guidelines that organisations can adopt to meet their data privacy and data ethics obligations. Data privacy and even AI regulations are also maturing, which is quickly creating leading practices that can be adopted.
Yet, customers are increasingly willing to share personal information if it enhances their service experience. This willingness is predicated on the promise of personalised recommendations, trust in the company’s data practices, and clear communication of benefits. By building trust and demonstrating the value of tailored service, businesses can effectively engage customers while safeguarding their privacy.
So, what’s next for 2025?
The journey to digital and modern contact centres is well advanced and we can expect a raft of technology innovations that drive improved customer satisfaction and lower costs as organisations grapple with creating personalised experiences. Automation, AI, and robotic process automation (RPA) will continue to revolutionise the industry. We anticipate enterprises embracing outsourcing, nearshoring and offshoring markets flourishing, and new labour markets emerging. The future is bright and filled with opportunities for innovation, growth, and purposeful impact.
About the Author
Ruben Moggee is CEO of Nutun International. We’re a global BPO leader headquartered in South Africa. With decades of experience, we lead business into the future by leveraging our innovative, omnichannel solutions across the customer experience and credit lifecycle, from customer acquisition to debt collection and rehabilitation. We drive economic impact in South Africa through award-winning programs in education, job creation, and skills development. We are a force of innovation that generates an impact for our clients, colleagues, communities, and country.
