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Companies in South Africa’s global business services (GBS) sector are enhancing their offerings to global clients so that their call centres and recruits will have an edge against the onslaught of AI.Kyle Goete, director of Human Xperience, told Business Times that the clients’ needs being channeled towards South Africa’s professionals were complex.“They [clients overseas] desire something more than transactional calls, and I think that’s driving our cost up because they want something better, and they’re here in South Africa to get something better. We’re moving out of the basic easy calls into work not only because of natural progression in IT but also because of AI.“All of the mundane, monotonous, repetitive tasks are going to be taken by the AI tools that are there, not to take jobs but to make things more efficient so they can deal with more calls and be more complex in their work environment.”According to the UiPath 2026 AI and Agentic Automation Trends Report, practitioners are successfully applying multi-agent systems to their complex, hard-to-automate processes, including inquiry triage, resolution drafting, compliance, and tone review.Key drivers of the adoption of AI in these sectors at a global level include the high cost of human labour, demand for faster response times, and the need to scale up capacity without raising headcount.Human Xperience is a global GBS assisting international companies with their business process outsourcing (BPO) needs. One of its partners, Everlight Radiology, specialises in connecting radiologists based in South Africa and finding radiologists for the world’s needs at flexible hours.This presents opportunities to utilise South Africa-based radiology expertise for an incident in Australia outside of Australia’s working hours.City of Cape Town MMC for economic growth, James Vos, said the city regarded the BPO sector as a high-growth sector that created skills pipelines in the order of sectors like clothing, financial services, pharmaceuticals and ICT. “This is a sector very close to our hearts. The BPO sector now nearly employs 100,000 people in Cape Town, both domestic and international, and it’s a sector that contributes about R24bn every year to the Western Cape economy.”Vos gave his support to the BPO sector to ensure it is responsive to the challenges and opportunities that AI presents to their businesses and their recruits. “AI is going to take over these calls, right? And that’s what we don’t want. We’d rather work with AI to strengthen the value proposition, but you still need a warm body to take that call or make that call that shows compassion and care to solve people’s problems right here from the southern tip of this continent.”Elvira Riccardi, Afrizan founder and CEO, said the business recently launched its Cape Town BPO call centre to enhance its customer-care offering domestically before branching off to prospective clients in the UK. “We don’t intend to be a 10,000-seater. We are looking to build bespoke niche products that will partner with AI. AI is a fundamental part of everyone’s journey. We would be silly to exclude that. We’ve developed a programme or philosophy.”According to the Business Process Enabling SA (BPESA) GBS Sector Report for the third quarter of 2025, frontline, voice-based contact centre agents employed in the sector during October to December 2025 accounted for 84% of new hires or 5,579 jobs. “These voice jobs were reported as falling within inbound customer services [at] 72.65% or 4,053 new jobs, inbound sales [at] 15.79% or 881, outbound customer services [at] 10.24% or 571, and outbound sales [at] 1.32% or 74 new jobs.”Back office and non-voice services accounted for about 16% of recruits, or 1,064 jobs, between October and December 2025, with back office processing at 55.47% or 590 jobs, finance and accounting at 33% or 351 jobs, and human resource management at 4.51% or 48 jobs. “There was also further growth in online tutoring [at] 3.57% or 38 new jobs, digital and information technology outsourcing [at] 3.35% or 36 new jobs, and procurement services [at] 0.10% or 1 new job.”
