Contact centers shift to high-skill tasks

THE Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) is seeing a major shift in job roles in the information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) industry.

CCAP president Jojo Uligan said job roles have now shifted from lowlevel-skill tasks into midskill and high-skill tasks as the new wave of industrial revolution shake up the landscape of the global IT-BPM industry.

Uligan said the group has taken a proactive approach to this job change noting that this is already the future of jobs.

“It is a common knowledge in our industry that we have already been implementing changes in job tasks and description to cope with the evolving requirements,” said Uligan.

He said the shift in the priority for professionals’ level of skills required to perform tasks will have an impact to the Philippine IT-BPM industry.

In a previous analysis by industry consultant, Frost and Sullivan, tasks that require basic skills (low-level) in the global BPM landscape is projected to decline by 29 percent by 2022.

At the same time, midskill jobs are expected to rise by 12 percent, while positions that require higher skills are projected to jump by 19 percent.

From the traditional focus, which is customer services delivery, Uligan said the Philippine contact center sector is now geared towards an emerging priority—customer experience delivery.

He said the local contact center firms now prioritize quick and accurate resolution, personalized interactions, demand for self-service option, interaction in customers’ preferred channel and seamless/consistent experience. Disruptive technologies also point to automation, analytics and artificial intelligence to meet delivery of customer experience.

“Mid- and high-skilled jobs are getting more demand in our industry. Our professionals are now finding themselves more engaged in complicated tasks that require experience or specialized expertise paired with abstract reasoning and situational response/autonomy,” Uligan explained.

Based on the internal research conducted by CCAP, mid- and highskilled jobs in the contact center sector already account for 85 percent of positions.

Uligan assured that the Philippine contact center sector is taking the necessary steps to overcome the challenges brought about by this shift.

“The industry is investing heavily in training for both entry-level and tenured positions,” he said.

The contact center industry keeps a big slice of the IT-BPM industry, accounting for an annual revenue of US$14.6 billion or P759.2 billion. It employs more than 890,000 call center professionals nationwide.