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Companies in South Africa's global business services (GBS) sector are expanding their offerings to global clients to give their call centers and recruiters an edge against the onslaught of AI.
Kyle Goette, director of human experience, told the Business Times that for South African professionals, customers' needs were complex.
“They (foreign customers) want something more than transactional calls, and I think that's driving up our costs because they want something better, and they're here in South Africa to get something better. We're moving out of the basic easy call, not only because of the natural progression in IT but also because of AI.
“All the mundane, mundane, repetitive tasks will be done by the AI tools that are there, not to take over the job but to make things more efficient so that they can deal with more calls and become more complex in their work environments.”
According to the UiPath 2026 AI and Agentic Automation Trends report, businesses are successfully implementing multi-agent systems into their complex, difficult-to-automate processes, including inquiry triage, resolution drafting, compliance, and tone review.
Key drivers of AI adoption in these sectors globally include the high cost of human labour, demand for faster response times and the need to increase capacity without increasing headcount.
Human Experience is a global GBS that assists international companies with their Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) needs. One of its partners, Everlight Radiology, specializes in connecting radiologists based in South Africa and finding radiologists to the needs of the world at flexible times.
This provides the opportunity to access South Africa-based radiology expertise for an incident in Australia outside Australian working hours.
City of Cape Town MMC for Economic Development, James Vos, said the City views the BPO sector as a high growth sector that has created a skills pipeline in the order of sectors such as clothing, financial services, pharmaceuticals and ICT. “This is a sector that is very close to our hearts. The BPO sector now employs approximately 100,000 people in Cape Town, both domestically and internationally, and it is a sector that contributes approximately R24bn to the Western Cape economy every year.”
Vos lent its support to the BPO sector to ensure it is responsive to the challenges and opportunities that AI presents to their businesses and their recruiters. “AI is going to take over these calls, right? And that's what we don't want. We'd like to work with AI to strengthen the value proposition, but to take that call or make that call you still need a warm body that shows compassion and care to solve people's problems from the southern tip of this continent.”
Afrizan founder and CEO Elvira Riccardi said the business recently launched its Cape Town BPO call center to enhance its customer-care offering domestically ahead of opening the branch to potential clients in the UK. “We don't intend to be a 10,000-seater. We want to create niche products that will partner with AI. AI is a fundamental part of everyone's journey. It would be foolish to exclude it. We have developed a program or philosophy.”
Frontline, voice-based contact center agents employed in the sector accounted for 84% of new hires or 5,579 jobs during October to December 2025, according to the Business Process Enabling SA (BPESA) GBS Sector Report for the third quarter of 2025.
“These voice jobs were reported to fall 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 the recruitments or 1,064 jobs between October and December 2025, including 55.47% or 590 jobs in back office processing, 33% or 351 jobs in finance and accounting and 4.51% or 48 jobs in human resource management. “Online tuition also increased by 3.57% or 38 new jobs, digital and information technology outsourcing by 3.35% or 36 new jobs, and procurement services by 0.10% or 1 new job.”