End of the Call Centre era: the first casualty of the AI revolution

Turab Ali

For nearly three decades, call centres stood as a defining symbol of globalisation — an era when technology, language, and inexpensive labour merged to create a worldwide engine of commerce. Nations such as India, the Philippines, and Pakistan transformed their youthful, English-speaking populations into valuable economic assets.

From managing airline reservations to troubleshooting software for American customers, call centres became the backbone of an outsourcing boom that turned developing economies into service powerhouses.

In the early 2000s, the so-called “voice economy” was flourishing. India’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector alone expanded from $1.6 billion in 2001 to more than $44 billion by 2023, employing nearly 1.5 million people. The Philippines earned its title as the “call centre capital of the world”, generating over $35 billion annually and providing work for some 1.3 million employees. Pakistan, though smaller in scale, brought in an estimated $3 billion each year from outsourced IT and customer service contracts, while Bangladesh and Sri Lanka joined the race.

These jobs did far more than pay wages — they built entire middle classes, transformed urban economies, and created vibrant nightlife cultures in cities that had once gone dark after sunset.

For Western corporations, outsourcing customer support overseas proved both faster and cheaper. Thus emerged a quiet new world order — one in which communication, rather than manufacturing, became the principal driver of growth across much of the developing world.

Yet history has a way of turning on its makers. The very technological innovation that gave rise to this industry is now dismantling it: Artificial Intelligence.

AI-driven chatbots and voice assistants have grown faster, sharper, and increasingly human-like. From ChatGPT-style virtual agents to Amazon’s Alexa-powered service platforms, machines now resolve customer issues within seconds — without salaries, training, or fatigue. Companies that once depended on vast human call centres are turning to automation, slashing costs by as much as 70 per cent. The result? Millions of jobs — particularly in India and the Philippines — are vanishing quietly but swiftly.

In 2025 alone, more than two million call centre workers were rendered redundant across the globe. Analysts warn this is merely the beginning. What was once a ladder to white-collar prosperity in the developing world has become the first major casualty of the AI revolution.

The economic consequences are immense. Call centres contributed billions in foreign exchange and sustained entire cities such as Bangalore, Manila, and Lahore. Now, those same urban landscapes are beginning to feel the tremors of automation.

We are witnessing a kind of reverse globalisation — one in which machines, not people, conduct the world’s communication. The irony is stark: the very nations that rose on the back of inexpensive human labour now find themselves undercut by even cheaper machine intelligence.

The call centre era enriched countries and elevated millions of families into the middle class. But as AI takes the helm, that human voice — once the sound of opportunity — is fading into digital silence.

-- The writer is a staff member of GNN TV and a senior broadcast journalist.