THE contact center industry is aiming to grow its revenues and employment base by between 5 and 7 percent this year, officials said, citing results of an internal survey last month.
Contact centers in the Philippines offer customer communications through voice calls, email and chat for customer service, as well as support for their clients in a wide range of sectors from banks to health and manufacturing .
“We are confident it is still going to be a journey of continued growth. We will continue (to support the Philippines’) leadership as the number one contact center destination,” Haidee Enriquez, president of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), told reporters in a conference in Makati City on Wednesday.
CCAP data showed the sector achieved an estimated $31.5 billion revenue in 2024, up 6.8 percent from $29.5 billion in 2023, and accounting for about 83 percent of the information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) industry’s total $38 billion revenue last year.
Employment also rose, reaching 1.62 million workers in 2024, a nearly 7.3 percent increase from 1.51 million in 2023 and accounting for 89 percent of the total IT-BPM jobs.
Enriquez said contact centers continue to face headwinds, such as talent and skills gap, cost pressures and competition from other markets offering similar services.
She said while the US reciprocal tariffs have no immediate impact on services like call centers, “we are very watchful,” given the unpredictability that services later on might be slapped with tariffs.
“There is concern… but we are cautiously optimistic (that the tariffs will) not have long-term impact because they are centered on goods and not services,” she added.
Tonichi Achurra-Parekh, CCAP director, in the same press conference said tariffs on goods entering the US could increase the cost of these products and therefore may impact Americans’ consumer behavior.
“Less spending means less services for the US market,” she added.
Achurra-Parekh noted the 0.3 percent contraction of the US economy in the first quarter of 2025 has no impact on contact centers supporting US clients.
The US remains the dominant source of outsourced work to the Philippines, accounting for about 85 percent of total contracts, based on Nexford University data from 2021, CCAP said.
Enriquez said results of the survey among CCAP members of a 5 to 7 percent rise in headcount would reflect a slowdown in growth compared with 2024, attributed to the deployment of technology for higher value services never offered before like cyber security, data analysis and medical coding.
She said the group estimates hiring a further 80,000 to 100,000 workers this year, a little less than last year’s estimated 110,000 new hires.
“Talent and skills gap remain a major challenge that we try to solve together with our partner in government and academe,” Enriquez said, adding CCAP members have focused on upskilling and reskilling existing workers for digital and technology-augmented services.
She said the Philippines competes with countries that offer attractive incentives, such as Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Egypt, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Achurra-Parekh said all talk about how artificial intelligence could displace contact center jobs did not happen but technology has helped existing workers achieve higher productivity, and contact centers to realize higher revenue per full-time equivalent (FTE) employee because of efficiency. She did not disclose numbers.
“Technology brings new roles for skills that are hard to find or not yet developed in the Philippines such as cybersecurity professionals, AI coaches, AI analysts and AI trainers,” she added.
The group said the deployment of technology has also reduced employee attrition rate to 43 percent, as of the latest data in 2023, compared with the industry average of 60 percent.
