Tata Consultancy Services CEO K Krithivasan has said that the rise of AI will inevitably render the need for traditional call centres across Asia obsolete within the span of a year.
Speaking to Financial Times, Krithivasan said that while there haven't been any immediate layoffs, the imminent proliferation of generative AI among multinational clients is set to reshape the landscape of conventional call centre practices.
"In an ideal phase, if you ask me, there should be very minimal incoming call centres having incoming calls at all," he said.
He added, "We are in a situation where the technology should be able to predict a call coming and then proactively address the customer's pain point."
The potential impact of GenAI on white-collar jobs, including call centre agents and software developers, has sparked concerns among policymakers globally.
India, famous for its back-office services, is facing considerable repercussions, given that over five million of its people are employed in the $48.9 billion IT and business process outsourcing industry, according to NASSCOM.
The AI progress is expected to cause considerable friction to India's over $250 billion technology sector, which plays a significant role in the nation's GDP.
Krithivasan urged caution against overestimating the immediate advantages of generative AI, emphasising that its true impact would be felt over the long haul.
Dismissing assertions of widespread job loss, he argued that the demand for technology expertise would actually rise, especially in India.
"If we can go to maybe 50 per cent of the colleges, we provide more employment, and more importantly, we will be able to address the technology demand the overall global industry is going to have," he said.
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