Customer service three decades ago was plainly picking up a phone, listening to a customer’s concern, finding an answer—and doing it over again.
When TP (formerly Teleperformance) began operating in the Philippines in 1996, the local business process outsourcing industry was still finding its footing. Since then, technology has enabled customers to easily connect with businesses, transforming the practice of customer service altogether.
Today, that same interaction might happen through chat, email, or social media. A customer expert may be helping someone troubleshoot their device, protecting their account from potential fraud, or using AI to quickly analyze customer data—often within the same conversation.
For TP, that industry evolution was an inside story. And Rahul Jolly, CEO of TP in the Philippines, said that technological leap reflects a human milestone.
The global digital business services giant is marking its 30th year in the Philippines with 60,000 employees across 29 sites, making the country a major global talent hub. The company’s milestone marks how Filipino professionals grew alongside the changing demands of customer experience, transforming the country from an outsourced call destination into an engine shaping the industry’s digital future.
“The Philippines is more than a witness to TP’s history. It helped shape who we are as a global company,” Jolly told the Philippine STAR. “Back when many of our international markets were just getting started, Filipino talent was already supporting customers globally with unmatched empathy and excellence. That is why TP in the Philippines is, in many ways, the heart and soul of TP Group.”
A workforce that grew with an industry
The work itself has matured far beyond traditional customer care. Frontline teams now navigate complex customer journeys across regulated industries—including fraud prevention in financial services, healthcare support, and critical trust and safety moderation.
That evolution aligns with where the customer experience industry in the Philippines is headed. The IT-BPM Industry 2028 roadmap calls for the country to move up the value chain through expanded digital services and accelerated reskilling. The industry benchmark is no longer headcount alone, but the operational complexity Filipino talent can resolve.
This vision also guides the transition toward an AI-enabled workforce at TP. Rather than viewing AI as an isolated tool, Jolly explained that TP treats it as an operational progression—equipping teams to leverage automated systems while safeguarding the human connection in every customer engagement.
When AI joins the workforce
Artificial intelligence is no longer an experiment on the sidelines of the Philippine IT-BPM sector. Industry data from IBPAP last year shows that 56% of member firms were already actively implementing AI as of mid-2024, with 11% reporting full implementation.
The findings underscore a decisive trend: AI’s primary impact across local centers is centered on upgrading and reskilling roles rather than eliminating them outright.
At TP, this transition is focused on offloading routine, repetitive tasks to automated tools. This way customer experts can concentrate on sensitive problem-solving and account disputes. Employees are trained to work alongside AI tools and exercise human oversight when automation falls short. With this hybrid approach, TP says roughly 7 out of 10 customer inquiries are resolved quickly and completely without unnecessary back-and-forth.
“AI helps employees process work faster and more consistently,” Jolly said. “But customers always remember the moments when someone understood their concern, made good judgment calls, and took accountability for the outcome. That is where Filipino talent continues to stand out.”
The future of customer experience is taking shape neither as entirely automated nor purely manual, but as a seamless collaboration between human ingenuity and artificial intelligence.
Levelling up the Filipino Customer Experts
For years, the Philippine BPO sector built its global reputation on a large pool of educated workers who are service oriented and very much proficient in English. But as the industry evolved, the bar has shifted decisively toward digital fluency and the capacity to handle more specialized and complex work.
That transformation places the country at the center of TP’s global enterprise strategy. Within the broader TP Group ecosystem, the Philippines serves not just as a scale delivery hub, but as an operational proving ground where automated systems are deployed, stress-tested, and continuously refined within highly secured spaces and workflows.
“The Philippines is one of TP Group’s most important talent hubs because Filipino teams combine operational scale with genuine human connection,” said Miranda Collard, CEO of TP in the Americas. “For clients around the globe, that combination is difficult to replicate.”
Automation can easily handle basic customer queries. But edge cases remain stubbornly resistant to automation: moments when the answer isn’t straightforward with a frustrated customer, or a transaction calls for critical thinking rather than another canned response. These moments demand empathy and accountability—qualities that Filipinos have as an advantage.
“Sustaining that advantage will require continuous upskilling, stronger digital capabilities, and closer collaboration across industry, government, and the academe,” Collard added.
Designing the next 30 years
Looking ahead, TP has a roadmap anchored to an ambitious enterprise goal: transitioning its entire global delivery workforce to become 100% AI-enabled by 2027.
In the Philippines, this steers the business from simple seat leasing toward high-value digital workflows, especially in key client industries. “It’s a high-tech, high-touch model, where automated speed handles baseline operations while human empathy manages the moments that matter,” TP in the Philippines CEO Jolly said.
He added that strategy is also directly shaping where the company grows. Rather than clustering thousands of jobs solely in Metro Manila, TP has steadily pushed opportunities into the countryside, matching the national IT-BPM vision for regional development.
Today, nearly 40% of its 60,000 employees work outside the capital. Regional hubs in cities like Davao, Cebu, and Cagayan de Oro—alongside major urban facilities like the newly opened site at Four E-Com Center in Pasay just this September—mean talent across the archipelago can build global careers without having to leave their families.
To support that footprint, TP works closely with local governments and universities to train graduates and workers from non-traditional backgrounds with core digital skills—through a program it aptly calls TP STEP (Skills Training to Employment Program).
Underpinning three decades of transformation is a resilient, people-first culture. TP marked its 30th year in the country by securing its ninth consecutive Great Place To Work certification—standing as the first company in the Philippines to achieve and sustain this distinction for nine consecutive years.
“A great place to work is not created in one year,” Jolly noted. “It is built through consistent listening, investment, leadership, and care.”
From phone calls giving way to omnichannel customer engagement, AI has now become an everyday partner for those on the production floor, elevating the standard for good customer service. Yet as the industry continuously reinvents itself, TP is banking on the one constant that brought it this far: the professional adaptability of Filipinos.
“Technology will rewrite the playbook every few years, but algorithms don’t build trust. People do,” Jolly said. “Filipino talent built the foundation of this company over the last three decades. And they will be the architects shaping and leading the next thirty.”
