Vennlisk industry analysis: outsourced call centres

Outsourced contact centres answer calls, chats and emails on behalf of other businesses: banks, retailers, utilities, travel firms and public bodies. Clients pay by the hour, by the contact or, increasingly, for outcomes such as problems resolved. People are the largest cost, so where the work is done, how well staff are trained and how long they stay drive the economics.

The biggest providers are global. Teleperformance, one of the largest, reported 2025 revenue of about €10.2 billion, up 1.3% on a like-for-like basis: modest growth for a business of that scale.

Automation is the question hanging over the whole industry. In March 2025 Gartner predicted that by 2029 agentic AI would resolve 80% of common customer service issues without a person, cutting operating costs by 30%. If clients can handle routine contacts themselves, the volume of work they outsource falls.

Investors have reacted. In June 2026 Bloomberg reported sharp falls in Concentrix and Teleperformance shares after Concentrix cut its revenue outlook, with Teleperformance at its lowest in more than a decade, on worries that automation is shrinking demand faster than new services can replace it. Providers argue the other side: that they can sell automation to clients, run it for them and keep the complex, sensitive or multilingual work.

The evidence so far is that automation changes the work rather than removing it. Gartner predicts that none of the Fortune 500 will have fully eliminated human customer service by 2028. In a 2026 survey it found that 85% of service leaders were expanding what their human agents do, and in another that 87% of customers say a company using generative AI for service must still give them access to a person.

That puts more weight on the remaining human contacts, which tend to be harder, longer and more emotional. Training, retention and quality become more important, not less, and they cost money.

Providers have long moved work to lower-cost countries, balancing wage savings against language skills, time zones, client preferences and the risks of operating abroad. Automation adds a second option: keep the work where it is and use fewer people.

Contact centres hold large amounts of personal and payment data, which makes them targets for fraud and cyber attack, including criminals impersonating customers. Rules on data protection and on how automated tools may deal with customers add cost and shape what clients are willing to outsource.