It seems like everyone is talking about the pace of change going into 2026. It almost feels like we woke up on New Year’s Day and the world had changed. The change is across all spheres, the global geopolitical environment, trade economics and technology advancement and there are no signs that the runaway train is going to slow down any time soon.
It’s hard to think of any industry that isn’t affected by these factors, but for the BPO industry, the potential or real impact can feel more pronounced. The BPO industry is by nature geographically dispersed and highly sensitive to geopolitical changes. BPO also fulfils the need for a rather unique combination of empathy and repeatable tasks, which also makes it a highly attractive target for AI and technology deployment. So, in many ways, the next 12 months could be highly transformative and highly disruptive.
Making predictions in such a dynamic climate is difficult, but also highly necessary. Now is the time to set your strategy and to make some investment bets. While the last 24 months have focused on understanding potential, the next 12 will be about execution. While your strategy will focus on your business, your industry and your existing network, we sat with executives at Nutun to make an attempt at distilling the main themes and predictions that could inform the direction and future state of the BPO industry.
Geopolitical risk becomes an operating model input, not a background variable
In 2026, geopolitical risk will be reflected directly in how BPO operating models are designed. Rather than being treated as a macro concern discussed at board level, it will influence delivery structures, diversification strategies and contractual requirements. According to Ruben Moggee, CEO of Nutun International, “Geopolitical uncertainty is now shaping delivery decisions in very practical ways. They’re now part of the same conversation.” This will be evident in how clients reassess concentration risk and build redundancy into global delivery networks, particularly when servicing US and UK markets from offshore locations. As a result, ownership of the customer operating model will continue to shift from traditional operations teams into technology-led functions.
Location strategy shifts from cost optimisation to risk-adjusted productivity
As AI absorbs more processing and orchestration work, the relevance of delivery locations will be reassessed. The question will no longer be simply where labour is cheapest, but where work can be performed most sustainably. In practice, access to AI skills, regulatory alignment and geopolitical neutrality will weigh more heavily than workforce scale alone. “In a world where AI is doing more of the work, location has to justify itself differently,” says Moggee. This will reopen questions about whether traditional delivery locations, including South Africa, still make sense in an AI-enabled operating model. The answer will be less about geography and more about whether a location brings the right mix of AI skills, risk diversification and tangible value beyond scale. Cost will still matter, but it will be evaluated alongside resilience and productivity rather than in isolation.
AI customer service agent reality check
“Customer service AI voice agents are actually the hardest to do, demonstrate the least value and provide little cost savings at present,” says Zachar. In 2026, many organisations will step back from ambitious customer-facing AI deployments after failing to demonstrate meaningful cost savings or experience improvements at scale.
While pilots showed early promise, AI voice agents will see success in narrow and well-defined use cases such as activation and collections. The complexity and cost of organising and integrating internal data and systems into an AI orchestration platform and building out prompt powered conversation flows will see most organisations abandon ambitions for universal customer service agents and focus on specific use cases.
AI finds a new sweet spot in the back office
While front-office AI has disappointed relative to expectations, back-office applications will deliver tangible value. Document processing, claims handling, policy administration and decision support will continue to prove far better suited to AI-led automation.
These environments are structured, repeatable and measurable, allowing AI to operate within clear boundaries. Back office use cases will prove to be more commercially viable making use of less AI components to perform tasks as diminishing the need for real time processing in favour of lower cost AI batch workloads.
This will inevitably result in an efficiency dividend that will power an improved customer experience. Customer-facing agents will have a greater set of tools at their disposal to navigate internal processes and will be less constrained and negatively impacted by back-office inefficiencies
AI economics become the primary constraint on scale
As deployments mature, organisations will focus less on model capability and more on the economics of running AI at scale. Token consumption efficiency, latency, infrastructure design and integration overhead will determine whether AI initiatives remain viable beyond experimentation. For many organisations, back-office cost savings will become the funding mechanism for broader transformation, future-proof operating models and entirely new business models.
Vendor choices will also become increasingly difficult. AI will continue to spawn countless startups and new products from existing vendors. There will be very good AI companies and very bad ones. Making the right choice will result in very costly failures and incredible successes. What compounds these choices, sitting on the fence is no longer a choice at the risk of being left behind. Practical experience, realistic expectations and an ability to keep a cool head will be invaluable in these choices.
AI exposes, rather than fixes, broken customer journeys
Over the past two years, investment in customer experience and journey design slowed as organisations waited to see whether AI would remove the need for traditional CX design work. In 2026, that pause will end. As AI is deployed more widely, deficiencies in fragmented journeys, poor handoffs and slow resolution will become more visible, not less. “Automation amplifies whatever process it sits on. If the process is broken, AI just exposes that faster,” says Stephen de Blanche, Chief Revenue Officer at Nutun. In many cases, investment in traditional contact centres slowed while AI investment accelerated, leaving experience gaps more visible, not less. This will drive renewed focus on fixing the fundamentals of customer experience rather than attempting to automate around them.
Speed becomes the dominant dimension of customer satisfaction
Customer tolerance for delay will continue to compress, driven by cross-industry experiences rather than direct competitors. What felt fast only a few years ago will feel slow. Speed will matter most when customer journeys break down, not when they work as designed. AI-driven back-office automation will enable fundamentally different operating models where resolution times collapse from hours to minutes. This will change not just efficiency metrics, but customer expectations entirely. “Customer expectations around speed are moving faster than most operating models can adapt,” says de Blanche. “And when customers reset their expectations, there is no going back.”
Taken together, these predictions point to a year where focus will matter more than novelty. Geopolitical volatility will force more deliberate operating choices. AI will deliver value where it is applied with discipline, not ambition alone. Customer experience will be reshaped not by conversation, but by speed, orchestration and reliability. For BPOs, the opportunity in 2026 will lie in helping clients navigate these shifts with clarity, honesty and execution, not hype.
Link to article: https://www.nutun.com/insights/2026-in-bpo-what-can-we-expect
Hans joined Nutun in March 2023 with 19 years of technology experience across multiple industries including financial services, telco, retail and insurance.
Hans previously served as the Chief Product Officer for TransUnion Africa with the responsibility of developing and maintaining innovative customer engagement and credit risk management solutions leveraging the latest digital and analytics technologies.
Hans also held the role of Managing Director of Technology Strategy at Accenture specialising in technology led business transformation, having led several major transformation initiatives across the Africa continent.