Artificial Intelligence: A Case Study of Business Process Outsourcing in Jamaica

The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry has become a vital source of job creation, investment, and cost-saving strategies for many countries and Fortune 500 companies. Many businesses, such as Conduent and Vistaprint, as well as health insurance providers, have established operations in developing nations like Jamaica, Trinidad, and the Dominican Republic, utilizing these countries as nearshore and offshore locations. These sites are used to set up BPO or call centers that handle document processing, customer service, and other back-office tasks that would typically be expensive in the home country. 

The governments of these developing countries, particularly Jamaica, have entered into agreements with international companies that provide business process outsourcing services, enabling more companies to outsource their operations to Jamaica. In return, creating jobs increases government revenue, and the clients of BPO companies can save on labor costs without sacrificing quality. 

The growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technologies has transformed how many businesses execute processes. Companies now utilize AI tools such as chatbots (designed to give customers instant responses to frequently asked questions), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (used to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks), Machine Learning (ML) (helping analyze large data sets), and Natural Language Processing (NLP) (used to extract insights from unstructured data and make recommendations for projection) as a new way to boost efficiency in meeting customer and client needs. 

This book aimed to investigate how BPO customer service agents in Jamaica perceive AI in the BPO sector, examine their concerns about job security, and identify practical strategies that Jamaican BPO companies can adopt to alleviate these concerns and promote the acceptance of these technologies. The findings from this study also increased awareness and helped agents better understand the use of AI and its role in their job functions. Additionally, this contributes to the existing body of knowledge and can serve as a reference for future research within the Caribbean and globally.

The study is organized into four chapters. This first section introduces the study, including background information, problem statements, the study’s purpose, research objectives, research questions, significance, delimitations, and definitions of terms. Chapter one reviews the literature across four levels: theoretical review, conceptual review, empirical review, and conceptual framework. Chapter two describes the research methods, including the research design and approach, population and sample size, sampling procedure, measurement of variables, research instrument, type of data, validity and reliability concerns, analytical tools, and ethical considerations. Chapter three will present the results and discussions based on the research objectives. By the end, the last section will conclude the study with a summary of the findings, conclusions, and recommendations.