Arbolo eyes Manila as ticket to global expansion

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)-powered coaching and simulation platform Arbolo has set up a headquarters in the Philippines as a gateway to its global expansion.

“The Philippines is not just a strategic location — it’s the heart of the call center industry, which makes it ideal for us to scale globally,” Arbolo co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Martin Tan said in a statement at the weekend. “Our presence here gives us a launchpad to rapidly expand across Southeast Asia and beyond.”

Arbolo has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investors, including Kendrick Kho, founder and managing partner of Hyperparameter, a US-based venture capital firm that specializes in AI solutions for traditional industries.

The firm said its generative AI (genAI)-driven solutions are developed at its innovation hub in Chile, where cofounder and chief technology officer Nicolas Rivas leads the technology team.

Arbolo’s platform has delivered operational improvement for major call centers in the Latin American country, it said.

An outsourcing provider in Latin America, iBr, has used Arbolo’s AI-driven coaching solution to enhance service delivery and deepen client relationships, doubling the number of agents managing its most critical account, the company said.

“We have seen a significant improvement in service quality, and Arbolo has played a key role in our growth with a major client,” iBr CEO Luis Gomez said in the same statement.

Similarly, Entel Connect Center, the customer service division of Chile’s largest telecommunication provider, experienced improvements using Arbolo’s. “Entel, which employs 9,000 agents, integrated AI-driven role-play simulations to boost customer satisfaction scores by 15% in the first month,” Arbolo said, adding that the platform cut coaching hours by 80%.

Another Chilean firm, Esencial, a health insurance provider, first adopted Arbolo for its sales team to improve customer interaction through customized simulations.

After seeing results, it expanded the platform use to customer service. Grupo Alemana, the firm’s parent company, is now evaluating the possibility of deploying the platform across its 500-agent network.

Arbolo is now set to replicate its early success across Southeast Asia, beginning with the call center industry in the Philippines, the company said.

“We’ve shown how our platform can deliver tangible results in Latin America, and we believe that approach will resonate in our country’s rapidly evolving business process outsourcing industry,” Mr. Tan said. — Aubrey Rose A. Inosante