Arbolo, an AI-native B2B SaaS company, has entered the Philippine market with contact center solutions. With its AI-driven coaching and simulation platform, the company aims to capitalize on the Philippines’ position as the world’s top outsourcing destination for contact centers.
Arbolo has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investors, including Kendrick Kho, founder and managing partner of Hyperparameter, a US-based VC firm specializing in artificial intelligence solutions for traditional industries. Kho, a triple Stanford alum with experience at Amazon and Rocket Internet, is also an investor in SpaceX, Deel, and other notable companies. This new funding is part of Arbolo’s initial expansion strategy.
Arbolo’s move into the Philippines aligns with its vision of transforming high-churn, siloed contact centers into a dynamic, data-driven industry. The company hopes to address critical challenges such as high agent turnover, slow ramp-up times, and the urgent need to upskill the workforce with AI technology.
“Empowering agents in real-time through immersive, scalable training and immediate, actionable feedback is at the core of our mission,” said Martin Tan, CEO and co-founder of Arbolo. “The Philippines, with its 1.2 million contact center agents, is the ideal market for us to deploy our AI-driven solutions. Our platform addresses the critical need for upskilling and agent retention in a sector that struggles with attrition rates of up to 50%.”
Leveraging the Philippines’ dominance in the global contact center industry, Arbolo has strategically chosen the country as its headquarters. This move positions the company to capitalize on the growing demand for outsourced customer service solutions. As the industry continues to evolve, cloud-based GenAI solutions offer significant opportunities to enhance operational efficiency. Arbolo’s AI platform can help Philippine BPO companies optimize customer interactions through automated quality assurance, scalable coaching, and actionable insights.
Arbolo’s entry into the market is timely. As contact centers around the world transition to hybrid models and rely increasingly on digital tools, artificial intelligence has emerged as a key enabler of efficiency and quality. The market for AI-first solutions like Arbolo is ripe for disruption since 70% of contact center seats still use outdated, on-premise technology.
In addition, coaching and training in the contact center industry today remains human-intensive and inefficient. Agents complain of receiving feedback sporadically, while onboarding is often delayed by the common practice of one-to-one call simulations, where dozens of new hires must wait for their turn with a trainer.
Arbolo is disrupting traditional methods of upskilling in the industry by allowing new hires to train simultaneously and ramp up faster. Its AI-driven coaching tool provides personalized feedback after every call to facilitate continuous improvement, a departure from in-person coaching, which lacks the immediate insights to accelerate skill development.
With lifelike personas and scenarios based on a BPO’s call history, Arbolo’s role-play simulations accelerate onboarding time by allowing new hires to do call simulations all at the same time without the need for a human instructor. The platform also tracks agent progress over time, benchmarks performance against peers, and improves overall efficiency – all while effortlessly integrating into existing workflows.
“I believe Arbolo will play a pivotal role as our workforce transitions from being lifers to lifelong learners” says Tan.
With a strong foundation of paying customers in Santiago, Chile, where co-founder and CTO Nicolas Rivas leads innovation, Arbolo is now turning its focus to scaling operations in the “call center capital of the world,” which will be its primary market moving forward. The new funding will support the expansion of sales and back-office teams, product development, and go-to-market efforts in the region, which will lay the groundwork for a larger Series A round.
Arbolo’s near-term plans include a product roadmap featuring AI agents tailored to the unique needs of the Philippine BPO market. The round will also enable the recruitment of local talent, particularly industry insiders that can support growth with their existing networks and a strong understanding of customer pain points. Within five years, Arbolo expects to capture 30% of the Philippine contact center market by leveraging AI-driven solutions to improve agent productivity and customer service.
“Our goal is to empower both human and AI agents by providing the tools and gathering the right data they need to win in this new era,” added Tan. “With the support of our investors, we’re excited to build a new standard for the Philippine contact center industry and beyond.”