In a dynamic shift that places South Africa at the forefront of global call centre AI innovation, two homegrown technology pioneers, Saigen and Callbi, are transforming how businesses extract insight and value from their customer interactions. By using AI language switching mid-conversation, they're revolutionising the call centre space. With over 100 clients already using the platform, Callbi, powered by Saigen’s proprietary speech recognition engine, is turning everyday voice conversations into actionable intelligence - in real time, across multiple languages, and at enterprise scale.

At the heart of this evolution lies a challenge familiar to businesses everywhere: how to move beyond gut feel and anecdotes to truly understand what drives performance in customer-facing teams. For South African businesses operating in a uniquely multilingual society, this challenge is amplified by the need to serve customers across a wide range of languages, dialects, and cultural nuances. Traditional speech analytics tools - often built in and for monolingual English markets - simply fall short.

AI Labs: Uncovering insights through AI-led analysis

Enter Saigen, South Africa’s leading provider of AI-driven multilingual speech recognition, with deep research roots and proprietary technology that is tailored to the linguistic landscape of the region. Built to transcribe and analyse speech across South Africa’s most commonly spoken languages, including isiZulu, Sesotho, Setswana, and Afrikaans, Saigen’s models enable a seamless switch between languages mid-conversation, a common occurrence in South African call centres, and one that has historically gone unrecognised by generic, English-only AI systems.

“Calls may begin in English, but they don’t always stay there,” says Dr Etienne Barnard, co-founder of Saigen and one of the country’s foremost authorities on speech technology. “We’ve designed our models to adapt in real time to the natural flow of multilingual dialogue. And now, with the addition of Generative AI, we’re able to go far beyond transcription; we’re turning speech into strategy.”

This advancement has been made possible through the launch of Callbi AI Labs within the last year, a collaborative innovation initiative formed by Saigen, Callbi, and strategic investor Alphawave. By combining state-of-the-art large language models with real call centre data, Callbi AI Labs is enabling the development of solutions that were previously out of reach, from instant post-call summaries and automated compliance verification to real-time agent guidance and emotion detection.

Benefits and Outcomes

The impact on customer service and operational efficiency is profound. Companies now have the ability to evaluate agent performance objectively, identify coaching opportunities, and standardise service quality across teams. Traditionally, call centre managers have relied on intuition and limited call sampling to assess their agents. Now, with Callbi’s AI-powered voice analytics platform, they can analyse every call, at scale, with insight into what makes top performers succeed.

“A good call centre manager has an intuitive understanding of their team,” explains Dr Charl van Heerden, CEO of Saigen. “But intuition alone isn’t enough. With our subsidiary, Callbi, we provide clear, data-driven evidence of where agents are excelling or struggling. And when you combine that with multilingual capability, you start to see a deeper, more human layer of insight emerge.”

One of those insights, uncovered through AI-led analysis, revealed that agents who switched to a customer’s first language during a call were consistently more successful in building trust, resolving issues, and creating a sense of comfort. This multilingual agility — until now unmeasured — proved to be a powerful differentiator in service outcomes, demonstrating the vital role of language in effective customer engagement.

Callbi Agent Assist: Generative AI for call centres

The addition of Callbi ‘Agent Assist’, a new feature enabled by Generative AI, marks a further leap forward in call centre AI. Rather than replacing human agents, the tool enhances their capabilities — generating accurate call summaries, drafting follow-up emails, and suggesting next-best actions in real time. By reducing cognitive load, ‘Agent Assist’ allows agents to stay focused on the customer, rather than multitasking with notetaking and admin during the call.

“We’re not just automating workflows — we’re amplifying people,” says Dr Barnard. “Agent Assist is about supporting humans with AI, not replacing them. This is the future of customer service: smarter, faster, and more emotionally aware.”

Local and global

The commercial potential of this AI-powered approach to customer experience has not gone unnoticed. Alphawave, the venture builder behind Saigen and Callbi’s growth, has committed significant investment and strategic support to scale this technology both locally and globally. For Alphawave CEO, Frans Meyer, the opportunity extends beyond individual product success; it’s about creating a thriving ecosystem of deep-tech innovation in Africa.

“Saigen and Callbi are delivering exactly the kind of breakthrough we look for: real AI, solving real problems, with clear market demand,” says Meyer. “We fund ideas and experts, but are most interested in building companies. With 16 portfolio businesses and over 200 engineers at our disposal in Stellenbosch, we’re able to connect the dots across sectors, deepen the opportunity, and help bring these technologies to maturity. Multilingual voice AI is not just a competitive advantage, it’s going to be one of Africa’s most valuable exports.”

Humane Technology

As companies worldwide search for ways to modernise their customer engagement strategies, improve compliance, and drive operational excellence, the team at Saigen and Callbi is proving that the answer lies not just in smarter technology, but in technology that truly understands people, in every language spoken in South Africa.

Our partnership with Callbi Speech Analytics highlights the importance of inclusivity in the AI landscape. Read the story as featured on TechFinancials, here.

For more information on Callbi AI Labs’ instant post-call summaries, automated compliance verification, real-time agent guidance, and emotion detection, feel free to send us an email: info@saigen.co.za