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Jan 13, 2021, by Ivan Kotzev
2020 was a very disruptive year for CX services, marked by supply problems in the first half and a massive shift to WAH. It also proved to clients the key role of their CX services suppliers and the major benefits of outsourcing. The year started several trends and accelerate multiple others which will shape a dynamic 2021 for the industry. Here are five CX services trends for 2021.
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Dec 15, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
In a year when the U.S. stock market pushed to a record high, the U.K. had its worst recession in 300 years, and entire sectors shut down for weeks, business planning has become less reliable while demand fluctuates unexpectedly and inconsistently. The supporting industry of CX services is directly impacted on two fronts:
Challenges with supply, where the traditional multi-hund[...]
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Oct 19, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
In July 2020, Majorel acquired French platform developer ISILIS, specialists in bank account switching. In this blog, I look at the new capability, the company’s focus on the banking and financial services sector, and the evolving CX services needs of EU banks.
Specialist in bank account portability
ISILIS was founded in 2004 initially to support non-regulated account switching pro[...]
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Aug 28, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
Ages ago, in the pre-COVID-19, pre-U.S. election, pre-BLM protest times of 2019, the challenges of online reputation management (ORM) seemed to be brand-specific. For example, how Boeing could restore customer confidence in the 737 MAX aircraft. Today, in the second half of 2020, navigating social media during a crisis is top of mind for most brand managers and PR departments across [...]
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Jul 31, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
The impacts of the pandemic and lockdowns are creating winners and losers in terms of BPS delivery geos. Determining factors include a geo’s ability to manage the health and safety of workers, its success in minimizing economic disruption, and the flexibility of its labor regulators.
For Egypt, the unfolding effects of COVID-19 on front-office BPS may be too early to judge, [...]
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Jul 10, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
If there is a silver lining to the pandemic with respect to CX services, it is the changing perception of clients and providers on the pace of digital transformation and the role of frontline staff. In a conversation with Ritesh Idnani, President of Tech Mahindra, we discuss the company’s vision for what the Future of Work looks like and some of the latest trends and technologi[...]
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Jun 04, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
The COVID-19 crisis is forcing a rethink of the CX delivery model with large contact centers. The fundamental question is how to maintain people’s health and safety in an open floor space with hundreds of seats, continuous face-to-face interactions, shared equipment, and 24x7 operations. For many outsourcing clients, the pandemic was the trigger to adopt work-at-home (WAH) for [...]
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May 18, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
In a new social distancing world, most traditional face-to-face customer service tasks have had to digitize quickly. This trend is not new, but for some processes, it required the adoption of emerging technology and different operational models. A prime example is customer premise visits by engineers for equipment installations, parts replacement, and technical support. For several y[...]
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Apr 14, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
One of the memes during the COVID-19 crisis asks ‘who led the digital transformation of your company?’ with the options of ‘the CEO’, ‘the CTO’, or ‘the virus’. The global emergency has severely impacted CX, forcing many organizations to shut down or limit their contact center operations when they are most needed. A side effect is that,[...]
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Apr 06, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
High employee attrition rates are the norm in contact centers, with companies maintaining a constant recruitment, training, and onboarding pipeline. As generations X, Y, and Z come to represent the majority of the workforce, these new workers have different career aspirations, work values, and learning styles. For CX services providers with global delivery networks and demand for spe[...]
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Feb 28, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
As businesses brace for the effects of the Covid-19 virus, one direct impact is already happening: the mandatory shift to work-at-home (WAH) in China created the world’s biggest remote working experiment. In CX services, this health hazard is putting the WAH model top of mind for both providers and clients. While virtual work has been gaining traction in the last few years, thi[...]
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Feb 14, 2020, by Ivan Kotzev
At the end of January 2020, NelsonHall attended Teleperformance’s global analyst meeting in Mumbai. Here are some insights into the company’s progress since the Intelenet acquisition in October 2018 and the formation of Teleperformance Digital Integrated Business Services (D.I.B.S.).
Repositioning as a knowledge partner
Teleperformance’s reorganization in 2019[...]
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Dec 10, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
Telus International announced last week the acquisition of Competence Call Center (CCC) for ~€915m. The deal marks the biggest M&A in front-office BPO (CX Services) for 2019. It is also one of several investments in the DACH region and part of a global trend for market share acquisitions.
CCC gives Telus International scale for DACH markets
CCC is a private CX services[...]
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Nov 25, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
One of the main challenges facing front-office automation projects is the adoption of commercial terms protecting the interests of both clients and CX services providers. In an industry dominated by traditional per FTE and per hour/minute pricing, to be successful, end-to-end digital transformation requires significant initial investments, new KPIs, a stake from the vendor, and a lon[...]
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Nov 01, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
Voice bots are a tiny part of the customer service and outsourced CX services market today. However, they are significant both in terms of investment and the attention they are receiving from organizations. In both smart home devices (voice assistants) and traditional telephony, voice bots are growing (*see a sample of news items from October 2019 at the end of the text).
With div[...]
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Sep 30, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
A common theme in NelsonHall’s Advances in Analytics BPS market analysis is that organizations’ need to operationalize data has matured beyond BI and simple visualization. Companies do not want to wait days to build a report and weeks, or even months, to generate insights. They need to fill the AI-analytics continuum, democratize data discovery and data manipulations, and[...]
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Sep 13, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
The inevitable automation of the contact center role has become such as surefire prediction in mass media, by CEOs, and even politicians, that a more realistic view of the industry may seem impossible. In this blog, I look at Webhelp’s assessment of the CX automation landscape and the realistic challenges and opportunities in the market.
Customer-facing automation requires s[...]
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Aug 05, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
A common theme in the upcoming NelsonHall CX Services in Retail & CPG report is the increasing need by sector clients to generate and operationalize insights from their customers. Technology has shifted the power to consumers who are less loyal to brands and change their buying behavior more frequently, creating micro-segments.
However, while having a wealth of data such as cu[...]
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Jun 26, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
Crowdsourcing and different types of freelanced customer support models pre-date the current household names using these models in leisure and travel, personal transportation, and delivery services. Many of these early attempts died out because of poor business models, or remain effective today but in niche markets (e.g. gaming) or on a small scale (e.g. U.K. mobile network, giffgaff[...]
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May 28, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
One of the first stumbling blocks of business process transformation is identifying meaningful automation opportunities. A typical process will have a management consultant, system expert, or Lean Six Sigma specialist to monitor manual processes for a set time, collect performance data, and make recommendations. Companies supplement this assessment with executive ideation sessions, operational[...]
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May 03, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
Despite the evolution of contact center technology (think conversational AI), the spread of digital channels (think smart speakers), and the dramatic change in the ways companies interact with customers (think mobile-first), the industry KPIs for measuring the impact of these transformations remain limited. CSAT, NPS, and more recently, Customer Effort Scores (CES) measure different elements o[...]
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Apr 17, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
Consumers are evolving their preferred ways of interacting on social media: ‘spontaneous’ stories are replacing produced content, transparency and privacy are driving the spread of private groups and influencing regulatory push, and machine learning is personalizing conversational commerce. The impact on brands is greater need for new types of content, investments in automation and[...]
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Mar 27, 2019, by Ivan Kotzev
In NelsonHall’s 2017 report, ‘Multi-Channel CMS – Delivering Digital Customer Experience’, I forecast that the chat channel, in all its forms, would become 18% of the global CX services outsourcing market by 2020, growing by 30% CAGR. What fuels this sizable growth are the many benefits to brands offering sales and support over text channels, the advancement o[...]
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Dec 20, 2018, by Ivan Kotzev
In this vlog Ivan Kotzev looks at CSS Corp’s digital experience suite Yodaa and how it unifies the company’s analytics, automation, and multichannel tools and models for digitalizing support.[...]
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Nov 30, 2018, by Ivan Kotzev
Ivan Kotzev shares highlights from Alorica's recent analyst day, including current CX initiatives and focus areas, business growth, and investment priorities.[...]