featured posts:
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WNS Brandttitude: Serving Marketers with Advanced Brand Analytics
Apr 26, 2017, by Ivan KotzevWhile Facebook banks on the smartphone camera to digitalize offline relationships, and sales people use Snapchat to sell real estate, the main challenges for marketers to reach this level of interaction are structural – how to visualize huge amounts of disparate data to get actionable insights fast at a granular level. Here I take a look at how one CMS vendor, WNS, is tackling [...]
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CMS in 2017: Delivery & Transformation and Industry-Specific Predictions for the Year Ahead
Jan 13, 2017, by Ivan Kotzevby Vicki Jenkins & Ivan Kotzev NelsonHall’s principal Customer Management Services analysts take a look at how the CMS market will shape up in 2017, with predictions for CMS delivery & transformation from Ivan Kotzev, and industry-specific predictions from Vicki Jenkins. 1. CMS Delivery & Transformation Predictions For CMS, 2016 marked a substantial shift i[...]
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Sykes’ Clearlink: Selling in the New Digital World
Dec 08, 2016, by Ivan KotzevThree watershed moments in online sales and support happened in November and went somewhat under the radar. At the beginning of the month, StatCounter reported that mobile surpassed desktop browsing for the first time at a global level. Then for the Singles Day in China, e-commerce retailers JD and Alibaba not only announced record sales, but the latter opened up the event internatio[...]
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Alorica Aims for CMS No. 1 Spot in U.S. with Bets on LATAM & CX Transformation
Nov 28, 2016, by Ivan KotzevNelsonHall recently attended Alorica’s analyst day in Guatemala City for an update on strategic developments. Here I take a look at how Alorica’s EGS integration is progressing, at the company’s U.S. nearshore strategy from LATAM, and at plans to drive CX transformation through consulting and analytics. EGS acquisition: a path to the global CMS top 3 As we covered[...]
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CMS Takes Center Stage for Conduent, the New Face of Xerox Services
Oct 05, 2016, by Ivan KotzevFrom January 1st 2017, Xerox will separate its business process services (BPS) business into a public company called Conduent (trading under the ticker CNDT on NYSE). Conduent will have approximately ~$7bn revenue and over 96k employees. I recently spoke with Chuck Koskovich, Executive Vice President Customer Care Services at Xerox Services, about the implications of the split o[...]
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CSS Corp’s Enterprise Product Lifecycle Support: Integrating CX with Product Development
Sep 15, 2016, by Ivan KotzevThe explosion of connected devices and IoT products promises a greater volume of technical support interactions and increased customer demand for proactive and always-on assistance through the lifecycle of a product. In turn, these requirements force customer experience (CX) providers to be involved with the product manufacturers at new levels, participating in development and testing, sales g[...]
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Analytics are the Key to Disruptive Customer Experience
Sep 08, 2016, by Ivan KotzevOver the last few months, I have held discussions with a number of leading customer management services (CMS) vendors and their clients regarding the increasing need for advanced analytics to drive step changes in customer experience (CX). Here, I reflect on the changing role of analytics as they take centre stage as the key to disruptive CX. How times have changed When I first participa[...]
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Teleperformance Forays into Interpretation Business with $1.5bn Acquisition
Aug 23, 2016, by Ivan KotzevOn 22nd August, Teleperformance announced the acquisition of interpretation services provider LanguageLine Solutions (LLS) for $1.52bn. LanguageLine was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Monterey, California. In 2015 it had revenues of $388m and adjusted EBITDA of $147m, and the company is expected have revenues of between $400m and $450m in 2016. It has ~8k interpreters, 92% of whom&[...]
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Concentrix to Acquire Minacs in Latest Big M&A Deal to Rock the CMS Top 10
Jul 12, 2016, by Ivan KotzevYesterday, SYNNEX Corporation, the $13.3bn parent company of Concentrix, announced it is acquiring Minacs for $420m. The acquisition brings approximately $400m of revenue and $0.53 per share non-GAAP earnings. Minacs adds to Concentrix ~ 21k employees, 15k seats and 35 centers in Canada, U.S., India, LATAM, Europe, and the Philippines. The combined Concentrix/M[...]
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Chatbots Are Back & Here to Stay
Apr 19, 2016, by Ivan Kotzev2016 can be officially declared the year of the chatbot. For the last few months the amount of attention from the media, and from developers and venture capitalists, has turned chatbots from an ordinary customer service tool to a hyped technology, tipped to replace apps and become the all- encompassing digital interface between customers and brands. A[...]
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The Renaissance of Self-Service: Are CMS Vendors Ready?
Mar 24, 2016, by Ivan KotzevSelf-service has long been part of the customer service mix, dating back to user manuals, and progressing to the first IVRs, website FAQs, and experience sharing communities such as Amazon Help. Even though self-service support has a wide range of benefits and savings for consumers and businesses, its adoption has been slow – due partly to technological limitations, and to a tendency to use [...]
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New From Old: How Intelenet is Emerging from the Shadow of Serco
Feb 19, 2016, by Ivan KotzevAt the end of 2015, private equity group Blackstone closed the purchase of Serco’s private sector BPO business for £250m (~$375m), and the company has now rebranded to its original name, Intelenet Global Services. Today, Intelenet employs ~55k staff across 66 delivery centers in eight countries, providing Customer Management Services (CMS), F&A, Knowledge Management, and ITO servic[...]
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Wipro’s Marvel CX: Marrying Automation & Analytics to Improve Customer Experience
Jan 11, 2016, by Ivan KotzevThe biggest advantage of automation in CMS has been the ability to simplify, optimize and remove redundant workflow steps in the contact centers’ internal processes with the goal of improving the customer experience, and an end-game for vendors of increasing the number of value-add projects with their clients. Wipro’s Marvel CX is aiming to do exactly that. Marvel CX’s compone[...]
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Minacs’ CRM Ecosystem: Getting Closer to the Customer with ALT CRM
Dec 18, 2015, by Ivan KotzevSince the first customer and marketing databases in the 80s, to the fully-fledged CRM platforms of the 90s, to the cloud-based CRMs of the 00s and the Social CRM of the 2010s, CRM platforms have had the same goal and challenge – to successfully match customers with companies. With the proliferation of more channels, and changing customer expectations for effortless and real-time interaction,[...]
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Enhancing Social Customer Experience with AegisLISA
Dec 17, 2015, by Ivan KotzevOver the last few years, social media has gradually achieved a small, but highly significant place within customer care and sales channels. CMS providers jumped to provide solutions as early as 2010-2011, but not until recently have these solutions reached a maturity level that has enabled them to go beyond simple monitoring of comments, posts and tweets. Aegis developed its proprietary social [...]
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The Edge of Tomorrow: Automation, AI & IoT in the Contact Center
Dec 02, 2015, by Ivan KotzevThe future of contact centers is in automation, self-learning AI, support for IoT, and engaging customers and agents at a new level. These were the major themes at the fourth annual Customer Engagement Summit in London on November 26th. Close to 700 delegates and 60 speakers met to compare notes and listen to success stories in robotics implementations, results driven by analytics, and connecting [...]
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Consolidation & Growth of the German CMS Market: A Quick Look at Regiocom
Mar 17, 2017, by Ivan KotzevOn 10th March, German energy BPS and ITO provider Regiocom completed the acquisition of customer management services (CMS) vendor SNT Deutschland to create a €230m provider focused on the German market. Here I take a closer look at the deal, and at the wider picture of consolidation and growth currently taking place in the German CMS market. An Energy BPS Specialist Regiocom G[...]
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CMS in Bulgaria: TeleTech Explores Multilingual Skills & Aims to Move up the Value Chain
Jan 31, 2017, by Ivan KotzevLast month, NelsonHall visited TeleTech’s delivery center in Sofia, Bulgaria, to discuss the company’s main European operations and the advantages and challenges of Bulgaria as a customer management services (CMS) delivery destination. From Sofica to TeleTech TeleTech acquired a local provider, Sofica Group, in 2014 and rebranded it in 2016. Sofica was one[...]
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South Africa and CMS BPO Services: The Importance of Conversational Skills
Oct 25, 2016, by Ivan KotzevLast week, NelsonHall attended the latest BPM Summit in Cape Town organized by BPeSA (Business Process enabling South Africa), the official trade body for the outsourcing and contact center industry in the Western Cape. The event provides an opportunity for potential investors, analysts, providers, and government officials to interact. Here I take a look at the appeal of South Africa[...]
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Sitel Presents its CX Vision Nine Months After Acquisition by Acticall
Jul 18, 2016, by Ivan KotzevNelsonHall recently attended Sitel’s European Customer Day in Paris. The event was an opportunity for Sitel to update the analyst community on the progress it is making with company restructuring following its acquisition by French BPO vendor Acticall, and to present to its clients and stakeholders a vision of the future – not just for contact center outsourcing, but for customer e[...]
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Driving Sales with CMS Analytics at Firstsource Mumbai
Jun 24, 2016, by Ivan KotzevThe traditional inbound phone sales process is giving way to a multichannel environment, where the customer is in control – usually visiting the company website first and expecting to connect with a sales rep immediately, more commonly over webchat, and then deciding on a purchase. The challenges for customer service teams are two-fold: Training agents to sell via chat, with all the re[...]
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Evolving a CMS Client Relationship: A Sutherland Case Example
Jun 16, 2016, by Ivan KotzevIncreasing emphasis on improved customer experience is driving customer management services (CMS) outsourcing deals to evolve, with vendors providing domain expertize, analytical insights, transformational capabilities, and access to new channels/technology across the entire contract duration. On the client side, this translates into working with fewer vendors sourcing multiple functions and geogr[...]
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Sitel Chennai: Improving Processes & People for Enhanced Customer Experience
May 25, 2016, by Ivan KotzevNelsonHall recently visited Sitel at their contact center in Chennai to experience operations at first hand and to discuss the evolving CMS outsourcing industry. Only five months ago, in December 2015, the South Indian floods hit Chennai and access to the Sitel center was blocked. Over 70 employees stayed behind in the office at Ramanujam IT Park, where the company provided beds and food, while tr[...]
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Sutherland Labs: Getting Under the Skin of Customer Behavior
Nov 18, 2015, by Ivan KotzevMinutes away from London’s Covent Garden, housed in a five-storey converted banana warehouse, is Sutherland Customer Experience Labs. This is an independent creative agency with its own P&L, offering customer experience mapping, idea generation and solution testing to Sutherland Global Services. However, three quarters of its business comes from external clients: delivering design and cu[...]
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Risk & Reward: The Rise of the Turkish CMS Market
Nov 03, 2015, by Ivan KotzevWebhelp recently entered the Turkish CMS outsourcing market with the acquisition of Callpex, a move that is set to bring an additional €20m (~$20m) in annual revenue against its global revenue of ~$648m (2014 NelsonHall estimate). Callpex has 2,000 employees and 40 clients, and will bring with it logos in the BFSI, telecom, travel and automotive sectors, primarily in the domestic market. Thes[...]