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[...]

  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[...]

  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[...]

  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[...]

  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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

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[...]

  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[...]

  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.[...]

  Ivan Kotzev shares highlights from Alorica's recent analyst day, including current CX initiatives and focus areas, business growth, and investment priorities.[...]

  NelsonHall has recently published a report on Digital Customer Experience Services, and one of the trends explored is the evolving competition in customer experience (CX) consulting. The traditional ecosystem includes distinct players with clear-cut roles: Big five management consulting firms such as Deloitte or PwC, providing strategy-level advisory which covers CX Niche UX [...]

Bertelsmann, the parent company of Arvato CRM Solutions, has announced plans to combine Arvato CRM with the CX services business of the Pan-African Saham Group. The joint venture will have 50/50 ownership, with ~ €1.2bn combined annual revenues and ~48k employees in 25 countries. The deal is expected to close in January 2019. Saham Group & partnership history Founded in 1995 in [...]

  In February, industry veteran and CEO of SYKES, Chuck Sykes, commented during the earnings call on CX services market trends: ‘… in the U.S., at least in my time, there is no time in the company's history that I can recall seeing this level of labor challenge. And it actually is something that you're going to see in a lot of developed countries around the world.&[...]

  Currently, the level of automation in the front-office is lower than it is for middle and back-office processes, with reasons including the lower cost of handling customer-facing processes, established offshore models for labor arbitrage, and lack of client interest. However, the upside of this relatively slow uptake is that automation can now be applied to multiple areas of CX, incl[...]

With its Q2 results yesterday, SYNNEX, the parent company of Concentrix, announced its intention to acquire Convergys, the second largest CX services provider and a public company with ~$2.8bn annual revenues. SYNNEX will pay ~ $2.43bn (includes $26.50 per share and repayment of $315m net debt). The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2018. The largest CX Services provider in Nor[...]

  After several months of media speculation, Teleperformance officially announced yesterday an agreement to acquire Intelenet Global Services from the private equity Blackstone for a total consideration of $1bn. Boost for Indian market The deal will expand Teleperformance’s topline growth and have a positive impact of around +10% on the company’s earnings per share in[...]

  For many years, the telecoms sector has been the dominant market for customer experience (CX) services providers. However, over the last few years, consolidation, flat performance, decreasing margins caused by market saturation, new digital models and competitors, and unfavorable regulations (e.g. Eurotariff) have eroded the significance of the telecoms sector for CX services provide[...]

  Last week Aegis Global and StarTek announced the creation of a combined company. The merger will see Aegis majority owner PE Capital Square Partners swap shares with the NYSE listed StarTek, to reach a ~55% stake in the merged company. The deal is expected to close by Q3 2018. Here I look at the implications of the merger. Return to the U.S. for Aegis For Aegis, the merger fol[...]

  NelsonHall recently visited WNS’ Analytics CoE in Bangalore. Research & analytics (R&A) services are key activities for WNS, as a first point of entry into new clients, and also as a higher margin activity in existing accounts. Readers of NelsonHall’s Quarterly Updates on WNS will be aware that WNS is looking to increase the level of annuity revenues from analytic[...]