This week, Concentrix announced the planned acquisition of Webhelp in the largest CX services deal yet. The total transaction value for Concentrix is $4.8bn in the form of cash, stock, and a seller note for 100% of Webhelp. Upon closing the deal by the end of the year, Concentrix shareholders will own ~78% of the combined company, with Webhelp shareholders ~22%. Number 1 CX servic[...]

  Revenue generation services are the fastest growing LOBs within CX outsourcing at over 9% CAAGR through 2026 globally (NelsonHall forecast). While the focus of most new revenue generation programs is on the consumer space, enterprise and mid-market client onboarding, sales, and retention are also becoming highly promising areas and the next growth engine for the leading CX services p[...]

  This week, Concentrix announced its agreement to acquire PK, a U.S. CX design engineering firm, for ~$1.6bn from PE Carlyle Group. PK will add significant scale and IT capabilities in CX transformation and will enhance Concentrix’s play in the fast-growing intersection of cloud technology, automation and analytics assets, and digital customer journeys. Digital and human asse[...]

  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,[...]

  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[...]

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[...]

  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.&[...]

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[...]

Over 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[...]

Concentrix recently briefed NelsonHall about its positioning now that it has essentially completed its acquisition of the former IBM BPO capabilities around customer management services and also some industry-specific services (excluding mortgages, which IBM retained). For details of this acquisition, see "IBM Exits CMS and Most Industry-Specific BPO: Divests Business to Synnex Corp" at:[...]