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 [...]

  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.&[...]

  I recently attended HGS’ forum on the trends and challenges in CX for the European Consumer Packaged Goods (FMCG) market. In the company’s West London center, clients and prospects including Colgate, Danone, L’Oréal, Nespresso, Nomad Foods, and Mars discussed the ways customer service can drive ecommerce and augment sales. Digital as a force for disruption[...]

NelsonHall recently attended the HGS Analyst and Advisory Summit in NYC. The event combined client perspectives with an update on the company’s healthcare business, a review of the latest offerings within its DigiCX suite of digital services, and discussion of the changing nature of customer experience (CX). Optimizing the healthcare payer member experience In 2015, HGS acquired a [...]

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[...]

This week, HGS announced the launch of their DigiCX suite of digital solutions, which integrates web self-service, live support via chat, text, social media, and voice, and optimizes the CX with analytics and automation. When it embarked on this latest phase in its development a year and a half ago, HGS consulted NelsonHall “to help validate our direction, sharpen our solution approach, and [...]

 2016 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[...]

Self-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 [...]

Financial institutions are seeking to deepen their operational capital in order to drive down cost of operations, increasing fixed cost and reducing variable cost (non-linear cost reduction). Here we look at two examples of how institutions are achieving this by partnering with third party operations vendors. Capital Markets Client with Broadridge In this example, Broadridge is providing a p[...]

There has been a recent spate of acquisitions and partnerships among Financial Services BPS vendors which reveals interesting trends. These include the following deals from 2015: HCL and CSC: Two JVs were formed, whereby HCL will operate and expand the existing Core Banking business of CSC. The first JV will focus on account management and delivery governance while the second [...]

The U.S. healthcare payer BPS market is relatively mature, but is also shifting towards changes driven primarily by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the growing Medicaid and Medicare population, and advancements in technology offerings. Activity is primarily driven by the need for claims administration support with the use of automation services, member engagement services, and improved clinical ana[...]

A couple of weeks ago, Hinduja Global Services (HGS) announced that it is to acquire Mphasis' Indian domestic BPO division for Rs. 17 crore. For around $2.7m, HGS will pick up seven contact centers in Noida, Raipur, Indore, Mangalore, Pune and two buildings in Bangalore, with a total seat count of 6,400, and ~7,500 employees - and a business that was generating around $22m in annual revenue. T[...]

Today’s capital markets industry is severely capital constrained, and this is likely to get worse over the next few years. Internal deployments of new or improved solutions will become harder to resource (both in terms of cash and manpower), and managed services will be the preferred way to improve operations. Furthermore, managed services that offer to improve process and/or vendor manageme[...]

During a recent visit to London I had the opportunity to visit the HGS contact center in Chiswick. The 500-seat center is focused on supporting accounts with broad language capability needs and it also provides specialist client programs beyond traditional customer care support. The industry sectors supported from the center include automotive, consumer packaged goods (CPG), government, and health[...]

NelsonHall’s latest CMS market analysis focuses on the increasing importance of transformational CMS, whereby a vendor not only takes over the running of a client’s call center processes, but seeks to optimize these processes to achieve the desired business goals of the organization. In the current market, the need to reduce cost while maintaining or enhancing customer satisfaction [...]