Since 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,[...]

The 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 [...]

Sitel celebrates its 30th anniversary in a year in which it was acquired by French-based Groupe Acticall, whose controlling shareholder Creadev is the entrepreneurial investment arm of the Mulliez family. Sitel had been looking for an investor for more than a year, while the Mulliez family was planning to build a global platform and saw Sitel as an opportunity to fulfill that goal. At its recent a[...]

Webhelp 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[...]

Minacs has a strong tradition of supporting the automotive industry: over six years ago, the sector made up ~70% of overall revenues, and it now stands at ~45% due to diversification across multiple sectors. Consequently, Minacs has a vision for supporting the connected car, aiming to deliver seamless CMS solutions for any wirelessly connected vehicle, over any network. Its clients are mainly orig[...]

I recently had the opportunity to meet with the Alorica executive team for an update on the integration of its recent acquisition, West Corporation’s Agent Services business. In March 2015, privately held Alorica acquired West’s Agent Services business for $275m in cash. In 2014, the Agent Services business generated ~$580m in revenue. Alorica anticipates $1.2bn in combined revenue [...]

NelsonHall recently visited one of Convergys’ Intelligent Contact (IC) centers in Belfast, Northern Ireland. IC originally started life as LBM in 1996, then was acquired by Stream in 2013, which was itself acquired by Convergys in 2014. IC is a specialist sales division of Convergys, consisting of agents across multiple centers in Belfast and Greater Manchester, performing a mix of outb[...]

STARTEK is to acquire Customer Management Services (CMS) BPO provider ACCENT Marketing Services, LLC ("Accent") from MDC Partners Inc. for $16m in cash plus working capital adjustments. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Jeffersonville, IN, Accent has 2.3k employees and delivers services from six locations in the U.S. and J[...]

Two common themes in the marketing collateral of vendors providing Customer Management Services (CMS) are the use of analytics and transformation.  For analytics, a popular claim is the use of big data for predictive modeling within contact centers. But is it really happening? The reality is that, while certain vendors are using data for simple predictive modeling, this is still a distinct[...]

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[...]

BPO contract TCV in Q1 2015 continued the improvement in contract activity seen in Q4 2014, with BPO TCV picking up and gaining momentum over the past two quarters following relatively low levels of BPO TCV awarded in Q2 and Q3 2014. In particular, Q4 2014 showed a 6% improvement in BPO TCV year-on-year, with BPO accounting for 31% of total outsourcing TCV. Q1 2015 BPO TCV performance then impr[...]

Teleperformance has had an impressive quarter that might have resulted in 9.1% growth if it wasn't for the extremely unfavorable exchange rate fluctuations which resulted in an overall negative impact of €32.7m ($44.2m). Despite this Teleperformance achieved 3% y/y revenue growth in the quarter to €610m. Growth in the English-speaking market & Asia-Pacific SBU w[...]

Webhelp is to acquire SNT, a Netherlands based CMS vendor. SNT has 3,500 agents across eight sites in Europe with revenues of 77m. The combined company will be called Webhelp SNT following the acquisition which is to be completed in twelve months.  This acquisition will give Webhelp a significant Dutch presence and will bolster its global agent headcount to ~21,500, and increase its a[...]

Work at home agent (WAHA) CMS BPO specialist Arise Virtual Solutions announced this week it is hiring 6,500 WAHAs (who will be equivalent to 3,250 FTEs) across Arizona, North Carolina, Texas, Michigan and Virginia. This marks a turnaround for Arise after what was a difficult 2013 marked by loss of volume in some key contracts and delays in new signings. These hires will represent a 26% increase[...]

Customer management services (CMS) is no longer the red-headed step-child of the BPO world.  In spite of the exit from this area of IBM, most CMS pureplays are currently achieving improving margins and revenue growth. With multi-channel delivery proving crucial in winning new contracts, and the increasing importance of big data and analytics in the value proposition, 2014 is set to be an extr[...]

Latin America has become an increasingly popular destination for the customer management services (CMS) BPO industry in recent years, outperforming the global CMS market. Will this continue? NelsonHall expects the global CMS BPO market to grow at 3.7% CAAGR through to 2016 with Latin America growing at more than twice that. So what is driving that growth? Much of the growth from this region is [...]

Maximus has announced results for FY 2013, the year ending September 30, 2013. Revenue was $1,331m, up 26.8% as stated. Operating income was $188.2m, a margin of 14.1%, up 200 bps. FY 2013 revenue (and growth) by segment was: Health Services $862.9m (+28.6%) Human Services $468.4m (+23.6%). FY 2013 operating income and margin by segment was: Health Se[...]

NelsonHall recently attended a briefing with BT in which it launched MeetMe with Dobly Voice, into its audio conferencing service. BT MeetMe with Dolby Voice aims to improve the ease of conferencing calls by: Improving the audio quality – audio will use a high quality Dolby codec ‘of reasonably similar size’ to competing conferencing systems Voice Separation &[...]