NelsonHall recently visited CSS Corp’s contact center in Chennai, India to learn more about its operations and its current focus on developing its premium technical support services. The center opened in July 2010, supports 28 clients (primarily in the high tech and telecoms sectors), and has ~2,200 employees providing customer care, technical support, premium technical support[...]

NelsonHall recently visited Convergys’ contact center in Bangalore to learn more about its operations, and here I reflect briefly on three areas: The center’s ongoing channel shift to webchat An interesting development in the center’s analytics work An initiative to hire more women in an effort to have a more balanced workforce. Background Convergys Bangalor[...]

I recently presented at the CCA’s annual Convention in Glasgow, Scotland. One of the key themes was ‘The Digital Game’, with sessions examining how organizations are responding to demand for digital customer services as part of the ongoing transition from call to contact centers. The future of customer engagement was illustrated using examples of newer channel usage, including vi[...]

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[...]

At CSS Corp’s analyst day and OneWorld client conference in Santa Rosa, California, the theme was “Let’s Simplify”. CEO Tiger Ramesh opened the analyst day with a story about his own digital experience travelling to the conference, including buying his airline ticket online, and piloting a hotel phone app he used to select his room and take restaurant recommendations. He us[...]

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 [...]

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[...]

French CMS vendor Groupe Acticall is to acquire Sitel Worldwide, buying the 86% stake owned by Onex for ~$55m including an earn-out component. Groupe Acticall has financing for the acquisition from Société Générale and BNP Paribas It comes as no surprise that Onex is selling its stake in Sitel. What is perhaps a surprise is the size of the company making the acquisit[...]

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[...]

By Vicki Jenkins and Mike Cook A year ago Convergys acquired fellow contact center vendor Stream, making it the second largest CMS BPS provider by revenue behind Teleperformance. NelsonHall CMS analysts Vicki Jenkins and Mike Cook caught up with key members of Convergys’ leadership team on the anniversary of the acquisition to discuss how the new organization is shaping up. The importa[...]

STARTEK has announced results for Q4 2014 and full year 2014. Q4 2014 Revenues were $64.2m, up 1.2% y/y LBIT was $1.5m, a negative margin of 2.4%, down 98 bps y/y. Full year 2014: Revenues were $250.1m, up 8.1% LBIT was $4.9m, a negative margin of 2%, up 72 bps. Q4 revenue contribution from largest clients was: T-Mobile: 30.6% AT&T: 19.6% Comcast 15.7%. [...]

Germany’s fiscal success story presents an interesting value proposition for the local customer management services (CMS) BPO market. Real GDP in Germany grew by 1.5% in 2014 and current forecasts indicate that, driven by a strong labor force, high consumption and favorable energy prices, Germany should be able to maintain this level of growth through 2015 and accelerate to around the 2.0% m[...]

I recently visited San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with CMS vendor Alorica. This nearshore America delivery location offers a low cost, educated workforce with strong native neutral Spanish delivery, as well as emerging support for English and Portuguese. The country is in the process of making English its official second language. Honduras, and specifically the city of San Pedro Sula, have battled n[...]

In the last twelve months we have more customer management services (CMS) BPO investment in South Africa, including  Webhelp setting up centers in Cape Town and Johannesburg with an agent headcount approaching 1,000 Capita transitioning part of its O2 support to Cape Town in the form of a ~1,400 seat operation. One (of many) attributes that make South Afr[...]

NelsonHall recently attended Sitel’s analyst day and client advisory board meeting in Las Vegas, where I had the opportunity to discuss CMS market trends. Click here to view a brief video. Sitel wants to be known for creating great experiences, and its focus now is ‘people first’. It recently hired a new chief HR officer, Elsa Zambrano, who has created a new executiv[...]

NelsonHall recently attended CSS Corp’s analyst day and OneWorld conference. The overriding theme of the day was a reinforcement of the company’s direction; CEO Tiger Ramesh emphasized his ambition for CSS Corp to become the leading global tech support service provider, as emphasized in the company’s new by-line “Wired to Support”. A new leadership team has been [...]

Sitel has been awarded a two year 800 FTE CMS contract by Danish telecom provider TDC, following an initial contact that was made with twelve potential suppliers in November 2013. This is TDC’s largest foray into outsourcing its CMS function by agent number and by total value, with headcount representing approximately one third of total CMS capacity. The contract includes the transfer of [...]

With like-for-like growth of 10.3% this is another strong quarter for Teleperformance although it continues to be challenged to its exposure to exchange rate fluctuations in the LATAM region resulting in reported revenue growth of 4.1%. Its Brazil business is contending with a stalling economy and a sharply depreciating currency, although it is still profitable and[...]