featured posts:
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Will the CX Services Boom Last?
May 24, 2021, by Ivan KotzevWhile the CX services industry is anxiously following the situation in India and its surge of COVID-19 cases, the start of 2021 mainly brought positive news. In this blog, I look at the strong performance across the industry and the extent to which the current growth is sustainable. 2021’s record start The three months ending 31st March 2021 was a record quarter for many [...]
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Shifts in Mobility are Reshaping CX: CSS Corp’s SMART Mobility Practice
May 12, 2021, by Ivan Kotzev2020 further accelerated transformative trends in the mobility space. Changes include electric vehicle adoption and the shift to mobility as a service and mobility on demand. Auto manufacturers, car rental firms, ridesharing providers, and public transport operations are all responding to this new market and, in support, the underlying model is changing from product to service to cus[...]
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Majorel Eyes Growing EU Banking Sector with ISILIS Acquisition
Oct 19, 2020, by Ivan KotzevIn July 2020, Majorel acquired French platform developer ISILIS, specialists in bank account switching. In this blog, I look at the new capability, the company’s focus on the banking and financial services sector, and the evolving CX services needs of EU banks. Specialist in bank account portability ISILIS was founded in 2004 initially to support non-regulated account switching pro[...]
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Online Crisis Management: Lessons from HGS’ Social Care Practice
Aug 28, 2020, by Ivan KotzevAges 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 [...]
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Positive Outlook from the Egyptian BPS Market
Jul 31, 2020, by Ivan KotzevThe impacts of the pandemic and lockdowns are creating winners and losers in terms of BPS delivery geos. Determining factors include a geo’s ability to manage the health and safety of workers, its success in minimizing economic disruption, and the flexibility of its labor regulators. For Egypt, the unfolding effects of COVID-19 on front-office BPS may be too early to judge, [...]
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‘Work from Anywhere’ for CX Services: Q&A with Tech Mahindra’s Ritesh Idnani
Jul 10, 2020, by Ivan KotzevIf there is a silver lining to the pandemic with respect to CX services, it is the changing perception of clients and providers on the pace of digital transformation and the role of frontline staff. In a conversation with Ritesh Idnani, President of Tech Mahindra, we discuss the company’s vision for what the Future of Work looks like and some of the latest trends and technologi[...]
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COVID-19 Accelerating the Future of CX Work: Teleperformance EMEA
Jun 04, 2020, by Ivan KotzevThe COVID-19 crisis is forcing a rethink of the CX delivery model with large contact centers. The fundamental question is how to maintain people’s health and safety in an open floor space with hundreds of seats, continuous face-to-face interactions, shared equipment, and 24x7 operations. For many outsourcing clients, the pandemic was the trigger to adopt work-at-home (WAH) for [...]
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Supercharged Technical Support: Augmented Reality with CSS Corp’s KYRA
May 18, 2020, by Ivan KotzevIn a new social distancing world, most traditional face-to-face customer service tasks have had to digitize quickly. This trend is not new, but for some processes, it required the adoption of emerging technology and different operational models. A prime example is customer premise visits by engineers for equipment installations, parts replacement, and technical support. For several y[...]
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Concentrix Messaging & Bots: Innovation During the COVID-19 Crisis
Apr 14, 2020, by Ivan KotzevOne 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,[...]
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Alorica Harnesses Technology to Engage Gen X, Y & Z Workforce
Apr 06, 2020, by Ivan KotzevHigh employee attrition rates are the norm in contact centers, with companies maintaining a constant recruitment, training, and onboarding pipeline. As generations X, Y, and Z come to represent the majority of the workforce, these new workers have different career aspirations, work values, and learning styles. For CX services providers with global delivery networks and demand for spe[...]
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Teleperformance Optimizes its Go-to-Market with Digital Integrated Business Services
Feb 14, 2020, by Ivan KotzevAt the end of January 2020, NelsonHall attended Teleperformance’s global analyst meeting in Mumbai. Here are some insights into the company’s progress since the Intelenet acquisition in October 2018 and the formation of Teleperformance Digital Integrated Business Services (D.I.B.S.). Repositioning as a knowledge partner Teleperformance’s reorganization in 2019[...]
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CSS Corp Addresses Commercial Challenges of Cognitive CX Transformation
Nov 25, 2019, by Ivan KotzevOne of the main challenges facing front-office automation projects is the adoption of commercial terms protecting the interests of both clients and CX services providers. In an industry dominated by traditional per FTE and per hour/minute pricing, to be successful, end-to-end digital transformation requires significant initial investments, new KPIs, a stake from the vendor, and a lon[...]
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Entering the Voice Bot Age: Tech Mahindra Launches m.ai.a
Nov 01, 2019, by Ivan KotzevVoice 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[...]
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Democratizing Analytics: Tech Mahindra Virtual Analyst
Sep 30, 2019, by Ivan KotzevA 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[...]
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CX Automation in Practice: Reality Check with Webhelp
Sep 13, 2019, by Ivan KotzevThe 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[...]
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Will Crowdsourced Customer Service Get Solv(ed)?
Jun 26, 2019, by Ivan KotzevCrowdsourcing 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[...]
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Seizing the Automation Opportunity: Alorica’s Automated Discovery Process
May 28, 2019, by Ivan KotzevOne 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[...]
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Concentrix VOC: Measuring CX Transformation
May 03, 2019, by Ivan KotzevDespite 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[...]
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Proactive Social Media Engagement: Best Practices from Startek & Aegis
Apr 17, 2019, by Ivan KotzevConsumers 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[...]
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Chat Services: Teleperformance’s Playbook & Targets
Mar 27, 2019, by Ivan KotzevIn 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[...]
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Enabling CX Digitalization: A Look at CSS Corp's Yodaa
Dec 20, 2018, by Ivan KotzevIn 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.[...]
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The CX Consulting Race: New Players, New Models, and Tech Mahindra’s Example
Nov 06, 2018, by Ivan KotzevNelsonHall 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 [...]
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Arvato CRM’s JV with Saham Group Consolidates EMEA Position
Sep 21, 2018, by Ivan KotzevBertelsmann, 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 [...]
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The CX Workforce Challenge & How Vendors Are Responding
Aug 31, 2018, by Ivan KotzevIn 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.&[...]
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Tech Mahindra BPS’ Approach to CX Process Automation
Jul 23, 2018, by Ivan KotzevCurrently, 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[...]