Claas van Delden is the Chief Growth Officer at yoummday. He is based in Munich, Germany. Yoummday is a proprietary technology platform for managing remote workforces - what we have summarized on this podcast in the past as 'Gig CX'. Yoummday has a diverse global talent pool of 15,000+ sales and customer care freelancers available. Mark Hillary called Claas to talk about the issues around providing support to customers in multiple languages and whether the platform-based appproach is replacing t...
Nov 28, 2024•30 min•Ep. 346
Ted Nardin is the VP of Customer Success & Value Add at Teleperformance Jamaica. Ted has spent years researching CX. He recently joined Teleperformance and Mark saw a LinkedIn update with this new job title focusing on customer success and value add. Mark called Ted to discuss this idea. How can BPOs put business success on the table and talk to clients about how to add value in the customer relationship - rather than the usual focus on the cost to serve customers? What more can companies ge...
Nov 21, 2024•22 min•Ep. 345
John Dinardo is the CEO and president of Nordia, a Canadian CX specialist with over 10,000 employees on the team. Nordia is the largest BPO in Canada. Peter Ryan and John are both based in Montreal, so this is a local Canadian edition. Bell Canada created Nordia back in 1999, but a quarter of a century on they are now looking at many new opportuntiies and areas of business. John talked about expansion beyond Canada and also about the complexities of managing customer service processes in both En...
Nov 14, 2024•21 min•Ep. 344
Vidya Ravichandran is the CEO of UnifyCX. She is based in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. In this conversation with Peter Ryan, Vidya talks about the evolution of GlowTouch Technologies into UnifyCX, how technology is changing the BPO industry, and how CX and BPO is evolving as technology solutions become more integral to customer interactions. As customers demand more complex solutions the BPO community is adopting or building different tech solutions - using AI in particular. But should BPOs buy of...
Nov 07, 2024•28 min•Ep. 343
The new (July 2024) UK government just announced their budget plans for the year ahead. Several measures look like they could impact the BPO and CX industries. In this special extra edition of the CX Files, Peter Ryan called a few UK-based friends of the podcast to ask for their views on the challenges and opportunities they can see in the latest UK budget... Featuring a discussion with... Alistair Niederer, CEO, NeedleRock https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniederer/ http://www.needlerock.net/ Lian R...
Nov 04, 2024•22 min•Ep. 342
Tanya Scotece is also known as 'Dr T.' She is a Professor and Program Coordinator at Miami Dade College focused on funeral service education. Tanya is also a senior placement specialist with Sunshine Senior Placement, helping familes find an assisted living facility for their loved ones. Tanya is a licensed funeral director and has direct experience managing a funeral home and crematorium. The funeral and mortuary environment in the US is heavily regulated and people working in this field need t...
Oct 31, 2024•31 min•Ep. 341
Almost everyone in the CX environment knows about B2B sales. BPO companies need to sell to clients. CX software companies need to sell to customer service teams or BPOs. Most people in this industry are working for specialist companies selling services to another company. Mark Hillary has just written a book about this - how do B2B companies sell to each other and how has it changed since the Covid pandemic? Mark and Peter talked about the new book. What inspired it and why it matters for people...
Oct 24, 2024•13 min•Ep. 340
Neal Topf is the founder and President of Callzilla. He is based in Miami, Florida. Callzilla is a CX specialist based in the US, but also with delivery centers in Colombia and South Africa. Peter Ryan called Neal for a conversation about corporate culture - in particular culture inside the BPO environment. Neal recently posted on LinkedIn that a prospective client was impressed with the Callzilla technology and their business proposal, but he wanted to meet the team. Seeing the team at work and...
Oct 17, 2024•28 min•Ep. 339
Peter has recently been touring Asia, including some time meeting CX and BPO experts in the Philippines. Mark called Peter in Tokyo to talk about his recent time in the Philippines. What is going on in CX over there right now and do they need to reinvent their approach to communications and promoting what they can do? When will we see Philippines BPO 2.0? https://www.ibpap.org/ https://ryanadvisory.com/india-is-the-most-favored-offshore-cx-delivery-location-in-2024/ https://ryanadvisory.com/ htt...
Oct 10, 2024•13 min•Ep. 338
The CX Alliance is a brand new CX trade association launched in September 2024 in the UK. It is being launched by Karen Howard, MD of The Retail Bulletin (TRB) and the partnership director of the CXA is Isobel Rogers. They aim to publish information, research, and host events all focused on various aspects of CX. Mark Hillary talked to Isobel and Karen to find out more about how this initiative got started and what are their plans for 2025. --- https://www.linkedin.com/in/cxisobelrogers/ https:/...
Oct 03, 2024•25 min•Ep. 337
Graham Brown is the SVP EMEA Sales for Alorica. He is based at Leicester in the UK. In some parts of the world, like Europe, brands need to offer a customer experience in many different languages. For major languages this is not a problem. It's relatively easy to find French and English speakers, but some languages can be hard to support and often they are not even economic to support. What if you want to operate in Finland, but you can't support those customers in their local language? Do you e...
Sep 26, 2024•24 min•Ep. 336
This week we have two guests rather than the usual one! Chris Gillen is the CEO of A Closer Look. He is based just outside Atlanta, Georgia. Stephen Loynd is the founder and Principal Analyst at TrendzOwl. He is based in Virginia, just across the Potomac from Washington DC. Both of these leading thinkers have spoken before at the CX Outsourcers conference about how AI is changing the CX industry. In this conversation, they join forces to talk to Mark Hillary about how the past couple of years ha...
Sep 19, 2024•37 min•Ep. 335
Michael Clark is the founder of CXTT Consulting. He is based in Sydney, Australia. Michael has been recognised in 2023 in the Top 100 Contact Centre Influencers in APAC, and in 2022 as a Top 50 Small Business Leader. Peter Ryan called Michael to talk technology and the tech stack required to make modern CX processes work well. We all know that multiple types of technology have become important for CX executives but how important is it to understand this technology and what really matters? https:...
Sep 12, 2024•29 min•Ep. 334
Once you are into CX, you never leave... this summarises how Martin Anderson explains the journey he has taken over the past 21 years building the Lemon Contact Centre near to Durham in the north-east of the UK. Peter Ryan talks to Martin about the entrepreneurial nature of BPO and CX, how he got started, and how he manages to compete in a business where the competition can be both local and global. https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-anderson-%F0%9F%8D%8B-b5372123/ https://www.lemoncontactcentre...
Aug 15, 2024•30 min•Ep. 333
Jonas Berggren is the Head of Global Accounts EMEA at Transcom. He is also a member of the Transcom EMEA management team. He is based in Stockholm, Sweden. Jonas has a long history designing customer experience processes, but he is also well known as an innovative thought leader. He publishes a popular LinkedIn newsletter titled "Transform Customer Service" that explores the future transformation of CX. Often the newsletter looks to the future of CX, but recently it has been exploring how AI is ...
Aug 08, 2024•26 min•Ep. 332
Leo Lopez is the co-founder and principal consultant at Calltastic, an advisory firm focused on helping startups and small businesses. He is based in Los Angeles, California. Leo has over 30 years experience in contact center operations and he is now using this expertise to help startups improve their customer service processes. In this conversation with Peter Ryan he outlines the top five mistakes that startups and small companies make when engaging with their customers. https://www.calltastic....
Aug 01, 2024•39 min•Ep. 331
FormIGA was launched in London in June this year. It's the Industry for Good Alliance for technology and business services and is a joint venture between the IAOP and the GSA. Alistair Niederer heads up the ESG initiatives for the GSA so he talked to Mark Hillary about what this new alliance is doing and how it is more than just another industry body publishing white papers on ESG... https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniederer/ https://www.anindustryforgood.com/ https://www.gsa-uk.com/ https://www.iao...
Jul 25, 2024•22 min•Ep. 330
Stephen Peattie is a Director at Kinetic GB and HybridWorkSmart. He is based near to Leicester, in the UK Midlands. Daniel Castilla is the co-founder and MD of Alliance BPO Services. He is based in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. Daniel and Stephen both visited Fiji on a recent mission to explore current and potential BPO and CX services from Fiji. Fiji is a small island nation of around one million people located in the South Pacific Ocean. What was their assessment of Fiji as a location for busine...
Jul 18, 2024•28 min•Ep. 329
Leigh Hopwood is the CEO of CCMA (Call Centre Management Association) and Chair of the European Customer Contact Alliance. She is based in London, UK. Peter recently attended a CCMA event in Manchester focused on the buy-side - the companies that need to create their own CX team or buy in expertise from a specialist BPO. He called Leigh to talk about the event and to discuess what buyers are really looking for when they are in the market for CX and BPO services... https://www.ccma.org.uk/ https:...
Jul 11, 2024•27 min•Ep. 328
Sandra Busy is the Chief Executive Officer of Cnect Waies. Cnect Wales, (formerly The Welsh Contact Centre Forum), is Wales' premier networking organisation for business in Wales operating centralised services. They represent Wales and promote greater investment in BPO and CX in Wales. The British general election is taking place as this episode arrives on July 4th so Peter talked to Sandra about this specfic region of the UK that has recently been enjoying far more global attention thanks to th...
Jul 04, 2024•27 min•Ep. 327
Alexandra da Silva Rodrigues has many years experience designing and supporting CX in various major hotel groups. She is now the Global Head of Reservations and Customer Services at Generator & Freehand hotels. Alexandra is based in Barcelona, Spain. Mark Hillary called Alexandra to talk about CX in hotels generally, but with a focus on the multilingual challenges this presents when supporting customers across many different European countries. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra1971/ http...
Jun 27, 2024•24 min•Ep. 326
Andreas Helland is the CEO & Co-Founder at Atender Group. He is based in Bergen, Norway. Atender Group is based in Norway, but has their main operational facility in Málaga, Spain. Andreas talked to Peter Ryan about how a company that mostly serves customers in the Nordics region manages to do this from a sunny location in Spain that is known to most Europeans as a vacation destination. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahelland/ https://www.atender.com/...
Jun 20, 2024•23 min•Ep. 325
Stephen Loynd is the founder and principal analyst at TrendzOwl. He is based in Virginia, close to Washington DC. Stephen has just published a new book this week. It's called "The Widening Turn: America & the Accelerating Sweep of Innovation." The book explores how new technologies, such as AI, are redefining work, culture, and our entire society. It also includes many observations on CX and how companies need to entirely reshape their relationship with customers. Stephen talked to Mark abou...
Jun 13, 2024•43 min•Ep. 324
Erin Broecker is the Senior Director for Global Content Strategy at Teleperformance. She is based in Sacramento, California. Erin is focused on content. How it is created and how it is published. She is endlessly thinking about how people within our industry learn about CX strategies. Erin plans which organizations Teleperformance can work with to create greater insights into the industry and how the company can publish this information. Erin talked to Peter Ryan about content creation and how t...
Jun 06, 2024•23 min•Ep. 323
Michael Morrison is the Chief Revenue Officer at NCRI Inc. He is based in Toronto, Canada. Peter called Michael to talk about CX and BPO in Canada and how Canada has played a dual role as a nearshore BPO destination for the US as well as being an important market for customer service itself... come and listen to a discussion about the great white north! 🇨🇦🍁 https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-morrison-9961052/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/nrci-inc/ https://ncri.com/...
May 30, 2024•30 min•Ep. 322
Aymen Ismail is the Head of Customer Engagement Solutions at smart Europe GmbH. He is based in Stuttgart, Germany. The smart auto company was founded in Germany in 1994. The brand was originally famous for quirky small cars, such as the ForTwo. Now, the company is focused on EV production and battery technology. The auto industry is surfing an extreme wave of change at present. Electric vehicles, autnomous vehicles, retail purchasing, leasing... change in the traditional dealer-focused business ...
May 22, 2024•31 min•Ep. 321
Seandette Wiltshire is the founder and director of strategy and operations at The Contact Hub. She is based in Christ Church, Barbados. The Contact Hub offers contact center and marketing services to companies in Barbados - and beyond. In this conversation with Peter Ryan, Seandette talks about creating a new BPO in Barbados and how the region is developing a growing reputation for the quality of CX services. https://www.linkedin.com/in/seandette/ https://gocontacthub.net/...
May 16, 2024•32 min•Ep. 320
Steve Mosser is the Group CEO & Chief Innovations Officer at Sensée. He is based in London, UK. Sensée is a work-from-home specialist, but has recently purhased The Contact Company, in Liverpool UK. This more or less doubled their size, but means they now offer both contact center and WFH options. In this conversation, Steve focuses on the evolution of workforce management and flexible working patterns, why this is good for the clients and the agents, and how to create flexibility while stil...
May 09, 2024•30 min•Ep. 319
CXOutsourcers 2024 took place on May 1/2 in Atlanta, GA. Both Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan were at the event. Mark talked to some of the speakers and delegates about their thoughts on what they experienced and learned from the event. This podcast features: Stephen Loynd, Founder and Principal at TrendzOwl https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenloynd/ Rod Jones, Founder Rod Jones Contact Center Consulting https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodjonessouthafrica/ Yanique Grant, MD of Professional Training and O...
May 02, 2024•10 min•Ep. 317
Chris Gillen is the CEO of A Closer Look. He is based very close to Atlanta, GA, so the CX Outsourcers conference is a local event for him. In this conversation he gave Mark Hillary a preview of his CXO keynote speech on CX and AI and keeping humans in the loop https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgillen/ https://a-closer-look.com/ https://cxoutsourcers.com/...
Apr 29, 2024•14 min•Ep. 316
