CX Files

Jeremiah Okello is the founder and owner of Collins Consulting International, a consulting firm focused on CX and BPO outsourcing and based in Nairobi, Kenya.

In this interview, Jeremiah talks about the CX market in Kenya and the wider emerging opportunities for CX in Africa with Peter Ryan.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-okello-8875689/

Last week, both Peter and Mark were at the CxO Glasgow conference in Scotland. Peter was one of the event organisers. Mark featured on a panel exploring the future of CX with Stephen Loynd, the founder and principal analyst at TrendzOwl.

Once Mark was back home in São Paulo, he called Stephen at his base in Virginia, just outside Washington DC, to talk about the various discussions that took place in Scotland last week.

https://cxoutsourcers.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenloynd/

https://www.trendzowl.com/

Barry Winkless is the Chief Strategy Officer at Cpl Group and Head of the Future of Work Institute Cpl. He is based in Dublin, Ireland.

CPL is a major HR and recruitment company that works across multiple industries - including CX. Barry is always considering the future of work for both employers and employees so in this discussion with both Peter Ryan and Mark Hillary he explores some of his ideas around how the evolution of work itself may change and affect CX executives.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-winkless-7357094/

https://www.cpl.com/ie

barrywinkless.com

Shane Jackson is the founder of Knowledge Rhino. He is based in Sarasota, Florida.

Shane is focused on data, analytics, and workforce optimization. In this interview he talks to Peter Ryan about the value of workforce management (WFM) and how critical it is for an efficient CX process.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaneajacksondata/

https://knowledgerhino.com/

Sadiq Mohammed is the managing director of USMAART. He is based in Manchester in the UK. USMAART provides outsourcing consultancy support to retail, travel, energy and telecoms sector clients such as N Brown, Studio Retail, Music Magpie, Sky, Coast, Comparison Technology Ltd and many others.

Peter Ryan talked to Sadiq about how clients can find the right outsourcing partner for customer experience (CX) projects and what has changed in the selection process in recent years?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadiq-mohammed-b281293/

https://usmaart.com/

Peter Ryan has been talking to Marianne Withers for some time about the special needs of vulnerable customers. Marianne is the founder and CEO of The Verity Centre, a boutique contact centre and BPO in Portsmouth, UK. Marianne is joined in the discussion by Cath Wohlers, LIAISE Manager at England Illegal Money Lending Team, to talk about how comanies can engage with their most vulnerable customers.

How can contact centres and BPOs help vulnerable people get their life back on track if they have been caught out by gambling addiction, loan sharks, or just huge increases in their regular energy bills?

How can BPO agents handle customer contact effectively when they may be talking to customers that are threatening to take their life if the company insists on collecting the debt?

Can it ever be moral to hire a BPO for collections and pay them only if they force customers to pay? This aggresive approach is common, but does it ever achieve results if it just forces customers into even more debt? How can a BPO force their employees to act in an aggresive way, ingnoring the need of any vulnerable customers.

The difference between what a company wants to do may not be morally correct. How do BPOs handle this dilemma?

The economy remains uncertain in many major economies at present, but in the past year the UK has had a very tough time with energy and property rental/mortgage prices soaring. How can BPOs help their clients to ensure bills are paid, but in a way that also accepts that vulnerable customers need more empathy that others?

Marianne Withers

Founder and CEO, The Verity Centre

Portsmouth, UK

https://tvc15.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne10/

Cath Wohlers

LIAISE Manager at England Illegal Money Lending Team

Liverpool, UK

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cath-wohlers-2a5328134/

Peter's recent article:

https://ryanadvisory.com/5-impacts-of-cx-bpo-mega-consolidation/

Peter Ryan leads a discussion on the recent wave of M&A activity in the BPO industry. What does it mean for CX innovation and diversity in the industry?

This emergency CX Files features these speakers joining Peter from his base in Montreal, QC, Canada:

Anne Bibb

Founder and CEO, Remote Evolution

Dallas, TX, USA

https://remoteevolution.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annebibb/

Lian Rowlands

Owner, Tayma Solutions

Swindon, UK

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lian-rowlands-a26119/

https://www.meetami.ai/

Rod Jones

Founder, Rod Jones Contact Centre Consulting

Johannesburg, South Africa

https://rodjones.co.za/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodjonessouthafrica/

Ian Barkin is a well-known expert inside the BPO industry. He is an entreprenuer and investor, has founded 4 companies, has written popular LinkedIn courses on automation, is an external adviser to Bain & Company ... the list could go on. Most recently in the BPO world he was the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at SYKES until May 2021. Ian is based in Tampa, Florida.

Mark saw Ian recently contributing to a new feature of LinkedIn, collaborative documents. These resemble a wiki and allow several different experts to contribute ideas to documents and many of them were focused on BPO as an industry.

Taking this as a start to the conversation, Mark called Ian to talk about BPO consolidation, AI, automation, and where customer experience specialists go from here?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianbarkin/

Who managed the limousine logistics at the Academy Awards in Hollywood, California earlier this year? You might not expect it, but one of the leading customer care and dispatch services for luxury autos is based in Serbia.

Marko Torovic is the founder of NSourcing, a specialist BPO focused on limo logistics and trucking. Peter caught up with him during his recent tour of Europe to talk about limos and managing customer expectations when they demand luxury from start to finish.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markotorovic/

https://www.nsourcing.net/

It's that time of year again - the 2023 Ryan Strategic Advisory Front Office CX Omnibus Survey is being revealed by Peter live in Poland at exactly the same time as this episode drops - so if you are downloading this on April 20th 2023, then you are one of the first to hear the results!

Which are the most favoured offshoring locations around the world for CX and BPO?

This is probably the largest annual study in the industry and is updated annually. In this episode, Peter explains how the research was conducted, what it means, and where are the top 5 global locations that are seen as the best for CX services?

https://ryanadvisory.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-ryan-montreal