CX Files

Alex Mead has a long track record in CX director roles in various brands. He is presently based in Bahrain and is the  Executive Director of Customer Service Experience for a new Middle East startup that is still in stealth mode - brand to be revealed in a few months. Alex has been vocal about the sheer number of lists of top 50 or top 100 CX gurus so the CX Files contacted him to find out if ther...

Helen Hickin is the founder and CEO of ICON Communication Centres, based in Prague in the Czech Republic. ICON is focused on CX, inside sales, and account management for B2B brands. Most of the time when we focus on CX strategy we tend to focus on B2C - the end consumers - but B2B remains critically important and has also changed with the pandemic. In this edition, Peter Ryan talks to Helen about...

Michele Rowan is president of the WFH Alliance, an industry forum that organizes workshops, events and toolkits all focused on helping companies implement WFH programs. Michele is based in Dallas, Texas. Michele has a background leading the customer contact team at Hilton Hotels and overseeing their own move into WFH agents. In this episode we look beyond the pandemic to a business world where WFH...

Jeff Pappas is the EVP of Site Selection and Brokerage at ESRP, based in Dallas, Texas. Jeff has two decades experience helping companies select the best site for their business - including contact centers and BPO operations. In this episode Jeff talks about the process involved in deciding where to locate a contact center and what might change in the post-pandemic era. https://www.linkedin.com/in...

Annelien Marcus is director and recruitment manager at Clarion People, based in London. In this episode she talks about the changing nature of CX recruitment and the skills needed to be a  modern CX professional. https://www.linkedin.com/in/annelienmarcus/ https://www.clarion-people.co.uk/

Miya Knights is the Director and publisher of Retail Technology, possibly the first dedicated retail technology trade journal in the UK. She is based in Brighton, in the UK. Miya is also the  global content strategist for Poq, a platform that enables retailers to build apps extremely quickly and she has written several books about the retail industry including one on omnichannel and one focused en...

Mark Hillary, from CX Files, published a new book this week (WFH: Securing The Future For Your Organization) co-authored with Andrew McNeile, the CCO of Thinscale Technology in Dublin, Ireland. Shelli Ryan, founder and CEO of Adhoc Communications in Las Vegas, Nevada, contributed the foreword. In this CX Files Mark talks to Andrew and Shelli about the book and WFH in the post-pandemic environment....

Alistair Niederer is the EMEA head of TTEC. He is based in London in the UK. Alistair has published several articles recently suggested that we need to redefine CX outsourcing - even dropping the term outsourcing. His argument is that CX requires orchestration, not outsourcing. CX suppliers should be genuine business partners. In this episode of CX Files, Alistair takes some time to explain CX orc...

ATAC is a Canadian based virtual service BPO. They have been a Canadian trailblazer since 2011 and have always focused on work-from-home (WFH) agents. Tugs Smith is the co-founder of ATAC and in this episode of CX Files she talks about WFH both pre and post-pandemic and how ATAC quickly developed a certification program to improve the WFH recruitment process https://www.linkedin.com/in/tugreofia-s...

It's that time of the year again! Ryan Strategic Advisory asks hundreds of CX decision-makers every year to talk about their most favored locations for BPO and other trends affecting the marketplace. In this episode of CX Files, Peter talks about the top 5 global locations for BPO based on his research in 2021. The Front Office BPO Omnibus Survey 2021 is being released live at exactly the same tim...

Simon Dillsworth is the UK Managing Director of Davies Consulting (Davies Group acquired Ember Group - you may have heard Simon a year ago on this podcast when he was with Ember). In this episode, Simon talks about Intelligent Automation (IA) and Digital Transformation - especially in the post-Covid era. What is IA and how can it be used to improve customer loyalty? https://www.linkedin.com/in/sim...

Chris Gillen is the CEO of A Closer Look, based in Atlanta, Georgia. A Closer Look focuses on data and human intelligence and in this episode of the podcast Chris explores the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on customer experience and behavior in travel and leisure. What is the pre and post pandemic view on travel and leisure and how can you get closer to customers? https://www.linkedin.com/in/chr...

Rob van Herpen is the Regional Vice President for North America at 5CA. He is based in North California. 5CA has a two-decade history of work-from-home (WFH) CX and Rob was here on CX Files a year ago helping companies quickly move to WFH in the early stages of the pandemic. Now he is back and talking more strategically about how WFH will evolve, embracing hiring from anywhere and 'fans of brands....

The CX rules have been rewritten by the Covid-19 pandemic. That's the conventional wisdom, as analysts talk about the New Normal... but Rick Denton, the Managing Principal of EX4CX says we should not forget what has not been changed by Covid. Rick is based in Dallas, Texas, and on this episode of CX Files he talks about what we need to focus on to build a post-pandemic CX strategy. https://www.lin...

The Ryan Strategic Advisory annual BPO survey will be published next month - featuring the most desirable global BPO locations. In this preview Peter Ryan talks to Lian Rowlands from Conversations by Ami (UK), Dave Rumble from The Knowledge Group (UK), and CX analyst Jesús Hoyos (USA) on what makes a great post-Covid BPO destination. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lian-rowlands-a26119/ https://www.me...

Randy Arellano has a long history in CX - he has worked at several of the major CX suppliers. In 2018 he joined Auxillium with the mission of making high quality CX available to smaller companies and start ups. His mission was to take the standards and processes used by the big players and to apply this to smaller projects. In this episode, Randy describes how he managed to achieve this goal and h...

Stuart Ravens founded Corax Insights in London at the start of 2021, but he has a long history as an industry analyst (Navigant and Ovum) focused on energy and utilities. In this episode of the podcast, Stuart talks about the transition to renewable energy and the relationship between energy companies and their customers - do energy companies even think about the customer experience at all? https:...

William Carson is the director of market engagement at Ascensos. He is based in London and away from Ascensos he is also a frequent CX commentator and council member of the GSA. Ascensos has a strong focus on retail CX so in this episode CX Files talks to William about the failure of department stores and the dramatic rise of brands such as Shein, BooHoo, and Asos. How does CX work in a modern ret...

Jim Farnsworth is a veteran of the CX industry. He is currently an Executive Vice President at SYKES and is well known as one of the leading thinkers in the business. He is based in Denver, Colorado. In this interview, Jim talks about the adaptation of CX and contact centers and how modern CX needs to embrace the role of the agent - they are on the frontline and they are the experts. https://www.l...

Ted Nardin and Brian Kearney founded research and advisory firm 5th Talent and are based in the US. During the Covid-19 pandemic they asked 4,000 contact center agents about their WFH experience. Now they are back with new research focused on what CX leaders have learned and need to know about WFH. https://www.5thtalent.com/work-at-home-study-november-2020 https://www.5thtalent.com/post/what-leade...

Nate Brown is the Chief Experience Officer at Officium Labs and the co-founder of the CX community CX Accelerator. He is based in Nashville Tennessee. In this episode, Nate talks about the people who work in CX. How do we fix the "minimum wage" reputation of CX and how do companies attract the best talent and start treating them like experts? https://www.officiumlabs.io/ https://www.linkedin.com/i...

GigCX is often compared to traditional contact centers or BPO, but there is an opportunity to re-think how customer service is designed throughout the entire customer journey. Megan Neale is co-founder and COO of Limitless Technology, based in London. She explains how the Limitless platform works and how we need to re-think GigCX and what it can offer. www.linkedin.com/in/meganneale-belimitless ww...

Victor van Baal is the GTM lead and MD of Qelp at Sykes Digital Services (SDS) and Amahl Williams is a director of SDS. Victor is based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Amahl is based just outside of Boston, Massachusetts in the US. In this episode we focused on post-Covid digital transformation, innovation, and automation - including RPA. www.linkedin.com/in/amahlwilliams www.linkedin.com/in/v...

In this final 2020 episode of CX Files, we brought together some leading CX experts and analysts to look at the key trends in 2020 and what might happen in 2021. Featuring: Marianne Rutz, founder of Rutz Consulting https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne-rutz-351b0a5/ https://rutzconsulting.com/   Stephen Loynd, founder and principal analyst at TrendzOwl https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenloynd/ http...

Jonas Dahlberg is the CEO and President of Transcom. He is based in Stockholm, Sweden. Transcom has a team of over 26,000 people working across 22 countries using 33 languages. Jonas likes to say that they are big enough to really matter, but small enough to still listen to their clients. In this episode Jonas talks about BPO and CX in the post-covid environment - will contact centers change in 20...