CX Files

In this special episode of the CX Files, Peter and Mark join with David Rumble, Rod Jones, and Traci Freeman to remember how the late Gareth Pritchard influenced and helped to shape the BPO/CX/GBS industry in South Africa. We discussed how Gareth was instrumental in making South Africa a leading location for this industry and what his legacy may be in future. https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethmpri...

David Powers is the VP of CX at Rooter Hero. He is based in Los Angeles, CA. David is also a published author and the host of the CX Riot Radio podcast.  This conversation between Mark Hillary and David came about because of a recent CX Riot Radio epsisode titled 'The Three-Faced AI God' where David talked about his experience of using AI in the contact center. David's experience shows that AI has...

Cheryl Paarwater is the Managing Director at Enerlytics & Call Lab BPO. She is based in Cape Town, South Africa. Cheryl has championed CX in South Africa for many years and is a board member of BPESA - the trade promotion agency for business process service companies in South Africa. In this conversation with Peter Ryan, Cheryl explores how BPO and CX has created many opportunities for employment...

This is the final Covid flashback where CX Files has looked back at the early days of the 2020 pandemic throughout August 2025. This interview was originally broadcast on May 15, 2020 - about a month into the pandemic and lockdowns. At the time Kathy Juve was the EVP, Customer Experience Technology & Insights Division, at Concentrix. She is now EVP of Global Solutions - also at Concentrix. Kathy i...

SUMMER SPECIAL - COVID FLASHBACK Covid-19 was five long years ago. In a series of short summer specials, CX Files is bringing you some memories of what was going on at a very chaotic time for the industry. During the early days of the pandemic, CX Files went from weekly to daily and captured many important observations on how the CX industry was coping across the world. Dave Rizzo is the APAC Pres...

SUMMER SPECIAL - COVID FLASHBACK Covid-19 was five long years ago. In a series of short summer specials, CX Files is bringing you some memories of what was going on at a very chaotic time for the industry. During the early days of the pandemic, CX Files went from weekly to daily and captured many important observations on how the CX industry was coping across the world. John Devlin is the Founder...

Dave D'Arcy is the founder of Laughing Leadership. He is based in Tring, close to London in the UK. Laughing Leadership was created to guide business leaders to build the environment to nurture and develop happy engaged employees. The solution is not in bean bags, slides, fruit on Friday or free tea and coffee. It is in culture. And culture is a byproduct of leadership style.  In this conversation...

Amanda Quinn is the Founder and Principal of Quinn Growth Advisors. She is based in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. In this conversation with Peter Ryan, Amanda talks about her work advising BPOs on how to build growth and develop a sales pipeline. Amanda advises focusing on deep expertise and specialization, rather than claiming to offer every single service and excelling at none of them. How can B...

Mike Ortegon is a customer solutions director at Yoummday. He is an American based in London and he has a focus on the global travel industry - with a long track record of leadership roles in travel companies. Mark Hillary called Mike to talk about travel. How has it recovered since the pandemic? What trends are travel companies seeing that are new for the 2020s? Are travel companies becoming more...

Jon Florence is the SVP of Industry Solutions at Xima Software. He is based in South Jordan, Utah. Xima is a contact center software company that is focused on AI solutions. Peter Ryan called Jon to discuss AI in CX. Beyond the hype, how can companies managing their own CX and BPOs all benefit from the use of AI in the contact center? What are the genuine and practical use cases that move the dial...

Thomas Oronti is the CEO at Advensus. He is based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The CX Files has explored many different nearshore options in the Caribbean region, but has never explored the Dominican Republic before and yet this location has the advantage of being able to easily offer customer support in English, Spanish, and French - thanks to Haiti also sharing the island of Hispaniola....

PANEL: In Face of Stagnating Favorability Ratings, What's Next for South African Offshore CX? When Ryan Strategic Advisory published the most favorable offshore location study last May, South Africa had dropped to third position, compared to more recently topping the poll. This survey features feedback from over 800 CX decision-makers and is potentially the largest survey that explores where CX le...

Pete Jones is the founder and CEO of Grypp. He is based in the UK between London and Birmingham. Grypp is a visual platform that aims to help contact centers and the agents working within them see what their customers can see. This can be a transformative technology for many support environments and it is low cost and proven - in contrast to many of the AI projects we have covered recently on the...

Nicola Collister and Jerry Briggs talk to Peter Ryan about AI in CX We have talked many times on this podcast about AI and the hype aound what it can do for CX designers and managers. But what can it really do? We are being flooded with AI-themed ideas on LinkedIn daily, but it is also clear that many AI projects are failing (Gartner says that 85% of AI projects are failing at present). In this ep...

Owen Campbell is the operations director at Kura. He is based in Glasgow, Scotland. Kura is a BPO based in the UK, but also with operations in South Africa. They have a number of clients from various regulated industries and Owen talked to Mark Hillary about the differences between a client that has complete control over all their services and a client from a more regulated environment. What needs...

David Neale is the Founder and CEO of GBPO Solutions. He is based in the UK. David has experience as a buyer of BPO services and as a representative of BPOs. With this insight he decided that one of the missing ingredients in the BPO sales process is transparency - how does anyone know that what a BPO says about their services is really true? David founded GBPO Solutions to provide accreditation t...

The 2025 CXOutsourcers event took place earlier in May in Munich, Germany. Peter called on a few of the delegates to get their feedback and key takeaways from the event. https://cxoutsourcers.com/ https://nearshoreamericas.com/cxoutsourcers-forum-trade-and-cx-disruptions-take-center-stage/ https://ryanadvisory.com/cxoutsourcers-2025/ --- Peter Ryan talked to: Carrie Ramskill - COO HGS (UK) https:/...

Mark Zucker is the Co-Founder of MCVO Talent Outsourcing. He is based in Chicago, Illinois. Mark shares his journey from founding a wedding album manufacturing company (almost 30 years ago) to starting MCVO, which specializes in helping small businesses in North America. He highlights the benefits of the Philippines as a BPO destination, citing its respectful culture, strong English proficiency, a...

Martin Hill-Wilson is the founder of Brainfood Training and Brainfood Consulting. He is based in Milton Keynes, close to London, UK. Martin has a long history as a leader inside the CX and BPO industry. For the past 15 years he has focused on strategy consulting and advising on CX leadership and culture. Brainfood Training is a more recent focus on helping non-technical teams to understand the imp...

Michael Aronowitz is the Senior Vice President of Revenue Growth at VXI Global Solutions. He is based in Miami, Florida. Mark Hillary called Michael to discuss the importance of turning contact centers from cost centers to profit centers, emphasizing the need for revenue generation through customer interactions. Michael highlights VXI's success in winning three Stevie awards for retention, win-bac...

Jonas Berggren writes the popular Transform Customer Service newsletter on LinkedIn. He is the Chief Business Development Officer EMEA and member of the executive leadership team at Transcom. Jonas is based in Stockholm, Sweden. Mark Hillary and Jonas have published a new book together called The CX (R)evolution - so Mark called Jonas to talk about how the book project started out. In this convers...

Amas Tenumah is the host of the Amas Talks podcast. He is based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, US. Amas has a long history focused on customer service and service innovation. He regularly advises companies and speaks at events forcused on CX. On his LinkedIn Amas says: "I'm a digital philosopher, keynote speaker and customer service thought leader. My thoughts are featured on NPR, NBC, Fox-business a...

Phil Kitchen is the Founder & Managing Director of Customer Contact Panel. He is based in Sheffield, UK. He recently attended the Outsource 2 Jamaica conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Peter Ryan caught up with him to discuss what Jamaica is offering to potential clients in locations such as the UK - outside their more traditional US nearshore market. https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-kitchen-ccp/...

Juan Caire is Co-Founder and CEO of Alliance BPO Services, based in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. Jim Farnsworth is the CEO and Founder of Octayne Ventures, based in Denver, Colorado. Peter recently visited Hermosillo and talked to Juan and Jim about the potential for growth in the BPO industry and the importance of value over cost in outsourcing. The event in Hermosillo also emphasized the strategi...

Chris Dumpleton is the Chief Sales Officer at Limitless Technology. He is based in London, UK. Limtless is a GigCX platform that offers a connection to freelance customer service agents to brands - replacing the need for a more traditional customer service contact center as all the agents work from home, choosing their own hours and the brands they want to work for. Chris describes it as "Uber for...