CX Files

Peter Zaitsev is the founder and CEO of Percona, based in the US. Percona designs, supports, and advises on databases. They help companies manage data and keep it safe. This episode was inspired by the recent Capital One hack, where personal details of over 100m customers was compromised. Peter talks about keeping customer data safe, GDPR, Cambridge Analytica, and much more...   https://www.linked...

Alistair Niederer is the CEO of Egeria Insights, a recently formed company launched by the Resolver Group, the leading complaint and dispute resolution organisation in the UK. Egeria Insights is focused on helping companies understand how to manage customer conflict and even predict it.   In the podcast, Alistair explains the importance of managing customer conflict well and how complaining custom...

In this episode of the podcast we are exploring the perception and reality of working in different global locations after the news this week that airlines such as BA and Lufthansa are not flying to Cairo because of "security concerns." How do executives working in BPO and CX separate perceived risk from reality? Steve Weston and Peter Ryan discuss the Egypt problem and also explore other locations...

NOTE: Sound quality is below usual in this episode thanks to the conferencing system we were using having a 'muddy' effect on the sound - apologies... lesson is to call direct, not through conference lines :-( Alan Graham is the Chief Commercial Officer at Mindpearl, based in Cape Town, South Africa. Mindpearl was born in 1999 when a consortium of 11 European airlines decided they needed a better...

Felix Serrano is the co-founder and CEO of Activus Connect. The company is a certified women and minority-owned customer engagement organisation and they are operating across all of the continental US and Puerto Rico - based out of Orlando, Florida. Activus Connect is building a new platform for customer experience services modelled on the gig economy. In this episode, Felix explains how this can...

Robert Allman is the Group Senior Vice President for Customer Experience at Dimension Data.  Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dimension Data operates all over the world managing and consulting on technology and they have a strong focus on CX and customer analytics.  Each year for the past 22 years, Dimension Data has published their annual Global CX benchmarking report - this is one of those r...

Ved Sen is a Digital Evangelist at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). He is focused on digital strategy, acceleration and innovation and from his base in London he advises TCS clients on how to utilise new innovations, platforms, and business models. Ved is also the author of a book titled Doing Digital, Connect, Quantify, Optimise - a guide to digital innovation and strategy for non-technical manag...

Evan Jones is the CIO of Youth Employment Accelerator, Harambee, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also the National Board Chairman of BPeSA, promoting and advising the wider BPO industry in South Africa. In this episode of CX Files Evan talks about Impact Sourcing and how CX can be used to create employment and change lives across Africa, and beyond.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanjone...

  Shai Berger is the CEO and co-founder of Fonolo, a technology company based in Toronto, Canada. Fonolo manages call-backs for contact centres eliminating the need for customers to wait on hold. In this podcast Shai explains how a simple change can have a dramatic effect on CX. https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaiberger/ https://fonolo.com/  

Rod Jones is a contact centre legend. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, he has consulted and advised on contact centres for over 40 years. Contact Centre Helper magazine once called him the most trusted contact centre advisor *globally*. His work takes him all over the world both to work with clients and to speak about his experience at conferences. Rod recently mentioned to me that there are a...

Srikanth Iyengar is the Group CEO for Europe of Conduent, a major international business process service company with expertise in digital platforms and a technology-focused approach to customer experience. In our conversation Srikanth talks about the evolution of customer service away from the contact centre to a world of data analytics and technology platforms and what this means for the partner...

Steve Jones is the Head of Insights and Data for Capgemini North America. He has a background managing both AI and Big Data for Capgemini and is a leading global expert on how companies use data for insights and improved CX. In this episode of CX Files he talks about using data insights to create great CX and the effect of emerging tech such as facial recognition. He also explores the ethics of in...

Mark Davies is a business design expert at PA Consulting with a focus on customer disruption and also author of a recent study titled Customer 4.0. This research explores different demographic groups and how different behaviours are making modern customers extremely complex. In this episode we explore some of the findings from the Customer 4.0 research - in particular why brands just don't underst...

Christine Bardwell is the Senior Principal Strategy for Oracle Loyalty and Commerce and she is responsible for all the global go to market strategy for Oracle Loyalty. Before Oracle, Christine was an industry analyst at companies including IDC and Ovum and therefore she has spent several years analysing the markets that she now works on for Oracle. In the podcast we explored smart speakers, China,...

Sarah is the Chief Happiness Officer at Happy Coffee Consulting. She is also the Head of Customer Service at Sure Petcare managing a customer service team that works across borders using several languages. For CX Files she is speaking in her Happy Coffee capacity. Sarah speaks on this podcast about Employee Experience and the importance of great managers and work culture - how does this influence...

Amit Shankardass is the Executive Vice President of worldwide marketing at Teleperformance. Teleperformance has over 300,000 people delivering CX services to 170 markets from 80 different countries. In this edition of the podcast, Amit talks about the differences between a human and digital focus on CX and how brands can achieve the best possible blend of both. If 80% of customers prefer to speak...

Until very recently Vadim Anikanov was the Head of Global Customer Operations at Digital Finance International, which is a member of the Finstar Financial Group. He has spent a couple of decades in various CX leadership roles and at present he is researching the effect of smart speakers on the customer experience. Vadim is particularly interested in the way that smart speakers, such as the Amazon...

Wendy Shlensky is the Global Head of PR and AR at Hinduja Global Services (HGS), based in New York. Wendy was a speaker at the recent CXOutsourcers event in Windsor, UK, so I called to catch up on her conference takeaways and views on the future for BPO and CX in 2019. https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyshlensky/ https://www.teamhgs.com/ https://knowledge-executive.com/cxoutsourcers/

Ed Thomas is the Principal Analyst for technology thematic research at GlobalData PLC. He was recently speaking about AI and CX at the CX Outsourcers conference in Windsor, UK. After his talk, I asked Ed to explain some of his thoughts about AI for the podcast. Are companies really getting value from AI today? Listen to Ed's thoughts here… https://www.linkedin.com/in/edgthomas/ https://www.globald...

Miya Knights is the head of industry insight at Eagle Eye Solutions. She is the director and publisher of retail technology magazine. She has a long history in both retail and technology journalism and analysis and she is the co-author of a recent book titled Amazon - how the world's most relentless retailer will continue to revolutionise commerce. Miya talked to CX Files on the edge of the CXOuts...

Peter Ryan is the Principal Analyst at Ryan Strategic Advisory and is a great friend of CX Files. On Monday March 25th he presented the latest RSA research - the 2019 Front Office BPO Omnibus Survey. This outlines the most popular locations for contact centres globally. In a CX Files exclusive this episode is being released earlier than usual so it is published simultaneously with his live speech...

Maxine Holt is a research director, leading the security practice at industry analyst Ovum.  Maxine will be delivering a keynote speech on trends in cybersecurity at the CXOutsourcers conference in Windsor on March 25th. In this podcast we explore some of the issues around protecting customer data and how GDPR is looking, one year into enforcement. https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxineholt/ https://o...

David Rumble is a Managing Partner at GoBeyond, a consulting firm based in the the UK that specialises in complex CX transition. Dave is a well known international expert on offshore outsourcing and he will be speaking about offshoring strategies later this month at the CX Outsourcers Mindshare event in Windsor, UK. In the podcast I asked Dave about some of the current trends around offshoring and...

Nuno Horta is head of innovation at Grupo Ageas, based in Lisbon Portugal. Ageas is based in Belgium and is the largest insurance company there although they operate across 14 different countries. Nuno talks about how insurance is changing and how insurance companies can improve the customer experience through the use of emerging technologies and just redefining their role in the life of the custo...

Tamar Ravelli is an international recruitment consultant at Talingual. Talingual is a recruitment company, based in Belfast, focused on helping contact centres find staff, particularly multilingual centres who need people that are prepared to relocate for their job. Talingual published research suggesting that the place that young Germans want to live and work most is England. Given the uncertaint...