CX Files

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...

Dave Rumble is Director and Executive Chair of the Maistro Group. Maistro has long been a specialist in helping companies with RFPs and vendor selection. The Maistro platform helps companies to make better sourcing decisons adn their database has very prescise details on thousands of suppliers. Maistro recently introduced the ability to have natural conversations with the database using generative...

Peter Ryan recently attended the CCW Berlin show in Germany. He talked to a lot of people at the show and recorded a conversation with a couple of the CCW stars for their views on BPO in 2025 and what to look out for based on the show in Berlin... This episode featured Peter talking to:   Sherif Kamel Poland GM @ Raya CX --- Rachel Poku Founder, CXHero   https://www.ccw.eu/en/ https://www.linkedin...

Mark and Peter take a diversion from the usual CX discussion to talk about LinkedIn. Why is it filled with garbage today and what can be done about it? Is there a way back for Microsoft to restore the function of the business networking tool? https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhillary/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-ryan-montreal/  

Last Saturday was International Women's Day 2025. To mark the occasion, Peter Ryan reached out to three leading women working in CX in three different global locations. Listen to his discussion with them about the challenges and opportunities for women in CX in 2025... ---- Samar ElShafie - Egypt Head of Commerical and Client Relations - Octopus Outsourcing https://www.linkedin.com/in/samar-elshaf...

Sergei Levteev is the Chairman and CEO of IBA Group. He is based in Prague in Czechia. IBA Group is a technology company with deep experience building and supporting IT infrastructure. They have managed cloud systems, AI, RPA, and are even supporting old mainframe tech. Mark Hillary called Sergei to talk about the IT infrastructure supporting CX.  Sergei decided to respond to Mark using the Eleven...

Audrey William is Principal Advisor at Ecosystm. She is based between Sydney, Australia and Singapore. Audrey has several areas of research focus, including  the Future of Work, Unified Communications, Video and Collaboration, Contact Center, CX, Outsourcing and Conversational AI. Mark Hillary called Audrey to talk about AI in CX - in particular what is happening on the ground in pilots, which are...

Ian Jacobs is the Vice President and Lead Analyst at Opus Research. He is based in San Francisco, California, USA. In this conversation with Mark Hillary, Ian explores how BPO is being transformed by AI and asks if we are sometimes focusing too much on Gen AI? CX practitioners have traditionally focused on the customer-facing AI changes - the improvement in chatbots - but there are many other chan...

Sid Victor is the Senior Vice President and Head of Support Services at Movate. He is based in Frisco, Texas, USA. Sid has published his opinion around BPO flexibility on LinkedIn several times. He has made it clear that he feels the future is not human agents OR AI OR any other solution - it is a blend of all the best options and BPOs should be able to offer this blended solution. For example, sh...

Phil Fersht is the CEO and Principal Analyst at HFS Research. He is based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He recently posted this 'AI continuum' on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pfersht_rpa-genai-agentic-activity-7282865406917115904-5lrX Mark Hillary called Phil to talk about this and how AI is offering the opportunity for genuine innovation in CX and BPO. https://www.hfsresearch.com/ ht...

Gregorio Uglioni is an Associate Partner at Forward. He is based in Zurich, Switzerland. Greg is focused on business transformation and service excellence. He is an outspoken commentator on LinkedIn about the CX and BPO industry in general and his online commentary led to Peter calling him for a conversation. Greg also hosts the CX Goalkeeper podcast so he is another CX podcaster! Greg's podcast f...

Joel Walker is the Co-Founder and Managing Director Platform Services of The Knowledge Group (tkg). He is based in Luxembourg. Last year Peter saw the tkg vendor selection system, which has details of millions of FTEs working in BPO and CX services globally. The system can help companies find the right supplier based on a large number of variables - it's an independent and impartial advice service...