CX Files

Stefan Osthaus is an author, keynote speaker and CX expert based in Dusseldorf, Germany. He is the founder and managing director of experience5, focused on helping companies to manage CX and employee experience (EX) together. In the podcast Stefan talks about customer centricity, building a CX strategy and how to combine a CX and EX strategy. https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanosthaus/ https://www.experience5.de/en/

Jim Farnsworth is a legend in the world of CX. Based in Denver, he is EVP and GM at SYKES, heading up their SykesHOME virtual contact centre solution. Jim has been a senior executive at several of the most important global CX specialists and he even built in own company in this business - and sold it. In this interview we focused on contact centres with agents working from home. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jifarnsworth/ https://www.sykes.com/

Graham Brown is the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS), based in London, UK. We talked about how emerging technologies are changing contact centres and even the contracts that brands sign with CX experts. Are we now in a world where brands pay CX experts only for positive outcomes and experiences? https://www.teamhgs.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-brown-7433891/

Traci Freeman is known to everyone in the BPO industry in South Africa. Based in Johannesburg, Traci runs Believe Consulting and advises BPESA. She was previously the Rockefeller Foundation representative for South Africa. We talked about Impact Sourcing and how it can create real jobs and create real help and growth from outsourcing contracts. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracifreeman/ https://twitter.com/believeconsult

Yoni Epstein is the founder and chairman of itelbpo, based in Jamaica. In the podcast Yoni talks about automation, AI, bots, and what this all means for the contact centre - and the team working inside contact centres. www.itelbpo.com

Morris Pentel is Chairman of the CX Foundation, a private global foundation focused on best practice in CX. He talks on this episode about how to redesign Voice Of the Customer (VOC) projects to better capture customer emotions. Morris is based in London. https://www.linkedin.com/in/morrispentel/ https://www.cxfo.org/

Thomas Reby is a Senior Strategy Manager at Google in Ireland. He is an internationally experienced CX professional, with proven track record of leading multi-national teams and business programs in the Service and Commerce industries. In this episode, Thomas and I are talking about the length of customer service interactions - from 2 minutes to 40 years... NOTE: Thomas is speaking on this podcast in a personal capacity and not representing a view from Google on CX strategy. www.google.com www.linkedin.com/in/thomasreby/

Giovanni Tavani is the director of Global Customer Care and Social Media at Royal Canin, based in France. He recently joined Royal Canin and was previously the head of social customer care at Dell - a company he stayed at for 17 years. Royal Canin is one of the leading premium pet brands globally. If you have a dog or cat then you probably know of their food and associated products. They supply food mixed for each individual breed and have a great reputation for high quality. https://www.royalcanin.com/

Stephen Loynd is the global program director of the digital transformation practice at Frost & Sullivan and is therefore well known internationally as a leading futurist and CX expert. Stephen is constantly on the road speaking at major conferences and I caught up with him on the phone from his base in Washington DC. We talked about emerging CX technologies and how the contact centre agent role is evolving in new directions. https://ww2.frost.com/ https://twitter.com/loyndsview

In this edition of the podcast I'm speaking with William Carson from Concentrix. William is based in London and is a CX Growth Hacker, which is an interesting job title and I know from working with William in the past that he has many interesting ideas about CX. Concentrix is an American CX firm, but they deliver services globally from over 125 different locations with over 100,000 employees. In June they acquired Convergys, arguably an even bigger company with around 130,000 employees and revenue of around $3bn. The two companies have yet to announce how they will formally merge, but those details are expected soon and it will create a global CX juggernaut. I asked William about CX sales trends - in particular how automation and emerging technologies are changing the way CX services are priced and consumed by clients. https://www.concentrix.com/