Melissa O’Brien is Research Vice President, Customer Engagement, Retail and Travel Strategies at HFS Research. Melissa leads HFS’ research initiatives for digital front office services, including customer engagement operations, digital marketing, cognitive agents and CX design and consulting, focusing on the trends and change agents that are driving customer experience across the enterprise. In addition, her industry research focuses on key dynamics within retail, CPG, travel and hospitality, with regards to customer-centric strategies, intelligent operations and service delivery.
Melissa brings over 13 years of both hands-on industry and analyst experience to her role at HFS. She previously led IDC’s Worldwide Customer Experience Management Services program, including in depth analysis of evolving contact center business process delivery and consumer communication trends. Prior to IDC, Melissa held various roles in the contact center BPO industry, including new client implementation, program design, and training development and delivery for contact centers in Manila and Cebu, Philippines. Melissa has led plenary sessions at HFS FORA, NASSCOM, IDC Directions, and various other service provider and industry events.
Melissa graduated with honors from the University of New Hampshire with a BA in English and Communication, and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She is a Boston area native who enjoys traveling, kickboxing, and spending time outdoors with her husband and coonhound.
Data security and privacy have always been a critical concern in the BPO industry, as vulnerability to cyber threats present potential revenue-impacting events. Teleperformance, the largest contact center BPO company with over 380,000+ employees across 83 countries, has made huge...
In 2020, the decades-old corporate mindset of resisting change flipped overnight to one of advocating change just to ensure survival. This worldwide seismic shift has forced enterprises to pursue and realize their digital transformation possibilities. Supported by Infosys, HFS led...
We have just released the HFS Digital Associates Services Top Ten report, an update from our 2018 assessment (Cognitive Assistants Services). We found that service providers are now doing more than just implementing digital associates – the leading providers in...
For government and education organizations, taking a more holistic approach to customer interactions is imperative for both cost containment and customer experience. Many of these organizations make the mistake of their CRM platform as the central technology of their contact...
Today’s citizens have the same expectations for government and education services as they do when wearing their consumer hats; personalization, on-demand services in the channel of their choice, and proactive communication. The public sector is overdue for implementing strategies that...
The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact has been profound and far-reaching in travel and hospitality, with executives in these sectors having relatively lower confidence about emerging opportunities and rebounding quickly from the pandemic (see Exhibit 1). As lockdown mandates slowly relax, digital...
The HFS Top 10 Digital Associates Services report examines the leading IT and BPO services firms developing conversational tools with and for their clients across enterprise functions. We assessed and rated the capabilities of 17 service providers across a defined...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players, each with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting startups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS Hot...
The opportunity to develop deep collaborative capabilities between customers and employees has never been greater than it is in this emerging business environment. In October 2020, HFS, with the support of HGS, brought together 20 thought leaders from major global...
Genpact has been slowly but steadily building thought leadership and capability around “experience innovation” over the last few years. Genpact’s 2017 acquisition of experience consulting firm TandemSeven was its first big demonstration of an appetite to develop a OneOffice capability,...
“There is an extraordinary change in the momentum of importance on digital capabilities—and those who haven’t moved aggressively on this are falling behind every day.” Traci Gusher, National Leader AI and Enterprise Innovation KPMG Businesses require essential technologies that are...
HFS recently attended Mphasis’ Virtual Analyst and Advisor Day, which boasted 10 clients presenting and participating, to check in on how this dynamic mid-tier growth firm has been faring during this generally cruddy year. You may already know that the...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players, each with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOfficeTM. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting startups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS Hot...
The pandemic has pushed BPO providers and their clients to embrace a whole new level of flexibility as both its staff and clients have shifted to working at home (WAH) en-masse. But across the globe, a variety of legal, operational,...
Accenture’s 20th and 22nd acquisitions of 2020 are enhancements to its impressive customer engagement and operations capabilities. As the firm hustles toward its mission of reimagining business through experience, it has amassed a vast portfolio of assets in digital marketing and content production, sales and marketing operations, as well as customer experience design and strategy, the latest additions being Creative Drive and N3. These recent acquisitions...
HFS’ Digital Roundtable points to the need for sustaining momentum and driving a culture of genuine process change to achieve post-pandemic digital success. In HFS’ recent digital roundtable, with the support of Automation Anywhere, a select group of senior leaders...
Just a few years ago, Infosys was grappling with a leadership transition and ruthless media attention that called into question many company actions. Spin forward to now and the company has found itself in a remarkable period of stability where...
Click to read A Manifesto to Revitalize the BPO Industry
WHAT THIS TOP TEN REPORT COVERS This Travel, Hospitality and Logistics (THL) Top Ten 2020 examines the services landscape for how the leading 20 providers are supporting and enabling THL companies. We analyzed the capabilities of 20 service providers across...
Today’s food and beverage service enterprise leaders seek support for maximizing business outcomes and taking advantage of opportunities within their deeply connected and complex ecosystem. Yet services for companies across the value chain are typically siloed, and horizontal services wear...
How Sun Life uses RDA to eliminate customer service agents’ mundane work and improve CX Your employees’ and customers’ experiences are inherently linked, whether or not you’ve made efforts to align them. Today’s automation leaders must know that integrated automation...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players, each with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOfficeTM. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting startups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS Hot...
HFS developed Industry Primer reports to compliment our Industry Top 10 reports. While Industry Top 10 reports cover the leading service providers offering best-in-class, industry-specific services to specific sectors, Industry Primers offer a comprehensive view of industry trends, including the...
Work as we know it is being redefined, where this whole idea of “return to work” is really the “future of work” happening right now, just accelerated. Deloitte’s differentiated approach to experience is founded on the evolution from thinking of...
While retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies around the world have been perpetually challenged with change and disruption, today’s pandemic environment has put a giant spotlight on the inflexible, often broken supply chains due to siloed processes & disparate systems, lack of integration across all internal and external network entities...
Enterprises’ desire to progress customer and employee engagement from physical to digital has never been more intense, and many companies have no choice but to make this shift rapidly. HFS uses the phrase “straight to digital” to refer to the...
Mars shares its response to today’s paradigm shock The COVID-19 business environment is a paradigm shock for all industries, and it has become an existential crisis for many companies. If the challenge for most retail and CPG firms over...
Cognizant doubles down on Salesforce marketing cloud and CX with Lev acquisition Executives embarking on a Salesforce or CX services engagement need to keep abreast of Cognizant’s acquisitions to understand its growing strength of services and delivery capabilities. Cognizant...
When we wrote about the legacy contact center’s demise, it was with an optimistic view that in the long term, smart companies work with their partners strategically and develop smart CX strategies, rid themselves of broken processes, and optimize digital...
Enterprise executives must consider all aspects of their company and industry to select the best fit digital associate (DA) for their needs. In the HFS Webinar Propel Your Business Operations “Straight to Digital on February 28, 2020, Robert Skaljin of...
The coronavirus pandemic is exposing an outsourcing industry that has been wildly unprepared for an event like this in many ways, and the contact center BPO industry is no exception. India and the Philippines have become the examples of world...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players, each with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOfficeTM. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting startups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS Hot...
Taking a OneOffice approach to enterprise operations requires a shift to focus on both the human elements of business and intelligent technology to support human experiences. We’ve been following the development of ‘cognitive assistants’ and their role in this shift...
A new value proposition for Tech Mahindra is “BORN” In November of 2019, IT and BPO giant Tech Mahindra issued a press release that it acquired a leading digital transformation agency, BORN Group. As a firm that has never...
As customer experience (CX) becomes one of the overused and underdelivered words in our corporate lexicon, it’s still undeniable that CX and, increasingly, employee experience (EX), are incredibly important aspects of business—however we define them. Many companies now see experience...
The BPO industry has been buzzing since Cognizant’s announcement to discontinue its content review and moderation services, reportedly freeing up about $250 million of revenues for the taking. While questions whirl about why and how Cognizant will gracefully exit this market, HFS decided to examine the nuances of this tricky but very critical work that most digital enterprises need...
It is more necessary than ever for companies to break down functional silos within business lines to support digital customer experiences (CX). Savvy service providers are capitalizing on these trends by investing in capabilities and assets that will help their customers bridge the gaps between their internal silos. Enterprise marketers and...
Smart companies are no longer just trying to get faster and cheaper; they are rewiring operations to prepare for a future hyperconnected state. Taking this approach focuses on the human elements of business, but it requires increasingly intelligent technology to...
If you’re in a strategic role at a retailer, helping to shape the future of experiences for your company is likely your biggest imperative. As the face of retail continues to change as quickly as athleisure duds and pet health...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting start-ups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS Hot Vendors...
Market disruptors like Lemonade and Tesla are captivating customers and forcing incumbent players to change how they operate. When an enterprise goes “straight to digital,” it is has decided that enough is enough. It wants an operating...
Integrated automation can enable a OneOffice experience by breaking down silos across an enterprises’ customers and employees In December 2019, HFS hosted an executive roundtable in London to debate the impact of integrated automation on the customer experience....
What this Top 10 Report covers The HFS Top 10 Retail and CPG (consumer packaged goods) Services 2019 report examines the competitive landscape of the top 17 providers of industry-specific services to retail and CPG companies. We...
The travel industry is a dynamic hotbed of complexity, where aligning the ecosystem to customer experience is remarkably complicated. Airports, in particular, have a short time frame for making or breaking a passenger experience; their business operations require fluidity...
The “outsourcing” market, as we know it, is changing at a faster pace than ever, and it is aligning with the Digital OneOffice. In many forward-thinking organizations, organizational silos around the front, middle, and back offices are collapsing to create organizations where...
The highest performing companies in the Global 2000 want to use customer experience (CX) as an enterprise growth driver. But siloed data, a lack of speed and agility to implement new ideas, and a lack understanding of customers’ journeys...
Every enterprise needs to rethink how they source talent—or risk falling behind. A cursory glance at what makes well-known digital disruptors tick should tell us one thing: The way we build workforces of the future must change, whether...
HFS Research developed the Digital OneOffice and key imperatives of a OneOffice strategy that can help enterprises design and create successful transformational experiences. We use this model to define how companies must adapt their operations to be more customer-centric,...
Consumers’ increasing expectation for seamless shopping, whether in store or online, is challenging retailers to transform their operational models to support a true omnichannel experience. In order to stay competitive, retailers must work toward bridging experience across digital and physical touchpoints throughout the customer journey to help customers better connect with...
As we move toward the hyper-connected economy, companies are recognizing the need to break down internal silos to align with customer-centricity and bolster business performance. Customer-centricity should be paramount to the entire organization, and the front office needs to...
Competing priorities, culture, and talent are the biggest inhibitors to achieving customer-centricity among the Global 2000 (see Exhibit 1). Your partner strategy must include selecting a provider that is focused on talent and culture if customer experience is an...
Most companies are trying to put the customer at center stage, but there’s too much confusion, and there are too many over-hyped buzz words, especially in the big banks. A holistic front-to-back transformation is the key to unlocking the...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting start-ups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS Hot Vendors...
Findings from our latest executive roundtable A recent HFS study of 590 global 2000 enterprises found that the top strategic and operational objectives for intelligent automation are revenue growth and improved customer experience (CX) (Exhibit 1). At...
Contact centers are alive and well, but they have changed immensely over the last few years and are still evolving. The next generation of contact center firms doesn’t reflect the legacy world of scripted, low-value, transactional phone calls; it’s...
Not many people have noticed the practical disappearance of the term “outsourcing” from the services dictionary in recent years, but the evolution of heritage “outsourcer” WNS into a firm much better described as a “business operations partner” was highly visible...
Accenture just scooped up Droga5 , AdAge and AdWeek’s "agency of the year.” It rounds out a digital experience design capability featuring others like Fjord that has easily become the envy of the industry. With high profile accounts like HBO and...
HFS Research attended Atos’ 2019 Global Analyst Summit in Boston, its first update to the global analyst community since its $3.4B acquisition of Syntel in July 2018. Our previous analysis from the company’s investor update assessed Atos’ immediate plans...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice. HFS analysts speak with numerous exciting start-ups and emerging players. We designate a select group as the HFS Hot Vendors based...
Customer expectations for a touchless, personalized experience have been increasing in the travel space, particularly with airlines. A recent HFS study of 460 operations leaders clearly outlined this importance: Exhibit 1: Which of the following business drivers will have...
If you’re an enterprise services customer, you’re probably getting invitations right and left to visit innovation labs, design hubs, or insight centers. You are probably wondering, “Why should I visit?” and “What’s in it for me?” HFS Research recently visited...
20 enterprise leaders in discussion on AI for business operations - at the Apella in New York At a recent FORA Roundtable in NYC, produced in association with Genpact and featuring their Chief Digital Officer, Sanjay Srivastava,...
The retail world is swarming with big, fantastic ideas. There’s no better showcase for these ideas than the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) Big Show, which was held January 13-15, 2019. It brings together the best and brightest folks in retail...
WHAT THIS TOP TEN REPORT COVERS This HFS Front Office Customer Engagement Operations Top 10 Report is an analysis of the major service providers in the customer engagement services landscape. We assessed and rated the capabilities of...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice (read "Introducing the HFS Hot Vendors"). In the rapidly changing space of digital operations, enterprises realize they cannot be everything...
In the face of digital disruption, organizations across industries are re-thinking how they operate and interact to support the customer experience better. This introspection is relevant in today’s banking ecosystem, which begs for more transparency and seamless ease of use...
Failure to listen to the voice of your customers will result in your demise, so isn’t the customer contact center more relevant than ever as the focal point of intelligent customer engagement? You would think so. Instead, we’ve been...
You can only provide a real time customer experience if your operations can service their needs in real-time, and you can gain a foothold over your competitors if you have the intelligence to anticipate their needs—and having this customer responsiveness...
WHAT THIS TOP TEN REPORT COVERS This Travel, Hospitality and Logistics (THL) Top Ten 2018 examines the services landscape for how the leading 21 providers are supporting and enabling THL companies. We analyzed the capabilities of 21 service...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice (read "Introducing the HFS Hot Vendors"). In the rapidly changing space of digital operations, enterprises realize they cannot be everything...
It is critical for enterprise leaders to understand the capabilities and business cases for cognitive assistants and how they can be used as building blocks in the digital enterprise, but unfortunately, hype, myths, and misunderstanding are rampant in this emerging...
A new wave of services, powered by the change agents of smart analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), is on the horizon. One application has been to create cognitive assistants that can execute on business outcomes and impact enterprise operations; these...
WHAT THIS REPORT COVERS A new wave of services, powered by the change agents of smart analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), is on the horizon. One application has been to create cognitive assistants that can execute on business outcomes...
The HFS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice (read "Introducing the HFS Hot Vendors"). In the rapidly changing space of digital operations, enterprises realize they cannot be everything...
The global market leader in contact centers, Teleperformance, has made the first bold move to shake up an industry in desperate need of a shakeup. But is this merely buying growth out of desperation, or a strategic shift to sell...
You’ll never be a Digital Enterprise until you’ve Integrated your Digital and Traditional Customer Channels. Your customer engagement capabilities, whether digital or traditional, are only as strong as their weakest link, and more often than not it’s the contact...
WHAT THIS BLUEPRINT REPORT COVERS The Digital OneOffice is where the organization's people, intelligence, processes, and infrastructure come together as one integrated unit, with one set of unified business outcomes tied to exceeding customer expectations. It allows an enterprise to...
Customer Service leaders who think artificial intelligence (AI) stops at chatbots are cutting their careers very short. Too many people think that AI for customer service is limited to robotic chat screens and monotonic IVR scripts taking over from human customer service...
The HfS FORA event in New York focused on actions enterprises must take to understand the importance of these change-agents and emerging technologies, and how to apply them to their businesses effectively. It also explored the pace of change: how...
Creating an engaging customer experience is more readily achieved by embedding increasingly sophisticated digital and cognitive technologies into the very fiber of an organization’s processes, from its front office right through to its back office. Successful organizations are both...
The HfS Hot Vendors are an exclusive group of emerging players with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice (read "Introducing the HfS Hot Vendors"). In the rapidly changing space of digital operations, enterprises realize they cannot be everything...
There may not be another industry in quite as much tumult as retail at this moment. As we analyze in our HfS Retail Customer Engagement Services Blueprint, the retail space is bifurcated: bricks-and-mortar legacy retailers pivoting to omni-channel and online...
WHAT THIS BLUEPRINT REPORT COVERS There may not be another industry in as much tumult as retail right now. As retailers of all shapes and sizes work to carve out their unique value proposition, the focus on creating engaging customer...
HfS is expanding its industry coverage in 2018 to include detailed IT and business process research on 11 core sectors, powered by extensive buyer research with Global 2000 firms. The transformation and challenges posed by digital disruption and changing competitive...
HfS is expanding its industry coverage in 2018 to include detailed IT and business process research on 11 core sectors, powered by extensive buyer research with Global 2000 firms. The transformation and challenges posed by digital disruption and changing competitive...
The pace of change in the industry is nothing short of astounding. Especially where AI capabilities are involved, we are seeing many projects going from the initial discussion to prototype and proof-of-concept (PoC) literally in a few months. Against this...
Like so many of its peers in the business services industry, Genpact has undertaken a brand refresh, complete with new logo and “Transformation Happens Here” mantra. If one thing is resoundingly clear from Genpact leadership, it is the acknowledgement that...
The bar for customer experience has been raised across the board, but no industry seems to have attracted more attention lately than travel and hospitality. Customer service issues that have received a lot of attention in the travel industry recently...
As an example of a OneOffice journey underway, Cisco saw an opportunity two years ago to transform the business, in large part using automation to take out costs and improve efficiencies, in turn re-investing into a redesign of the business...
“Improving people’s lives through technology.” This is not typically a phrase you would associate with Concentrix. This mantra is now part of the service provider, however, as Concentrix acquired the company Tigerspike, which was founded on this phrase 14...
As we move along the Digital OneOffice journey to deliver better customer experiences, enterprises need to think big and take action in order to transform—involving many stakeholders, including service providers, as partners on that journey. The aim of Cisco’s...
The Role of Culture in OneOffice The classic Peter Drucker adage goes “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and this holds true for both enterprises and service providers as they make a shift to support digital customer experience. Culture is the...
MARKET DYNAMICS In HfS’ first Blueprint focused solely on the Travel and Hospitality industries, we analyze the innovation and execution capabilities of 16 providers whose services offer support for customer engagement in this market. WHAT YOU’LL KNOW AFTER READING...
HfS Research teamed up with Concentrix for an in-depth look at how enterprises are investing in and adopting a digital OneOffice-type framework. We surveyed 154 buyers of enterprises with over $1 billion in revenues across a wide variety of industries to understand where they...
Companies across all industries are learning the importance of using customer experience (CX) as a brand differentiator. At the foundational level, doing this well means aligning the entire organization to the customer—but it’s not simple. Great customer experience requires not...
WHAT YOU’LL KNOW AFTER READING This is a comprehensive buyer-focused analysis of Concentrix. This guide will enable buyers of outsourcing services to make better informed sourcing decisions to not only outsource specific services but future-proof their organization in the context...
It seems everywhere we turn there’s a new story about airlines behaving badly, and these stories are illuminating examples of a complete breakdown of people, process, and technology: a classic “DumbOffice” fail. No industry is immune from digital disruption and...
When an entire organization pivots to align with customer-centricity, the importance of front-office services increases significantly and the leadership roles in these areas change drastically. The need to support customers on digital channels and create the support structures in the...
Amidst all the hype and confusing marketing propaganda surrounding Robotic Process Automation (RPA), it felt like a breath of fresh air listening to customers talk about their genuine experiences with IPsoft’s cognitive solutions. The Digital Workforce Summit in New York...
WHAT YOU’LL KNOW AFTER READING This report is a comprehensive buyer-focused analysis of Teleperformance. This guide will enable buyers of outsourcing services to make better-informed sourcing decisions to not only outsource specific services but future-proof their organization in the context...
In today's interconnected environment, where customers want to be able to work with you safely without sacrificing speed or effectiveness, security is the lynchpin of great customer experiences. In fact, as more "back office" processes become visible to customers, your...
As organizations are progressing toward the As-a-Service Economy with a dual mandate to drive down cost while increasing business agility, service delivery is ever more taking center stage when discussing strategic imperatives. Notions of Intelligent Automation are not only enabling...
As HfS Research the concepts within the OneOffice™ Framework, we believe it essential to evaluate how service providers’ emerging capabilities are stacking up, not just in each distinct category, but how they align to the holistic Digital OneOffice Framework. Being...
For banks to remain competitive in the current climate, they will need to embrace a “customer first” strategy, with better customer experiences at the forefront. We outline some trends that will define the progress in 2017 – for banks as...
WHAT THIS BLUEPRINT REPORT COVERSThe 2016 Digital Marketing Operations Blueprint presents a comparative analysis of the innovation and execution capabilities of service providers in this market. The scope of services within this Blueprint includes marketing content development and management, campaign...
Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies are dealing with some of the most difficult issues that face society—issues such as poverty, mental illness and child abuse. At the same time, these agencies are driven, measured, and often funded through regulatory...
Staying competitive in today’s intense retail environment is no easy feat. At the heart of the issue is a clear call to arms to understand and satisfy today’s savvy shopper. Retail’s biggest challenge and opportunity is the vast amount of...
Contact center operations are being faced with the potential of serious impact from a number of shifting dynamics. Rising consumer expectations coupled with technology advancements are leaving contact center operators struggling to play catch up in terms of both talent...
In September 2016, HfS hosted its 13th Working Summit for services buyers at the Ritz-Carlton, in White Plains, New York. Entitled Cognition, this three-day event focused on the global dynamics that are shaping the services world at the moment....
WHAT THIS BLUEPRINT REPORT COVERS This Blueprint is a spinoff of the previously published Contact Center Operations Blueprint, focusing on the digital elements of contact center BPO, highlighting 12 service providers in the contact center services market. Digitally enabled...
HGS wants to make it easier and more pleasant for customers to get the right answer fast—by making self-service a more fluid experience across channels. In a recent demo for the launch of DigiCX, HGS introduced a strategy for helping...
There’s a new set of ambitious, demanding BPO clients, and they’re changing what the future of BPO looks like for all of us: born in the cloud enterprises, digital natives and unicorns. These companies, like Nest, Slack, Google, Facebook and...
Using recent research from HfS into the "Intelligent OneOffice" as the starting point, the Vision 2020 San Francisco Summit explored how digital and automation will drive the move to OneOffice and the As-a-Service Economy. The HfS team unveiled data from...
Welcome to the TWITCH family, Tech Mahindra! Tech Mahindra has quietly accelerated to a formidable position in the IT services industry, to add another T to the WITCH[1] acronym of leading India-heritage service providers. This is a company with deep engineering...
HPE and CSC announced the merger of HPE's Enterprise Services Division and CSC, which is expected to happen before the end of March 2017. The new company will have revenues of approximately $26 billion and around 160,000 staff. We heard CEO...
Alorica’s mandate to provide “insanely great customer service” is a spot-on mantra, if a little cheesy. The question is whether the service provider can pivot to adequately provide insanely great customer service to the customer of the future amid extensive expansion....
In a consumer world where customer experience is the biggest differentiator for products and services, the retail industry can’t wait to experiment. It is apparent that people, particularly younger generations, are increasingly interested in spending on experiences more than on...
Cognizant has made an investment that gets to the heart of “digital”—understanding and serving the customer of the future. The service provider announced a 49% stake in ReD Associates, a consulting firm specializing in using human sciences to help businesses...
Since the acquisition of France-centric Prosodie in 2011, Capgemini has expanded the footprint of the ODIGO SaaS contact center platform throughout Europe. Recently, the service provider has been working to grow Prosodie in North America, where Capgemini has a sizeable...
The San Francisco Infosys Confluence Summit for Infosys services clients, selected sourcing advisors, and industry analysts, has taken on a cultish culture, vaguely reminiscent of Salesforce’s Dreamforce, but for a global services firm with a strong flavor of software at...
The Contact Center Operations Blueprint is our inaugural Blueprint in this market, presenting a look at the evolution of the Contact Center Operations market to a more agile, consumer-centric As-a-Service Economy that includes increasingly diverse talent, analytics, and platform-based services....
The easiest way to improve customer satisfaction is to make doing business as simple and effortless as possible. Last week KLM announced the ability to access flight itineraries, get check-in notifications and boarding passes, rebook flights and communicate directly with...
HfS Research led and attended sessions at this event where BPO Service providers, buyers and advisors gathered to discuss the future of the global BPO industry and promote US investment in Indian BPO. India's BPO market is at a...
Many enterprise executives are on a mission to build a social customer experience in a way that improves customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. They realize that social media should be used throughout the customer lifecycle, and see potential in a...
The blending of digital and offline worlds, as well as bridging gaps between phases of the customer lifecycle is a challenge and opportunity for all involved in the customer experience ecosystem, as we examined in Omnichannel Customer Experience: Moving Beyond...
One of the hottest buzzwords in discussions about customers today is the ubiquitous and nebulous term “omni-channel.” The contact center industry has adopted this phrase developed in sales and applied it broadly to customer experience management. When enterprises answer the...
As the voice of the company, the customer service agent plays a critical role in impacting customer experience. Therefore, it is now more critical than ever that contact center providers think outside the box on how to empower agents to...
Consumers have many varied ways to communicate in the digital age, and it can be difficult for companies to meet customer expectations across or even within channels. Adding to the complexity, customer experience is about engagement, so it is not...
Optymyze solutions are a unique example of solutions in the emerging Sales-Operations-as-a-Service market. Using a blend of talent and technology, these services are focused on the improvement of sales operations, including the management of sales compensation, territories, quotas, objectives, analytics,...
Last week Lionbridge Technologies, a language translation and marketing services company, announced a broadening of its real-time translation platform Geofluent with an offering that brings automated multi-lingual, multi-channel support to the contact center. The SaaS tool integrates with contact center...
WNS is leveraging its unique roots in the airline industry, having started as an in-house delivery center for British Airways in 1996, to help the wearied traveler have a more pleasant journey. It is customer experience when getting from here...
NexGen Agency is a customer experience management services provider focusing on contact center, social media engagement and sales/lead generation. While still in start up mode, NexGen Agency social media mentoring program caught our eye as something unique. As social presence is such a sensitive topic...
Last week it was announced that SaaS contact center provider, LiveOps Cloud Platform, has been acquired by a private equity firm, and its pure play home-based agent BPO business, LiveOps Agent Services, will operate independently. This announcement solves an internal...
At the start of December 2015, HfS brought together a cross-section of the leading talent from both sides of the outsourcing community together in Harvard Square to discuss and debate the state of the industry. From these two days, 10...
Digital communication channels and technology are significantly changing the talent requirements for delivering an omnichannel customer experience that is increasingly critical to enterprises and their service providers. In doing so, it has created potential for new and exciting career paths...
