CX Files

Enea Dervishi is the Operations Director at Simetrix Solutions. He is based in Durres, Albania.

Last month, Enea published an article in Customer Think titled "From Beaches To Business: Is Albania's BPO Wave About To Break?"

The article kicked off a fevered discussion on LinkedIn because it did not focus on the usual BPO regional comparisons - how many airports, graduates etc... it directly compared the BPO possibilities in Albania with much larger and established destinations such as South Africa and India.

Albania is on track to join the EU soon and although...

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/garethmpritchard/

https://capebpo.org.za/

https://www.bpesa.org.za/

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodjonessouthafrica/

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 genuine value, but there is a big difference between the genuine application of AI to improve CX and what is p...

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 in South Africa - and beyond - and this has created a very positive socio-economic ripple effect. People leaving informal jobs and entering contact centers pay tax, support...

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 is based in Orlando, Florida.

In this episode, Kathy describes how the previous three weeks created the digital transformation that might usually have taken three years... April 2020...

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 President of TP. He is based in Singapore. Five years ago the company was known as Teleperformance and Dave was based in Manila...

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 and CEO of Ascensos (acquired by Firstsource in 2024) - he is still in this position.

John talked to Mark Hillary on...

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 with Peter Ryan, Dave talks about some of the 'groundhog day' issues he keeps reading about and seeing in CX. Why do we keep reading about t...

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 BPOs compete and leverage technology to improve what they offer to clients?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandaquinnmalach/

https://quinngrowthadvisors.com/

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 proactive in their approach to the customer experience? Why are some people around the world protesting that there is too much tourism now?

Mike talked...

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 and which claims are just hype? 

What can you really do with AI today?

https://www.l...

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.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/wgpE2LoSLp9tu6TX6

Peter Ryan talked to Thomas about the growing importance of the DR in the nearshore CX and BPO...

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 leaders will consider operations.

https://ryanadvisory.com/india-is-the-most-favored-offshore-cx-delivery-point-in-2025/

India and the Philippines are now the most popular destinations, but have these giant destinations just reasserted their postiion or is something going wr...

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 podcast.

Mark Hillary called Pete to get an ouline of the various ways in which a visual approach to...

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 episode Peter Ryan aims to do some myth-busting. Where is AI in CX today? What are the real use cases...

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 to be considered when working to design CX for a regulated industry?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/owen-campbell-a4602b173/

https://www.wearekura...

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 to BPOs, so if they do make claims about their capabilities then they can point to the accreditation to show that their claims...

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/

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Peter Ryan talked to:

Carrie Ramskill - COO HGS (UK)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-ramskill-503446223/

https://hgs.cx/

Ahmed Refky - CEO Planovate (Orlando, FL, USA)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmedrefky/

https://www.planovate.c...

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, and service-oriented mindset. Zucker emphasizes the importance of understanding client needs, maintaining client relationships, and providing simplified pricing models. He advises entrepreneurs to seek knowledgeable, involved partners and to consider the feasibility of outsourcing tasks.

Mark...

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 implications of and opportunities for the use of AI - particulary for CX teams.

Brainfood Training is focused on helping people understand what AI can really do - not...

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-back, upsell, and cross-sell. Michael stresses the significance of the human touch in customer interactions, leveraging AI for training and recruitment, and the importance of blending sales and service roles.

He argues that companies should...

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 conversation they talk about how Mark's comments on the newsletter formed the initial idea for a book and how they developed the idea together.

https://www.linkedin.com...

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 and other outlets. I have spent over 20 years in the customer service industry and now advise executives on service modernization."

Amas recently published an article titled: "The Worst Job in...

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/

https://customercontactpanel.com/

Phil's LinkedIn comments on Outsource2Jamaica 2025

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/phil-kitchen-ccp_outsource2jamaica-bpo-cx-activity-7318574026124058624-yQZd

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 strategic partnerships Alliance BPO has formed globally to enhance service delivery.

An important part of the discussion was also focused on looking beyond the major BPO delivery cities and...

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 CX."

But how does the gig economy work in the CX environment and what are the challenges that clients with experience of the contact...

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 AI, so B2B buyers can engage with the information in the database without needing to build complex queries.

Our conversation came about because Forrester Research recently noted that 9/10 B2B buyers are now asking...

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

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Rachel Poku

Founder, CXHero

https://www.ccw.eu/en/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-ryan-montreal/

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...

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Samar ElShafie - Egypt

Head of Commerical and Client Relations - Octopus Outsourcing

https://www.linkedin.com/in/samar-elshafie/

https://octopusoutsourcing.com/

Sabrina Labonte - Canada

Marketing Director, Laivly

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrinalabonte/

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 ElevenLabs AI voice system - underlining some of the ideas around how AI can be used to create voice-based systems.

https://elevenlabs.io/

https://i...

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 the main tech vendors to watch, and what are the difficulties or blockers that some companies are experiencing - it's not always out-of-the-box!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/audrey-william-3a4a04/

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 changes taking place inside the enterprise. 

Ian also talks about the pilots and experiments in AI that have worked and where more traditional CX is still working w...

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, should BPOs be capable of offering traditional BPO, Gig CX, and AI all under one roof?

This is...

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/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pfersht/

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March 2010 - Mark Hillary with Phil Fersht podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/phil-fersht-horses-for-sources...

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 focuses on using the analogy of how a football team (soccer) works together to achieve success and applies this to the CX environment. How can customers and brands both win...

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 that helps CX executives find the best service provider at the right price.

Peter called Joel to talk about CX pricing and how to find the right partner.<...

BONUS EPISODE: CX Transformation in 2025

At the start of 2025, Mark Hillary from CX Files joined Chris Hague from Yoummday and Lian Rowlands from Tayma Solutions to talk about CX trends in 2025.

This discussion was hosted by Yoummday and focused on some of the trends detailed in their CX Report 2025: “Transforming Customer Experiences: The AI Advantage Meets the Human Touch.”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lian-rowlands-a26119/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-hague/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhillary/

https://www.yoummday.com/

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🎧 Listen to the...

Veronica Richards is the COO at CALLS Contact Center and VP at WW CALLS Canada. She is based in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. 

Veronica is also the marketing director of the Mexico Business Club in Toronto.

Veronica is originally from Mexico and now works with Mexico from her base in Canada so Peter called her to ask about BPO and CX in Mexico in addition to the attractiveness of the consumer market in Mexico - a market with a population of 128 million people.

What opportunities are created by being located so close to the U...

Neville Samuels is the CEO of Virtual Staff 365. He is based in Melbourne, Australia.

Virtual Staff 365 offers a virtual staffing service that includes CX. In this discussion with Peter Ryan, Neville explores how virtual staffing can help to create a flexible CX environment that can work for in-house teams or BPOs.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/outsourcingexperts/

https://www.virtualstaff365.com.au/