Are We Ok?

Are We Ok?

A crisp, blue-skied Friday morning had me enroute to a mind blowing – mindshare, attending the much-anticipated CxOutsourcers 2024 Year End roundtable(s!) in Great Fosters Hotel & Restaurants near Windsor, Egham to be more exact. Organised by the contact centre industry’s highly respected, thought leader himself, Peter Ryan and his team with Traci Freeman (she / her) and Mark Angus.

My taxi pulled in at a stunning Tudor venue, greeted by wine on arrival which I politely declined as I hadn’t had any breakfast that morning and didn’t think it would be wise to drink alcohol on an empty stomach! As the British Sri Lankan in me sipped on a strong cuppa, I briefly scanned across a beautifully decorated room, surrounded by many familiar faces and it quickly felt like home. I was in my element and doing what I loved – talking to people about the industry I loved! You could feel the incredible energy with so many CX Leaders under one roof. I knew straight away that this was going to be an epic day of learning and networking.

I looked around for my name tag and was thrilled to be sitting between Jon Yarlett and Kenny Morris, industry legends. The day then commenced with Peter doing some introductions, sharing some insights and handing over to the brilliant speakers while we were served a beautiful 3 course meal. I didn’t have a note book, so I took out my phone and frantically started typing away. Many truth bombs were dropped igniting fires, the good kind that provokes emotion and thought which made some very interesting conversations during the networking drinks that followed.

This was originally going to be a Linkedin post to share with my network but having sat down to write it up, it’s transpired that I couldn’t possibly do the event the justice it deserves in a quick post. The content deserved to be covered in as much detail as possible. Hence, the evolution of this article.  

As outsourcers, much like many businesses, we always try and differentiate ourselves from our competitors. I’m sure we’ve all been there trying to answer almost every other week, what makes us unique? How do we keep differentiating ourselves?

Peter highlighted some very interesting statistics around being ready to compete in 2025, how budgets will be shrinking even more but there will be opportunities, standing out in a competitive market and increasing your visibility.

Here are a few key takeaways -

1. KYC – Know Your Customer

2. Presence on the ground – within our industry sector but also within the Verticals we want business in

3. Influencers – partner with influencers, build key relationships, influencer engagement

4. Thought Leadership – put out thought leadership subject matter, show you are experts in your field

5. Flexible pricing models – with budgets getting tighter and tighter, we need to be innovative with our pricing

6. Events – Be at the right events, be seen, be heard

Mike Havard armed with just paper notes in his hand and no Powerpoint presentation, plunged us into a bit of a Mariana Trench type deep dive of our industry and then slowly, brought us up for air. The journey was eye-opening and thought provoking. There’s was a lot of ground covered here so I’ll try my best to share some of his key points -

1. There is general uncertainty across markets due to a number of factors (US elections, wars, disruption etc)

2. Macro concern about our space – customer contact and BPO

3. Share prices for major Tier 1 BPOs have fallen year to date

4. IT/Tech services on the other hand are seeing 3-5% growth

5. There is money flowing in but investment running away - So where is the money going? What’s going on under the surface? The volume of work is rising so why aren’t people investing in BPOs? Mike throws in a brilliant reference/analogy here with Who Moved My Cheese here – someone’s moved the cheese and we’ve missed it!

6. What about the role of AI? BPOs and customers missing a trick here? –Natural Conversation models are on the horizon - could take volume away from BPOs

Considering all the above, it’s clear we need to focus on survival. This means evolving, moving with the times. As shared by the experts, there is evidence to suggest we are on the edge of not being ok. It isn’t all doom and gloom, it’s a case of survival of the fittest. We need to think outside our BPO boxes –

So to summarise, here’s what that process might look like in your business strategy for 2025 and beyond according to Mike

Think about -

1. How do we stay relevant?

2. How are we going to differentiate?

3. How to make that compelling?

4. Questioning the role of AI and questioning – do we compete or do we collaborate?

5. Demonstrate what we’ve done really well

6. Understand and think about – where is our industry heading? Where is the investment going?

7. What should we be doing to evolve our BPO model? – It’s not about ‘bums on seats’ to be frank, it never has been for us inside the industry– create ventures to survive? Tech ventures?

8. Build your own tech inhouse or work with tech partners

Do –

1. Stay close to emerging tech – speak to your clients and prospects about it

2. If you have the means – build your own small language models

3. Buy cheap tech companies – this might be a way of increasing our bottom line and increasing our assets. There are circa 400 tech companies in Europe.

4. Keep agile

5. Keep profitable (this is increasingly difficult in the traditional BPO sense)

6. Keep future proof

7. Change the business model

The contact centre industry is where you will find some of THE most passionate people on the planet who just love and adore every bit of this industry! It’s built on this love, care, innovation, resilience and a constant need to want to do better for our people, our clients and our customers. Carrying that core into 2025 and beyond, working smarter and getting away from being busy fools will ensure our survival.

We Will Be Ok.

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