CX Files
CX Files features your hosts, CX industry analysts Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan, speaking each week to leading analysts, thinkers, and practitioners focused on managing the Customer Experience (CX). In each episode Mark and Peter talk to their guests about the future of CX, the important trends, and what customers really expect from brands today.
Episodes
This week we have a group of CX and BPO experts who recently visited Georgia. This nation of 3.6m people is positioned on the Black Sea, at the intersection of Europe and Asia, and is working hard to position itself as an attractive destination for CX and BPO sourcing.
Peter Ryan talked to people who travelled with him to visit Georgia this year to explore questions such as the ease of doing business there, the opportunity for mult...
Traci Freeman holds a number of roles, including as the managing member of Believe Consulting, but in this conversation we focused on her role as a partner of the Africa Federation of GBS Associations.
This federation is aimed at unlocking Africa’s potential in the BPO, CX and ITO sectors. Enhancing Africa’s standing as a hub for innovation, knowledge exchange, and technological advancement, promoting partnerships, youth employment...
Kwame Agyei is the founder and CEO of Appoynt. He is based in London, UK with operations in Ghana.
In this conversation with Peter Ryan, Kwame tells the story of how and why he founded Appoynt during the Covid pandemic and the opportunity for more businesses to work with partners in Ghana.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwame-agyei-b3ab1333/
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SUMMARY
Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan discuss the growth of BPO s...
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...
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.
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 ...
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 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 & I...
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 Singapo...
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 Fi...
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 ...
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...
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...
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?
W...
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.
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.
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 t...
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 my...
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 d...
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 a...
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