ISG Provider Lens™ Report: Contact Center Outsourcing
Our latest ISG Provider Lens™ study makes it clear that, in today’s enterprise business context, customer experience is the nucleus of contact center outsourcing. Contact center businesses are rapidly evolving, especially technologically, and enterprises outsourcing contact center operations are looking for value that goes beyond traditional customer services. Enterprises can no longer survive with just voice channel contact; the key is to strategically blend multiple channels with voice to address customer needs across different touch points in a varying range of environments.
The report details key buyer types and needs, and illustrates how and why different types of buyers are at different stages of digital transformation. Data and analysis in the report explain why legacy systems and data inhibit rapid transition to this new contact center strategy - explaining how, as with any other aspect of digital transformation, it is best implemented in phases - with careful transition and effective management of the relevant data. So while traditional voice service will never be eliminated, it is important for enterprises to start embarking on the journey of contact center digital transformation.
This ISG Provider Lens™ Contact Center Outsourcing – Customer Experience Archetype Report summarizes months of research and analysis to gauge the relative capabilities of contact center services providers, and their abilities to address the requirements of four typical categories of enterprise buyer types (i.e., “archetypes”).
Each archetype represents a set of enterprise user business and technological needs and challenges that tend to be seen repeatedly throughout global markets. Many if not most enterprises include more than one archetype. And the ability to satisfy the needs of these archetypes is what’s going to enable provider success in a rapidly changing customer services outsourcing industry.
The archetypes are based on contact center evolution in the field of customer services spanning traditional voice-channel-based customer services to a digitally-enriched customer experience journey. The roles and requirements of each of the four archetypes - identified and explained as Customer Service Outsourcers, Virtual Solutions Buyer, Digital Enthusiasts and Automation Seekers – are mapped to relevant IT services provider capabilities to provide means of identifying and comparing relevant services and providers.
For each of the archetypes, the report also positions different services providers based on our analysis and assessment of relevant capabilities and offerings. Based on this analysis, we can identify some providers as “leaders” for each archetype’s needs. The leaders are then compared against each other based on their abilities to satisfy each of the key imperatives for the archetype.
This report also provides insight into key trends shaping (and re‐shaping) customer services and their providers, and how these trends are changing (and will change) enterprise‐side demand and use of such services. Three of these developing trends are as follows:
With the introduction of multiple channels, omnichannel services is a minimum necessity for all organizations. It is imperative for organizations to deliver a seamless journey to customers
Implementation of automation technologies (e.g., chat bots, intelligent self-service) is on the rise
Understanding customer needs and being more pro-active is imperative. Thus, analytics will play a huge role in deriving meaningful analysis of all the customer data collected that enables organizations to deliver enriched and personalized customer service.
For more information on this and other ISG Provider Lens programs, please visit https://isg-one.com/research/research-detail-page/isg-provider-lens. Clients of ISG Insights can download the report by clicking below.