2011 – 2021: A Decade in Sourcery

Ten years ago, my professional freelance life in CX BPO felt very much the same as it does today – post pandemic discussions on the effective role of customer contact outsourcing, and debates on the use of technology to allow customers to self-serve.

The outputs in 2011 following the industry’s response to the H1N1 pandemic resulted in several contact centre providers retaining significant public sector contracts and the Department of Health’s Managed Contact Centre Services framework. The MCCS was established to enable the DoH to bring on-stream simultaneously and at short notice a significant number of contact centre service providers in the event of any subsequent pandemic event. Who knew?!

Meanwhile RPA was making waves and catching the attention of customer service directors keen to exploit its value in creating more effortless customer management while reducing operational cost. Utilities and telecom were first in line and became power users while whispers spread throughout the rest of the industry trying to fathom what the acronym stood for and what in actuality it meant to the future of voice.

Back then I was almost eight years into a successful career as a freelancer focused predominantly in outsourced customer contact. Clearly not GigCX but certainly an experience that has since informed a positive perspective on the Gig economy and the opportunities it presents.

I mention all of this as it seems as good an anchor as any for a short reflection on several things that have changed over the years in between and some that have not.

• For a start, CX wasn’t a term anyone in our industry would recognize or give credence to back then – yet today CX is ubiquitous in every customer facing sector, public or private, and in the main, is well understood as an imperative in business strategy and planning.
• Over the period the pushing at the door by tech providers has been a constant in the customer management sector. Presentations on platforms to support customer engagement on social media and web chat were perennial early in the past decade, and today both social and chat have become channels central to the servicing and understanding of customer requirements and intent. 
• Self-serve solutions evolved but were driven more by the increasing sophistication and ubiquity of the smart mobile device than customer service driven design. While the use of true AI continues to attract and confuse in equal measures, the once as equally contested claim of the advantages of ‘work-at-home’ customer service solutions has quite simply become the only show in town. With the journey from onsite to work-at-home a much greater cultural and operational shift than work-at-home to gig, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this decade of ‘hype cycle delivered’ will in turn join
• GigCX as a stable platform and component in the overall customer management model has arrived. Today Limitless, Directly, LiveXchange, Concentrix SOLV have all established functioning delivery models with a contingent workforce.

Things that have changed more slowly include procurement. While certainly not denying the professionalism and quality of the processes and resources involved, the heart of the competitive procurement exercise has changed little. I can put my hand on RFP responses that are older than my children from former client BPOs that would need little adjustment to respond to a tender today. Brokers are playing an increasingly valuable role in introducing and hand-holding buyers and providers through the process, but like the term ‘outsourcing’ itself, the fact remains that service providers feel buyers continue to approach procurement as an exercise in collective indecision making.

And that brings me to my final reflection - my interaction and engagement with the GSA, formerly NOA. It began in 2011 with the NOA/Middlesex University Post-Grad Diploma in Global Strategic Outsourcing. This provided an opportunity to study the practice and discipline of the profession in detail, vertically and horizontally, and across a range of sectors, leading in turn to a Masters in 2017 with Portsmouth University. Just as important have been the many conferences and special interest groups that the GSA has organised in that time which provided a platform for significant insights, discussion and debate across a broad sweep of the key components of exemplar partnerships, contractual models and solution developments as outlined above. 

With 2020 behind us, and looking back on a period a decade ago which had a similar requirement for service providers to step up and support the economy and entire sectors, the wider sourcing industry has to take hold of the opportunity presented today to recalibrate the understanding in the UK of the role, function and economic benefits of strategic sourcing. Today as a GSA Council Member I can attest to the ambition of the GSA to help drive that engagement supporting buyers and vendors alike, and to be that representative voice lobbying for the rights and wellbeing of employees, the continuing development of sourcing models and supporting contractual and legal standards and constructs. I wholeheartedly invite service providers, brands and partners engaged in the industry today to get involved, participate and contribute.

When I write the blog focused on the next decade of 'sourcery' for 2021 - 2031, we will have travelled almost one third of the way through the 21st century. It will in my opinion be a real loss to our industry's employees, the public it serves and the companies that drive it if in that time, strategic sourcing remains unloved, undervalued and misunderstood. 

I also saw a lot of gigs in 2011, this was the Foo Fighters at Milton Keynes! Fingers crossed we can get back to these major events soon.

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