GBS WORLD NEWS | WEEK 3 | JANUARY 2022

Another partnership has emerged in South Africa, where global customer experience management firm, iSON Xperiences, has been appointed by MTN South Africa as their outsourced customer service provider. Combined with the Vodacom deal through the acquisition of Altron People Solutions late last year, iSON Xperiences now dominates a significant portion of the South African telecom customer service outsourcing market. Across Africa, iSON Experiences manages 120 million customers for MTN, 80 million for Airtel, more than 40 million for Vodafone in Egypt, 12 million for Vodafone in Tanzania, and a combined total of more than 10 million customers for AirtelTigo in Rwanda and Ghana.

This partnership comes at a good time when South Africa’s Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) officially recognized Global Business Services (GBS) as a priority sector through the signing of the GBS Masterplan, a document that sets out an action plan to target the creation of 500,000 new cumulative jobs in the sector by 2030. A framework of public, private and social sector contributions, as well as key industry interventions, is set out in the masterplan to reach the job creation objective. More insight into the significance of the signing of South Africa’s GBS Masterplan can be read here.

A celebratory vibe kicked off the week with the recognition of American financial services provider, Westwood Insurance Agency, achieving an industry-leading Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) of 91. The NPS®, created by Bain & Company, reveals a customers’ likelihood of recommending a company or product to others. Scores over 20 are defined as favorable, 0 and above as excellent and 80 and above as world-class. Westwood Insurance Agency lends its achievement to the company’s prioritization of consistent improvement of user experience and positioning the customer at the core of its business.

More feelings of optimism were felt across the border where Canada’s customer relationship management market is predicted to reach US$5,3 billion by 2028. This was reported in the Canada Customer Relationship Management Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis, which indicated that the market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.2% between 2021 and 2028. Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) are the major drivers of this growth.

Across the pond, leading UK and Manchester-based digital-first consumer brands group, THG Ingenuity, has partnered with Contentsquare, a global leader in digital experience analytics, to enhance THG Ingenuity’s existing technology stack. The enhancements are aimed to expand THG Ingenuity’s range of services it offers to its suite of global brands. One of the new offerings the relationship with Contentsquare will bring include digital experience analytics, such as customer journey analysis and zone-based heatmaps.

Focusing on the year ahead, conversational experiences is one of four leading digital CX trends of 2022, according to leading content marketing firm, Skyword. Personalized content, predictive AI and Total Experience (TX) are trends that will dominate this year in the digital CX realm. These trends are driven by the forces of individualization and tangibility in an environment that is non-human.