White Paper: Driving The Best B2B CX Results With An Outsourcing Partner

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An ICON White Paper
November 2021

Prepared by Mr. Peter Ryan, Principle, Ryan Strategic Advisory.
Ryan Strategic Advisory is a specialised agency providing BPO advisory services with a focus on customer experience excellence, work-at-home delivery, BCP, and offshoring.

This white paper is the result of ICON’s round table discussion exploring the premise, “Why are some brands hesitant to outsource B2B activity”. Outsourcing B2C interactions is common place but outsourcing B2B can prove to be more of a hurdle. This was explored by discussing the following questions with the attendees listed underneath.

• What are the pain points of running an in-house B2B CX operation?
• What are the challenges that impede B2B enterprises from outsourcing CX services?
• What are the drivers for outsourcing B2B CX functions?
• Are there any CX functions that particularly lend themselves to a B2B environment?
• What should a CX outsourcer bring to the table for B2B brands?
• Have you outsourced B2B activity previously, and what impacted that decision, either positive or negative?
• How much does vertical expertise count when outsourcing B2B activity?
• Are some verticals better suited to the B2B CX outsourcing market?
• Does localisation of service count as much as it does in the B2C space?
• Does a B2C track record mean anything when seeking a B2B outsourcing partner?

Round Table Attendees

Peter Ryan – Host

As the Principal at Ryan Strategic Advisory, Peter provides commercially relevant counsel to stakeholders across the front-office BPO ecosystem, including contact centre outsourcers, CRM technology players, offshore development agencies and industry associations.

Neal Bartram – ICON

Neal Bartram is currently the Chief Operating Officer at ICON; he has 22 years of experience in sales and customer service operations across a variety of verticals with global brands. Neal specialises in maximizing the value of human resources through the use of technology, he is constantly redesigning and optimising customer journeys to push the boundaries of what is possible to deliver ever increasing cost effectiveness, ROI, and customer experience.

Phil Kitchen – Director – Contact Centre Panel

Contact Centre Panel helps clients find the right telemarketing, call or contact centre partner. Their network consists of over 70 on, near and offshore outsourcers covering all manner of functions across B2B and B2C business and consumer interactions, including sales, customer service, appointment generation, credit, and debt management. Contact Centre Panel considers its network members to be best of breed in their field.

Adam Dorrell – CEO & Co-Founder – CustomerGauge
Adam is an experienced CEO with more than 25 years in marketing and sales for start-ups and corporates. In 2007 he co-founded CustomerGauge, a leading Net Promoter SaaS system. CustomerGauge has 100s of clients globally with offices in Amsterdam and Boston. Adam’s extensive background also encompasses senior roles in Dell, HP, Sony, and Philips.

David Rumble – Co-Founder – The Knowledge Group

David is an industry leader for customer experience, digitisation, outsourcing and multi-shoring. He co-founded The Knowledge Group (TKG), a disruptive sourcing firm that use analytics, machine learning and technology to predict and implement the best sourcing model for outsourced delivery solutions. TKG is built on many years of experience in the outsourcing sector and harnesses an international marketplace in combination with requirement matching to take the complexity out of sourcing, building and running outsourced service operations.