{"id":4065,"date":"2018-06-29T10:10:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T10:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/convergys-concentrix_062918\/"},"modified":"2021-12-03T06:32:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-03T06:32:23","slug":"convergys-concentrix_062918","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/convergys-concentrix_062918\/","title":{"rendered":"Concentrix gets up close and personal with Teleperformance with its Convergys acquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"
One of the worst-kept secrets in the world of call centers finally went from gossip to reality as Synnex Corp added Convergys to its acquisition portfolio to roll under Concentrix. As we covered here in 2013<\/a>, IBM spun out its call center business to the Concentrix brand and – almost five years on – will merge forces with Concentrix under the leadership of Chris Caldwell (recently interviewed here<\/a>).<\/p>\n So, from 10,000 people (just 5 years ago) to being very close behind the market leader, let’s see how the call center market is shaking out right now:<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Let’s just get right to the nub here… what’s good and not-so-good about this lovely marriage?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Pros<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Cons<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The Bottom-line: As long as this “traditional consolidation” is short-term, this could pave the way for a OneOffice future for the winning contact center providers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Let’s cut to the chase here – Convergys is a great call center provider, but lacked the leadership and investment to break into the digital era effectively. This merger may just provide that opportunity for a very talented employee base with a terrific customer culture. For Concentrix, they needed one big play to get up-close-and-personal with Teleperformance, and this is the move. Plus, the price was really damn good, and we’re surprised why others with huge financial backing didn’t make the move, such as Sitel or Arvato.<\/p>\n On the negative side, these contact center heavyweights appear to be doubling-down on size and scale, rather than pursuing a true OneOffice vision<\/a> for digital customer engagement. We are more excited about some of the smaller acquisitions happening in the space, such as Webhelp’s recent Sellbytell acquisition from Omnicomm and SYKES’ pursuing digital marketing with Clearlink<\/a> – connecting the pieces in the front office as marketing, service and sales continue to overlap and converge, and using the vast amounts of customer data they process to better engage with customers. <\/p>\n The large contact centers can’t seem to get out of their own way—they talk about providing digital, analytics and CX consulting focused services, but the reality is that the bulk of their business is still traditional contact center. Despite some real capabilities, salespeople aren’t incentivized to sell a different way, and customers aren’t ponying up to partner and buy a different way. Continuing in this paradigm is a short-sighted view… look at what is happening with eroding revenues from the telco sector now, the most mature of the contact centers will eventually happen in other sectors, such as retail and banking. In addition, the wave of “chat only” deals are increasing and threatening the life out of the traditional voice business. Providers like Teleperformance and Concentrix don’t have to disown their core business – there’s always going to be a huge market for traditional interaction management, however, adding some truly differentiated digital offerings would be a much smarter long-term strategy.<\/p>\n Net-net, this is a massive coup for Synnex and the Concentrix management teams – and Convergys has found a good home to focus on the future with confidence. However, we would like to see some significant investments in intelligent automation and digital technologies to drag contact center BPO into the OneOffice era. Let’s hope these guys can work it out, as there is a real war on between the legacy cost-obsessed approach and the OneOffice approach…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the worst-kept secrets in the world of call centers finally went from gossip to reality as Synnex Corp added Convergys…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,833],"tags":[303],"organization":[],"ppma_author":[19,34],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contact-center-and-omni-channel","category-oneoffice","tag-enterprise-irregulars"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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