Holden Olsen

🧠 Errors are feedback, not failure. In BPO, we’re wired to minimize mistakes. But when perfection becomes the goal, growth gets sidelined. The best CX teams aren’t flawless. They’re fearless. They operate in cultures where missteps spark learning, not blame. Where agents are trusted to think, not just execute. If we want innovation at the edge, we need to normalize the messy middle, where experiments happen, feedback flows, and real progress begins. Because when people feel safe to get it wrong, they’re far more likely to get it right. #CX #BPO #POSitivelyDifferentCX #POSCX

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The best BPO strategy is highly dependent on your context. What works for a fintech scaling fast in three languages is not what works for a retail brand navigating thin margins and high turnover. And neither of those strategies fits a healthcare org with HIPAA constraints and aging infrastructure. 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 🔹 Industry regulations 🔹 Customer lifecycle complexity 🔹 Internal vendor management capacity 🔹 Labor mix (W2 vs. 1099 vs. EOR) 🔹 Required SLAs (by channel) 🔹 Degree of AI-readiness 🔹 Near-term vs. long-term cost pressures 🔹 This list gets pretty long, but you get the idea. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗲. I’ve helped clients across industries — healthcare, energy, retail, hospitality, finance, etc. — architect contact center strategies that: ✅ Reduce cost per contact — without cutting corners ✅ Boost NPS through specialization and coverage ✅ Enable continuous to-spec service quality across LATAM, APAC, and EMEA ✅ Maintain agility to scale or pivot without replatforming At Site Selection Group (https://bit.ly/43bQSz9), we have access to a vetted database of geographical insights. After 38 years in the contact center space, our network encompasses countless pre-vetted BPO providers across onshore, nearshore, and offshore regions. And our expertise in CX, outsourcing, and operational leadership enables us to match clients with the right-fit partners based on actual business constraints (not slide decks and RFPs). We can help you maximize the value of CX outsourcing. Check out my video on how: https://bit.ly/3ZgTTvD #Consulting #Outsourcing #BPO

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Outsourcing your contact center might be the smartest move you make this year. This blog from HGS breaks down 7 powerful reasons why businesses are turning to outsourcing to boost efficiency, reduce costs, and deliver exceptional CX.

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Need night-shift coverage that hits SLAs and stays consistent every week? Our latest guide breaks down how a Philippines-based Support VA can run chat, email, voice, and social queues with strong QA, secure handling, and dependable response times. Inside: 🧭 Coverage blocks for stable US hours 📈 Per-channel SLA targets you can copy and tune 📝 A 10-point QA rubric with calibration workflows 🔒 When to convert to EOR for payroll proof and PII controls #CustomerSupport #SupportVA #EmployerOfRecord #CXOperations #PhilippinesTalent #NightShift #SLA #QA #RemoteTeams #Outsourcing #SupportOps

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Here’s why I like this Service to Sales model: it doesn’t try to force sales, it turns support conversations into value-driven offers just when they matter. By blending behavioral data, intent recognition, and coaching, TTEC helps transform routine care interactions into real revenue, while keeping CX tight. Curious how support + sales can coexist? This explains it: https://okt.to/xA4oky

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Inefficient workforce management erodes both service quality and profitability. When staffing fails to align with actual demands, contact centers either overspend on idle agents or underserve customers, driving up both costs and complaints. At SSG, our WFM solutions analyze historical patterns, seasonal shifts, and promotional calendars to project demand down to the hour. This reduces costly overstaffing and reactive hiring. Using live data, we dynamically adjust breaks, shift overlaps, and task allocations to keep service levels intact without unnecessary overtime. We help businesses cut contact center labor costs while improving service — creating wins for agents, customers, and your bottom line. 🔔 Follow me for more insights on WFM for contact centers! #BPO #ContactCenter #WorkforceManagement

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According to Sg2’s 2025 Impact of Change Forecast, healthcare demand is set to grow significantly over the next decade, especially in outpatient and home-based care. 🔹 Outpatient volumes: +18% (Outpatient surgeries: +20%) 🔹 Post-acute care: +31% (home health leads at +24%) 🔹 Virtual visits: +19% 🔹 Pediatric & cancer care shifting outpatient to handle increased volumes 🔹 Inpatient care: +5%, with increasing acuity Implication: Health systems must rethink clinical operations, digital investments, staffing models and physical footprints. #Sg2

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Mike and Max sat down with MarTech Edge to discuss how Alorica’s digital-first solutions are transforming customer experiences. Learn how blending human empathy with automation enables businesses to pivot faster. https://lnkd.in/g6zNTZ99

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Most CX leaders aren’t struggling with AI. They’re struggling with trade-offs. You can: Protect margin. Or protect experience. Standardize everything. Or empower judgment. Push self-service hard. Or make it easy to reach a human. Every decision looks small in isolation. But stacked together? They define your brand. The hard part of leading CX in 2026 isn’t technology. It’s deciding where you’re willing to disappoint someone: Finance. Operations. The customer. Or your team. The best leaders I see are clear on one thing: They choose intentionally. Not reactively. If you’re leading a service organization right now, What trade-off are you being forced to make this quarter?

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Great to see Joel Sylvester sharing how the landscape of customer experience is evolving. It’s no longer about managing constraints, but about dreaming bigger—whether that’s scaling 24/7 or leveraging a global network of skilled agents alongside the latest AI. At the heart of it, the goal remains the same: creating world-class, tailored solutions that solve the unique problems each business faces. Watch the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gn-APYRQ

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Nearly 6 in 10 consumers have stopped doing business with a brand after just one bad experience. That’s not a rounding error, that’s a wake up call. The latest CMSWire research with Justin Robbins / Metric Sherpa reveals the CX confidence disconnect: 91% of leaders believe customers experience their brand as intended… only 36% of consumers agree. 79% feel forgotten after multiple interactions. Just 17% are very comfortable with AI in support. 72% expect to know when they’re talking to AI. 👉 The problem isn’t AI. It’s how brands use it. Overconfidence without delivery erodes trust. At Movate, our approach is different. We: ⚡ Provide an AI incubation team to guide every stage: strategy, design, rollout, adoption, and optimization ⚡ Design end-to-end experiences that cut repetitive requests and lower customer effort ⚡ Support, educate, and enable both teams and customers before and after AI adoption ⚡ Ensure seamless AI-to-human handoffs, so customers feel recognized, not reset The future of CX isn’t just about adding AI. It’s about making it trustworthy, transparent, and effortless. Read the entire article here: https://lnkd.in/eFQQn6Ck

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The teams I see making real progress treat VOC as a living operational signal. But in a lot of CX conversations lately, NPS has become the comfort metric. And to be fair, it is important to know whether customers would recommend you. It’s also easy to report and defend in meetings. But the score doesn’t tell you what to do next… and it definitely doesn’t guarantee future behavior. Brian Riback’s CMSWire piece (worth the read) nails the core issue: NPS is what customers say… but it doesn’t reliably tell you what customers will do next. https://lnkd.in/db_PRs39 It’s not that NPS is useless. It’s that it shouldn’t be the headline, and the drivers shouldn’t get ignored. If your NPS drops, don't react with “how do we raise it?” Instead ask: *What broke in the journey? *Where did the handoff fail? *What’s causing repeat contacts? *What are we making customers work too hard to understand? That’s why I’m big on “living VOC” approaches. If you could replace NPS with one operational signal tomorrow, what would you choose? #CustomerExperience #CX #VoiceOfCustomer #NPS #CustomerInsights

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Let’s be honest—recognition in customer service often sounds like, "Thanks for handling that tough call." But when we elevate recognition from a pat on the back to a strategic CX lever, something powerful happens. ✨ Employees who feel valued are more likely to perform at their best. (Gallup) ✨ 70% of CX success comes from emotional intelligence and soft skills. These are hard to train—but easy to reinforce through recognition. (Harvard Business Review) What does building recognition into the rhythm of operations look like? → Celebrating “moments that matter” (e.g. when an advisor de-escalates a frustrated customer with empathy) → Tying performance incentives not just to speed or volume—but customer feedback and quality → Sharing customer shout-outs to boost morale and reinforce positive behavior → Using recognition tools that keep momentum high, not just end-of-quarter rewards(Deloitte,) When frontline teams feel seen—not just for numbers, but for nuance—they don’t just show up for work. They show up for customers.

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After three decades in this business, I’ve seen every ‘revolutionary’ technology promise to transform contact centers. Most fell flat. But AI is different. Let me show you why. We just wrapped a pilot program across 2,500 agents. The numbers don't lie. 🎯 First call resolution jumped 18% in three months 🎯 Average handle time dropped 23 seconds per call 🎯 That's real money when you're processing 50,000 calls daily Was it all smooth? Absolutely not. The change management was brutal. Half our supervisors fought the new routing algorithms because they didn't understand them. We had to make sure people understood AI so they didn’t fear AI. What made a difference was that we never tried to replace agents — we focused on empowering them. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐝: ⚡ Real-time event classification – gives reps instant coaching cues ⚡Predictive routing – matches customers to the right specialist before frustration builds ⚡Knowledge base automation – surfaces answers while agents are still listening 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐭: 1) Your change management strategy matters more than your technology choice 2) Agent buy-in happens when AI makes their job easier, not when it threatens their role 3) Executive sponsorship means nothing without middle management commitment AI in contact centers isn’t a plug-and-play upgrade. It’s an operational transformation. Companies that miss this end up with pilots that never scale. 👉 Curious — what has your experience with AI rollouts been like so far? . . . #AIinContactCenters #CX #EX Manu Patrick Christopher Michael Sharath Synthflow AI Jordan Zivoder Kali Sarim Mark Brody

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Curiosity and courage. They’re not buzzwords. They’re the real drivers of progress in customer experience—and if you're not leaning into both, you're likely falling behind. Too often in CX, we celebrate the metrics without questioning what’s behind them. CSAT’s up? Great. But why? NPS dipped? Sure—but what changed? The best CX leaders I’ve worked with don’t just look at numbers. They interrogate them. They follow the trail until it either confirms or challenges what they thought they knew. That’s curiosity. And it’s not optional anymore. But curiosity without courage is just analysis paralysis. It takes guts to walk into a meeting and challenge the status quo. It takes real leadership to propose a new approach, push for a better tool, or sunset a process that’s comfortable but outdated. At Transcom, we’ve built a culture that rewards the question and the action. We encourage teams to bring ideas forward—even when they feel risky. Especially when they feel risky. Because real transformation doesn't happen when everyone plays it safe. If you're leading a CX team today, ask yourself: Are we encouraging questions at every level? Do our people feel safe to speak up when something isn’t working? When we learn something new, do we act on it—or shelve it? Curiosity fuels insight. Courage fuels change. But culture determines whether either one survives. And in this space, the leaders who win are the ones who stay curious, stay brave, and never stop listening. #CustomerExperience #CXLeadership #Innovation #CuriosityAndCourage #Transcom #LeadershipMatters #CustomerFirst

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Great article, which inspires thinking and evaluations .... Legacy KPIs Are Out—Next‑Gen Metrics Are In Main Takeaways from CX Today: 1️⃣ Traditional metrics are losing relevance—metrics like Average Handle Time (AHT) or sheer call volume fail to reflect quality and strategic customer experience. 2️⃣ Emergence of smarter insights—forward-looking measures such as Predictive Satisfaction Scoring, Success Scores, and Conversational Dashboards give leaders faster, action-driven data. 3️⃣ Shift from self-focused to customer-outcome measurement—we’re moving from “how efficient we are” to “how effectively we drive satisfaction and business outcomes.” Time for a New KPI Playbook in the Agentic AI Era --> some food for thought and for evaluation in the context of AI (web search) As CX evolves toward AI-powered, outcome-driven service, it's time to complement legacy KPIs with new, modern indicators that measure what truly matters: 1. Frictionless Resolution Rate Percentage of customer issues resolved end-to-end by AI (or hybrid) without human intervention—or with seamless handoff—reflecting smooth service journeys. 2. Moment Completion Efficiency (MCE) Tracks the success rate of critical customer journey moments (e.g., first login to purchase, support request to resolution), capturing both speed and emotional quality. 3. Outcome-Centric Success Score A blended indicator combining resolution quality, emotional sentiment, and downstream behavior (e.g., upsell, retention), giving holistic view of experience impact. 4. Cross‑Channel Consistency Index Measures smoothness and coherence across channels (voice, chat, email, SMS), ensuring customer context (and satisfaction) is maintained. 5. AI Learning Velocity Tracks how rapidly AI (gen AI or agentic) improves over time—based on reduced errors, faster responses, fewer escalations—demonstrating adaptive ROI. 6. Revenue-attributable Automation Ratio Percentage of generated or saved revenue directly tied to AI-enabled transactions (e.g., retention, renewals, upsells), shifting focus from cost saving to growth enablement. Why These KPIs Matter Now In the service-as-software era, brands must go beyond measuring efficiency—toward tracking empowerment, satisfaction, and business outcomes. From AI agents autonomously managing workflows to real-time hybrid collaboration, these KPIs signal maturity—and competitive advantage. Ready to rethink your CX playbook? Let’s connect. https://lnkd.in/e_CxTg-H Parloa

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Here’s why I like this Service to Sales model: it doesn’t try to force sales, it turns support conversations into value-driven offers just when they matter. By blending behavioral data, intent recognition, and coaching, TTEC helps transform routine care interactions into real revenue, while keeping CX tight. Curious how support + sales can coexist? This explains it: https://okt.to/b1jsfa

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Sweet reviews don’t just happen—they’re given to CX teams with skills. 🎯 Like, real skills. Optimization skills. Feedback-loop-closure skills. AI skills. Basically all the skills CXone Mpower can provide. Behind every 5-star experience is a CX leader making flippin’ smart moves, like Jon Heder as “Future You”. Learn how in our latest series: https://bit.ly/3S1nyoy #FutureYou #FutureIsDynamite #CustomerExperience

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