Less Is More: Half of Today’s Enterprises Have Reduced Their CX Footprint in the Past Year

New TELUS International survey results indicate that half of enterprises are using a single CX delivery partner to achieve all their customer experience goals

Research commissioned by TELUS International, a digital customer experience (CX) innovator that designs, builds and delivers next-generation solutions for global and disruptive brands, found that half of enterprises have reduced their CX provider footprint over the last 12 months, with 51% using a single provider and 44% engaged with only two to three providers.

“In many cases, we’re seeing enterprises rethinking their existing CX partnerships to form fewer, stronger, trusted relationships that encompass the full spectrum of capabilities and expertise to implement, evolve and scale their end-to-end CX strategy, including the provision of more complex services, such as content moderation and AI solutions”

The survey¹, conducted by BPO consultancy firm, Ryan Strategic Advisory on behalf of TELUS International, revealed a significant trend in enterprises consolidating CX providers over the past five years. While only 27% of enterprises were in the process of reducing the number of providers they worked with five years ago, that percentage jumped to 44% two years ago, and has roughly doubled from five years ago to 50% over the past 12 months.

“The global survey results indicate that many companies are no longer looking to diversify their CX partner footprint, rather they are looking to form a trusted partnership with far fewer, or even just a single provider that has the breadth and scope of experience and solutions to offer end-to-end services that span across the full customer experience value chain,” said Peter Ryan, Principal Analyst at Ryan Strategic Advisory. “This could be indicative of the wide range of challenges today’s enterprises are facing, from significant world events such as the pandemic exponentially accelerating consumers’ digital adoption, to having increasingly limited internal resources to manage multiple external CX partners, to not having the in-house digital expertise needed to design, build and deliver today’s more complex digital CX solutions and services.”

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Enterprises Want More Complex, End-to-End CX Services
The global enterprise executives surveyed indicated that 40% would leave a CX provider if they were unable to provide all of the complex digital CX services they needed. Presently, 65% responded that they receive two or more services from a single CX partner versus 35% who only receive one service, and 58% of respondents indicated that this number has increased since the start of the pandemic. Respondents indicated they have engaged a single CX partner for complex services such as artificial intelligence (67%), digital IT (68%), content moderation (72%) and digital CX (77%).

“In many cases, we’re seeing enterprises rethinking their existing CX partnerships to form fewer, stronger, trusted relationships that encompass the full spectrum of capabilities and expertise to implement, evolve and scale their end-to-end CX strategy, including the provision of more complex services, such as content moderation and AI solutions,” said Maria Pardee, chief commercial officer, TELUS International. “Our new economy services portfolio ensures that we are able to support our clients’ growth ambitions over the long-term, providing them with the services and solutions they need to be able to keep up with market trends and consumer behavior, which indicate a need for more smart products as well as more personalized, frictionless and anticipatory brand and customer experiences.”

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