Constellation ShortList™ Customer Experience (CX) Operations Services: Global

Customer experience (CX) operations services span everything from shaping organizational models and defining required technology capabilities to implementing CX technologies and, in some cases, providing technology and operations outsourcing. These services companies help companies implement the infrastructure and operational capabilities required to deliver consistently good customer experiences. They combine global reach with technology integration expertise, business operations knowledge, change management capabilities, and collaborative design processes. In this age of AI fluency, clients increasingly expect these firms to help implement data and model infrastructures and apply AI capabilities to accelerate output, enhance impact, and deliver results.

CX services providers work with all functional departments, such as marketing, sales, customer service, supply chain, ecommerce, and IT. They assess and implement the right tools to manage customer interactions across all channels (e.g., email, chat, text, websites, phone, social networks) and devices (e.g., phones, tablets, desktops), and optimize each to deliver a flawless experience. Because their expertise extends from front-end customer interfaces to back-office systems, they support a range of operational improvements that go far beyond direct customer interactions.

CX operational services include best practices, strategy design, delivery, and testing methodologies to help clients achieve optimal, customer-centric CX. These firms often create long- and short-term road maps, emphasizing low-hanging fruit and rapid ROI. They may also incorporate a range of design capabilities, including user interfaces, service design, and tangible outputs such as physical environments. Increasingly, these firms are guiding AI strategies to better leverage data to enhance, personalize, and automate critical customer interactions.

Threshold Criteria

Constellation considers the following criteria for these solutions:

• Best-practices methodology
• Assessment tools
• Art-of-the-possible strategy and technology road map
• Deep strategic partnerships with core CX vendors and technologies
• Focused strategic services focused the intersection of CX and AI
• Customer references
• Design and creative space
• Differentiated IP
• Design-thinking approach
• Operating in three continents
• Innovation centers
• Deployable teams (from engineers to functional execution experts)