Following COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns in 2020, the global outsourced customer experience management (CXM) market spiked in 2021, with the fastest year-on-year growth (between 12 percent and 14 percent) in recent history, according to Everest Group.
Growth of the CXM outsourcing market, which currently stands at 31 percent of overall global CXM spend, including in-house contact centers, outpaced GDP growth in all economies in 2021 after a decline in 2020, the research firm concluded.
Everest Group says the CXM outsourcing market will continue to grow, albeit at a more normalized rate (between 7 percent and 9 percent), despite the uncertainty presented by a looming recession. In fact, the recession will act as an indirect market driver; to compensate for low buying sentiment, companies will focus on customer service and retention, thereby spurring continued growth in CXM outsourcing during the next few years, it said.
Additional growth drivers will include the following:
- A considerable shift of contact center operations toward a hybrid delivery model, with greater emphasis on gig and work-at-home (WAH) agents;
- The increasing use of conversational artificial intelligence and automation to decrease reliance on full-time employees while delivering better CX outcomes; and
- A foray of first-time outsourcers into the CXM market, especially among small and midsized businesses.
Everest Group also uncovered some geographic dynamics in the CXM market, including the following:
- Numerous mergers and acquisitions, primarily focused on expanding geographic presence;
- Multiple new multilingual hubs emerging in Eastern Europe;
- The linguistically diverse southeast Asian region being considered for Asian language capabilities; and
- Africa experiencing increasing demand from customers in the Middle East and Africa and from companies looking to diversify their service delivery footprint by shifting work away from India and the Philippines.
"The future of CXM service delivery will be defined by a combination of locations, technology, and delivery models to create unique solutions that are flexible, scalable, and tailored, based on each enterprise's requirements," said Shirley Hung, a partner at Everest Group, in a statement. "The service providers who are growing faster than the market average are those who offer end-to-end CXM solutions that include advanced digital tools, front- and back-office services, and advisory and consulting services to provide bespoke solutions tailored to their clients' requirements."