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Building an effective CX partnership.

Jonas Berggren

Head Of Business Development NE

Core services

CX,

partnership,

BPO services,

outsourcing,

specialization,

customer service,

Customer experience,

Published on Fri Aug 07 2026

Updated on Fri Aug 07 2026

4 minute read

The majority of companies - across all industries and all geographic regions - handle their customer service processes internally. It is hard to get specific data on a percentage split between in-house customer service and outsourcing this to a partner because it varies from region to region and industry. However, analyst estimates vary from approximately half to three-quarters of all companies handling all customer experience (CX) processes internally. So there are a lot of companies out there that have captive CX in-house.

Some will not even be considering partnership as an option, and some will be considering it for the first time. Many will be assessing the option to work with a partner based on experience from a long time ago. My colleague Dario Bakovic recently wrote an excellent LinkedIn post on this theme where he argued that if he is looking to buy a Peugeot car in 2026, then he will not form an opinion on that brand based on his memory of his father’s Peugeot from 1998. So why work with a partner now?

Think about why you insist on keeping the CX team in-house - or using an internal business service unit to “outsource” internally. The most common answer is to retain control over processes. The next answer is usually the retention of deep insight into customer behavior or trends. But after these two answers - which could be defended as reasonable in some cases - there are other reasons that seem harder to defend as rational.

Empire protection is when managers perceive that their own personal value to a company will diminish if they work with a partner - because their direct reports will no longer report to them. Some managers fear the transition from managing a visibly large group of internal people, rather than managing suppliers. Meanwhile, legacy bias is the outdated view that a company only ever works with a supplier when the outcome is a lower cost service. This attitude once applied to customer service managers who all explored offshoring to remote locations with the intention of reducing the cost to service their business. Managers that remain concerned with this issue will talk about the loss of control or issues around quality that are bound to arise when working with a partner.

Put yourself in the shoes of a retail or banking CEO. It’s possible to argue that you want to remain close to your customer by managing customer service processes in-house. It gives you close insight into customer trends and demands. But are you really going to ignore the opportunity to improve how your business interacts with those customers because some of your management has outdated views on outsourcing, or they are just concerned about protecting their own empire?

On the other hand, the strongest argument for working with a specialist customer experience partner today is something that many managers fear losing - their expertise. The problem is that the world is changing so quickly that most internal teams are not designed to respond to the rate of change. They want stability. Artificial intelligence, process automation, multilingual services and exploring how to base the cost of a service on outcomes rather than headcount are all areas where specialist partners are now investing time and effort.

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What are the benefits of offshore BPO? Your practical guide.

Transcom

Created at Mon Aug 10 2026

10 min read

What are the benefits of offshore BPO? Your practical guide.

Cutting costs by 40% to 70%, achieving 24/7 service coverage, and accessing a vast global talent pool of skilled workers are just a few reasons why offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) could be your company’s next competitive advantage. Strategic benefits ranging from enterprise-grade tech to airtight security - all financed flexibility without steep upfront investments - are driving businesses of every scale to delegate more non-core functions to overseas providers. But doing

Resistance to change may feel like the retention of control - and control feels safer than partnership - but the reality in this modern business environment is that partnership with a specialist supplier will produce better outcomes for your customers. It is the less risky option. Internal business processes are rarely designed to embrace change. This is exactly why so many managers who have always focused on in-house services still have a negative view on partnership.

Offshoring processes to other locations can be scary. People who have had a negative experience in different locations may hold some prejudice - they don’t want to repeat earlier mistakes. But so many offshore service locations have changed with experience. Places that were once innovative are now mature, and capabilities are emerging in new places all over the world. A customer service specialist will be on top of this change constantly - that’s our job. We track change and plan for innovation. We seek out customer voices and predict how the changing technology will create different customer expectations.

The reality is that managing a modern customer journey is no longer just managing calls. Customer interactions can be managed across many different channels and they can then trigger other business processes - technical troubleshooting, a fraud investigation, managing a disputed payment. All this requires a focus on innovation and continuous transformation. The design of modern CX processes are now focused on technology. Any CX partner now has to have serious insight into the way that constantly evolving technology can be used to improve your customer interactions.

This is a cultural difference. An in-house team focused solely on the process associated with customer interactions will usually try to focus on stability. A stable number of channels, customer interactions, and a stable technology platform. But the world no longer functions this way.

Just look at my previous post exploring how brands can make customers love their products. This is a complex branch of neuroscience. This requires a deep understanding of products, processes, and how customers engage - to design customer journeys that feel fantastic. Not every customer journey will resemble a visit to a Disney theme park, but even a visit to a favorite retail outlet can feel good.

This is the real challenge. If you try to retain control over customer service processes by maintaining the view that an external partner is a risk, then the real risk is that your business is outpaced by your competition and customer expectations. Control may feel safer than partnership, but reframe the question and ask why you are not taking advice from the people at the frontline of managing how customers engage with brands today?

Jonas Berggren

Created at Fri Aug 07 2026

4 min read