Weekly briefings from inside the global CX business
CX Files pairs analysts Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan for weekly conversations with people building customer experience and BPO operations around the world. Episodes open with the two comparing notes from wherever they happen to be, then hand over to a guest interview on a specific market, channel, or practice.
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CX Files runs on a simple weekly rhythm: two analysts, one guest, one topic drawn from the working end of the customer experience and outsourcing industry. Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan host. They tend to open by locating themselves, sometimes Sao Paulo and Montreal, sometimes Tbilisi, Berlin, London, Manila, or Munich, which quietly reinforces how geographically spread the business is. The banter is brief. One host then introduces the week's interview, explaining how the guest came across their radar and what question the conversation is meant to answer. Questions are long and carefully signposted. Guests get room to finish a thought, and the hosts often paraphrase before moving on. The subject matter is comparative by instinct. An episode with Sarah Leff of Interact Contact Centres considered the Eastern Cape as a delivery region and why the UK remains the dominant demand market for South African services, with shared media, communication style, and time zones all part of the answer. Chris Chance of CCI Global walked through the launch of the Outsourcing Alliance of Kenya and a framework that splits Africa into mature, emerging, and nascent delivery markets. Channel strategy comes up regularly. Gareth Bray of Premier CX, who worked on the team that rolled WhatsApp out across Europe, discussed asynchronous support and why immediate response is not always what a customer wants, while Ryan noted that Canada has not moved that way yet even as Europe and Latin America have. Technology gets a measured rather than breathless treatment. Roger Barlow of LATAM Translations described AI handling the bulk of translated text competently while still stumbling on names, nuance, irony, and material that would read as inappropriate to a human eye. Melanie Disse of Melanie Disse Consulting raised a structural problem: feedback now arrives from many more sources than surveys, but the contact centre and insights teams who receive it usually cannot fix what it describes. Kwame Agyei, founder of a BPO delivering out of Ghana, talked about serving smaller businesses from Accra. Several of these guests were first found on LinkedIn, and the hosts say so, which tells you something about how the show is put together. Nothing here is dressed up as a trend report. It is closer to a series of practitioner briefings, useful if you need to know what a particular market or channel actually looks like from inside. Episodes close the same way each week, with thanks and an invitation to reach the hosts directly.
Made for: CX and BPO professionals, contact centre operators, outsourcing buyers, and analysts who follow delivery markets and channel strategy. It suits listeners who want practitioner detail about specific countries and technologies rather than general customer-service advice.
What sets it apart: Most customer experience shows stay at the level of principles; this one keeps returning to particular markets, naming the country, the company, and the constraint. The comparative habit, Kenya against Ghana, WhatsApp in Latin America against Canada, is the whole point rather than an aside.
CX Files features your hosts, CX industry analysts Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan, speaking each week to leading analysts, thinkers, and practitioners focused on managing the Customer Experience (CX). In each episode Mark and Peter talk to their guests about the future of CX, the important trends, and what customers really expect from brands today.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
CX Files makes customer-service strategy concrete by tracing it through management, outsourcing, feedback systems and language technology.
CX Files treats customer experience as an operating problem. Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan interview practitioners about the decisions behind contact centers, from developing frontline staff into capable managers to turning customer feedback into action across multiple channels.
This is where your CX strategy travels from Kenya to the Eastern Cape, with receipts.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded review of how the Eastern Cape could turn cultural fluency into CX value for the UK market.
The episode looks at why Interact Contact Centres is backing South Africa's Eastern Cape as a strong base for CX work, with Sarah Leff setting the case around South Africa's natural fit with the UK market.
A grounded Kenya-based look at Africa's rising CX markets, uneven maturity, and the questions beyond low-cost delivery.
Chris Chance's CX Files conversation gives Africa's CX and BPO growth a steadier frame than the usual low-cost outsourcing pitch. Set against the new Outsourcing Alliance of Kenya, it maps the region by market maturity: established players such as South Africa and Egypt,…
A clear look at why hearing customer feedback is not the same as being able to act on it.
Customer feedback turns into an operating problem when the teams hearing it cannot fix what caused it. This episode, featuring Melanie Dissa of Melanie Dissa Consulting, uses that gap to frame a wider customer experience challenge: contact centers that once managed one or two…
A grounded episode on why AI-assisted translation still needs judgment, confidentiality, and cultural fluency.
Roger Barlow's work at Latam Translations gives the episode a practical frame for thinking about AI in translation. Simpler material may come through reasonably well, especially with a strong prompt, but Barlow makes clear why complex ESG reports still need human judgment:…
A practical look at why frontline talent needs real leadership and operations support before promotion.
CX Files centers its conversation with Leo Lopez on a familiar small-business problem: a strong frontline employee is promoted into leadership before the role around them has been fully taught.
Odd questions, followed patiently down to the incentives.
CX industry analyst Peter Ryan interviews Leo Lopez, co-founder of Calltastic, about the top five mistakes startups make with customer experience.
Hosts Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan preview Chris Gillen's keynote at the CX Outsourcers conference in Atlanta.
Mark Hillary interviews Roger Barlow about how AI has transformed translation into interpretation, affecting his business in Brazil.
April 16, 2026 sets the market frame.
CX Files uses Chris Chance of CCI Global to map the Outsourcing Alliance of Kenya and the next wave of African CX and BPO locations.
Steve Sullivan of Channel Doctors tells hosts Peter Ryan and Mark Hillary that customer rage was a problem before COVID but worsened afterward and has not eased.
The CX Files episode on March 26, 2026 centers on Melanie Disse Consulting and the problem of acting on customer feedback.
Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan introduce a discussion with Gareth Bray about why customers prefer WhatsApp for customer support and the benefits of asynchronous communication.
Roger Barlow, who runs Latam Translations in Bragança Paulista, says his work for Energies, Vibra Biagi, CBA, and the FCO now sits alongside AI-assisted post-editing.
Michael Gray says sending employees home with laptops and phones ignores recruitment, training, management, communication, and technology.
Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan introduce an interview with Kwame Agyei, founder of Appoynt, a BPO delivering customer experience services from Ghana.
Pete Jones discusses the evolution and benefits of Visual CX, emphasizing how video support can streamline problem-solving by allowing agents to see issues directly.
Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan introduce an interview with Owen Campbell of Cura about how BPOs can work with regulated industries like healthcare.
Hosts Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan introduce an interview with Michael Aronowitz from VXI, who argues that contact centers must be transformed from cost centers into profit centers to remain competitive.