Launching a disruptive brand is thrilling, but surviving and thriving in an industry of entrenched giants demands more than just a great idea. The real test is earning credibility, attracting early adopters and transforming sceptical buyers into evangelists. In this unforgiving landscape, CX is the make-or-break factor that determines who wins and who fades away.
Six red flags that warn of CX trouble ahead
An industry disruptor’s to-do list never ends: innovation, trend-tracking, cost control, brand building… the list goes on. All too often, customer experience drops to the bottom, and invisible problems quietly accumulate until they threaten your entire trajectory.
Did you know that more than one-half of consumers will switch to a competitor after only one bad experience? That’s a risk no disruptor can afford.
So, what are the warning signs? Here’s what you should look for:
- Hiring and retention challenges: Difficulty attracting or keeping skilled agents, especially those with specialised expertise or language skills.
- Staffing problems: Inability to scale talent up or down as volumes shift, leading to burnout or wasted resources.
- More complaints than praise: Slipping customer satisfaction as you fall behind on response times and struggle to fix issues.
- Innovation bottlenecks: Executives pulled away from strategic initiatives to deal with support fires, stalling growth and progress.
- Unsustainable CX costs: Ballooning capital and operating expenses that squeeze budgets and limit your flexibility.
- Technology limitations: A patchwork of outdated systems that cost too much to fix and block real efficiency improvements.
If you recognise these in your own operation, you’re at a strategic CX crossroads. Ignoring these red flags just opens the door for competitors to win over your customers.
Three options: Stay, build or partner
The instinct to “tough it out” in-house is common but risky, and the reward for maintaining the status quo is rarely positive. You have three options to consider:
Option 1: Stay the course
Continue as you are, hoping incremental fixes will be enough (spoiler alert: this rarely pays off for rapid-growth brands facing resource constraints and scaling demands).
Option 2: Double down on in-house
Invest in expanding, modernising and managing your own contact centre. This means not only upfront infrastructure costs but also ongoing spending on tech, compliance, quality monitoring, workforce management and constant training. It’s high-touch, intensive and often slower (and riskier!) than fast-moving disruptors realise.
Option 3: Explore a BPO partnership
Leverage a business process outsourcing (BPO) partner. Outsourcing the right way means accessing advanced CX expertise, proven tech, skilled multilingual agents and agile operations — without the headache of building and managing it all yourself. Plus, you can flex capacity as you grow, keep costs predictable and focus your leadership’s energy on innovation.
Why disruptors choose CX outsourcing
Whether you’re fighting for market share against established players or bracing for rapid growth, we have a whitepaper that will help you spot hidden risks in your customer support, evaluate your options and leverage outsourcing for exponential impact.
Download “CX outsourcing for strategic growth” and discover why outsourcing could be your key to greater disruption and a stronger competitive advantage.