When you outsource part of your customer experience, someone else’s team speaks to your customers for you.
That takes guts from the brand doing the outsourcing. You are trusting a team you did not hire to look after the people your business depends on. Choosing a partner is a big call, and it’s one you shouldn’t just leave to your AI assistant. In the end, the decision comes down to who you can trust, and that’s always been a human question.
In my experience, trust starts with the relationship between the leaders on each side. When leaders have genuine relationships, they build a level of transparency, trust and understanding that helps both teams spot challenges sooner and fix them faster. It also speeds up innovation and motivation, and the frontline team feeds off that energy.
Those relationships are the foundation. On top of them, I believe three things separate the partners worth trusting. They welcome incentives that are connected to earned results, they are excited to show you how the work gets done, and they respond to urgent moments with a plan. If your CX outsourcing partner runs from any of those three things, you should be running from them.
This article takes each in turn, with a question you can ask any partner, including us.
1. Your CX outsourcing partner should welcome incentives connected to earned results
When what a CX outsourcing partner earns depends on results you care about, you and the partner end up working toward the same goals. Every commercial model creates an incentive, because it points a partner’s attention at something. Each of these fits some programs well, and they differ in what the fee follows.
| Pricing model | What the fee follows | Example measure |
| Input-based | Resources provided | Hours staffed or full-time agents |
| Output-based | Work completed | Contacts handled |
| Outcome-based | Results achieved | First-contact resolution, customer satisfaction, sales conversion |
| Hybrid | A mix of the above | A base fee plus a results-linked portion |
Buyers are moving toward the outcome end of that table. Everest Group’s Customer Experience Management (CXM) Services PEAK Matrix® 2026 — Americas finds that enterprises now place more value on transparent pricing tied to outcomes than on the lowest available rate. The same report points to TELUS Digital’s mix of pricing models, with notable depth in outcome-based arrangements.
To see the difference between models, consider a retail company that outsources its order support. Over a few weeks, one issue starts to dominate. Customers who return an item keep calling back because the instructions for printing the return label are unclear, and about one-in-eight contacts is now a repeat call on that one step. Under a model that follows contacts handled, the partner is paid to handle those calls well. Under one that follows first-contact resolution, the partner earns when customers get an answer the first time. That gives the partner a reason to trace the repeat calls to their source and bring that finding to the retailer, so the retailer can fix the instructions. Both models can serve the retailer, but only the second links what the partner earns to those repeat calls going away.
Jim Mitchell, vice president of customer experience and digital innovation here at TELUS Digital, covers the mechanics in his article on transforming CX delivery in a cost-conscious world. One point in particular is worth underlining. The outcome has to reflect the value being created, because the wrong measure points both sides at the wrong target. He also notes that this kind of pricing moves the relationship from transactional to strategic and gives both sides a longer-term view.
Choosing the outcome is half of the work. The other half is agreeing how you will both know whether you are hitting it.
What to agree on before you sign an outcome-based contract
An outcome-based partnership only works when both sides settle the terms up front.
Terms should include:
- A baseline. Where results stand today, so improvement is measured against something tangible.
- How results are measured. Which system is the source of truth and over what period.
- Outside factors. How seasonality, a product launch, or an outage affects the numbers.
- What changes as results move. How the fee adjusts when results land above or below target.
The model also suits some programs better than others. A brand-new program with no baseline is hard to price on outcomes until it has a few months of data, and a trustworthy partner will say so.
The signal to run from is a partner that will not discuss any results-linked component at all, or cannot name the baseline and measures it would use.
| Ask: What do you earn when my outcomes improve?
A good answer names the specific results, the baseline, and how the fee changes as they move. |
2. Your CX outsourcing partner should be excited to show you how the work gets done
A partner’s team will speak to your customers every day, so you should meet them, and a good partner will want you to. That matters more as AI takes on routine contacts, because the ones that reach a person are the harder ones.
When customers need advice, they still trust people more. In a Gartner survey of 5,801 U.S. customers, 54% said they trust human agents more than AI for product or service recommendations, compared with 32% who trust AI more. That trust rests on the person on the line, and your brand inherits the outcome of every conversation.
A site visit is the simplest way to get a sense of the people you are considering trusting with your customers. Ask to spend an hour on the floor of the site where your program would run, and to meet the team lead who would own your account. If an in-person visit is not possible, ask for a live walkthrough. Look for leaders who know their agents and agents who have the ability to raise ideas and concerns.
A partner that will show you a polished presentation but not the operation behind it is one to run from.
| Ask: When can I visit, and who will I meet?
A good answer names a date and the team lead who would run your program. |
3. Your CX outsourcing partner should respond to urgent moments with a plan
An urgent moment is any time your volume or priorities change faster than the agreed plan can absorb, whether the cause is a problem or an opportunity. That is when you find out whether you have a flexible partner, with leaders you can go to for clarity and guidance.
Suppose a billing error reaches a segment of your customers overnight and contacts double by the morning. An outsourcing partner whose leaders step up will do four things:
- Call you promptly with a recommendation on how many agents to add and by when
- Get a working script in front of agents quickly
- Tell you what caused the surge and what is still unknown
- Settle how the surge will count against your measures and fees
The same test applies to good news. If a product launch is about to triple your contacts next week, the right partner calls with a plan for ramping and a straight answer on what it can cover by when, including what it cannot cover yet.
Speaking on our podcast, Questions for now, Richard Bledsoe, vice president of customer experience innovation at TELUS Digital, put the case for this kind of leadership plainly. When you select a CX outsourcing partner, he said, leadership is “one of the most important things,” because a partner’s leaders build the team, stay flexible when things change on your side, and step forward when there are problems to solve.
Because partnerships are built on trust, a partner also cannot shy away from uncomfortable truths, in a surge or in the routine. Take the return-label example from earlier. Someone has to tell the retailer that its own return instructions are the problem. That can be a hard message to deliver, and depending on how the partner is incentivized, it can mean fewer contacts for the partner to handle.
Estuardo “Ligo” Ligorría, regional vice president of operations for the Americas at TELUS Digital, who oversees more than 22,000 team members, advocates for delivering that kind of message anyway. On a separate episode, about the relationship between agent experience and CX, he explained that his teams talk directly to clients’ customers every day and know why they call, so he sees telling clients what drives the calls as an obligation. He says client relationships start with that kind of transparency, and that there is “no other way to do business.”
A partner whose leaders go quiet when the numbers move, arrive with problems and no plan, or promise coverage they cannot deliver, is one to run from.
| Ask: Tell me about the last time a client’s volume spiked without warning. Who called whom, and what did you say?
A good answer is specific and recent, and it ends with what changed. |
Hold any partner to these three things, including us
Relationships between leaders are the foundation of a great partnership, and these three things take it further. A partner worth trusting shares in your results, lets you see its people at work, and arrives with a plan when things move fast. Before you sign, picture the worst week your customers could have and ask who you would call first, and whether you could count on the response. If the answer comes easily, you have likely found the right one. We would welcome the same test, so if you would like to put us through it, talk to our team about arranging a site visit.
Guest blog post written by Roland Mason, VP, Customer Experience Innovation, TELUS Digital
