For years, enterprise organizations and their technology and services providers followed a familiar relationship structure. Organizations defined their needs, evaluated providers, negotiated contracts, and paid for an agreed-upon set of products or services.
The arrangement had its advantages. Costs were relatively predictable, responsibilities were documented, and both sides had a framework for measuring delivery. But as expectations around customer experience (CX) evolve, so does the conversation about what organizations are paying for.
CX leaders are being asked to demonstrate more from their investments. Efficiency gains, customer satisfaction, employee productivity, revenue impact, and the ability to scale innovation are increasingly part of the business case. In Execs In The Know’s The ROI Imperative research, 86% of CX leaders say demonstrating ROI is extremely or very important when proposing new initiatives, and 48% say their organization’s focus on ROI has increased significantly over the past 12 to 24 months.
At the same time, procurement teams are scrutinizing costs, traditional pricing structures are facing pressure, and organizations are exploring models that tie compensation more closely to results.
The question is no longer simply what a provider will deliver. It’s what the relationship will produce, and whether anyone can prove it. That last part is rewriting the economics of CX partnerships.
The Move from Deliverables to Outcomes
Traditional contracts often focus on defined inputs: hours, seats, licenses, transactions, or specific service commitments. These measures provide structure, but they don’t always reflect the business outcomes an organization ultimately wants.
A contact center may meet its service-level commitments, for example, while customer effort remains high. A technology implementation may be completed on schedule, but employee adoption may fall short. An artificial intelligence (AI) solution may automate a significant volume of interactions without producing the expected improvements in customer experience or operating costs.
The work was delivered. But the larger objective may not have been achieved.
This is one reason gain-share and outcome-based models are receiving greater attention. Rather than compensating providers exclusively for the resources or services they supply, these arrangements tie some payment to agreed-upon business results. In principle, the approach creates stronger alignment between the client’s and the provider’s interests. Both have a reason to focus on the outcome rather than simply completing the contracted work. But moving toward this model requires more than changing the pricing structure.
If compensation is tied to results, the next question becomes: Who defines success?
Consider an organization that wants to reduce contact center costs through automation. The provider may implement the technology, but the outcome will also depend on data quality, process design, employee readiness, customer adoption, and the organization’s willingness to change how work gets done.
How much of the result can reasonably be attributed to the provider?
What happens if the technology performs as expected but the organization doesn’t implement the necessary operational changes? How should success be measured when customer experience improvements take longer to materialize than anticipated? And what happens when the business environment changes halfway through the engagement?
These questions matter because outcome-based partnerships shift risk in different ways. Providers may be asked to accept greater financial exposure while having limited control over the conditions that determine success. Corporate organizations, meanwhile, may expect providers to take on more accountability without fully considering the investments, resources, and cooperation required on their own side.
An outcome-based contract cannot compensate for a poorly defined partnership. Before either party agrees to share risk or reward, they need a common understanding of the desired outcome, how it will be measured, what each party controls, and what happens when circumstances change. That shared baseline is harder to establish than it sounds. Only 4% of CX leaders describe their organization’s approach to calculating ROI as highly standardized, and just 10% are fully confident they can measure the value and outcomes of new CX initiatives.
The Business Case is Where the Partnership Starts
For many CX leaders, the hardest part of a new investment isn’t choosing a provider. It’s getting the investment approved. Competing priorities and budget constraints (each cited by 68%) are the most common reasons CX proposals are delayed or denied, and 29% point to a lack of clear ROI.
That’s where partners have a growing role, and where corporate buyers are being very direct about what they need. In our research, 77% of CX leaders agree that their business partners provide valuable support in building the case for new CX initiatives. But when asked what partners could do better, they were specific.
One respondent said the most impactful thing a partner can do is bring “a co-developed, organization-specific business case rather than generic ROI calculators.” Others asked partners to use their own data to make ROI calculations real, offer pilot opportunities, and share realistic outcomes from comparable companies.
There’s a credibility gap to close, too. While 56% of CX leaders agree that the outcomes of their CX investments closely match what their partners promised, only 8% strongly agree. Several respondents also described the challenge of finding realistic data that doesn’t come from the technology seller.
For providers, this is the new economics in practice. Helping a client build an honest, defensible business case, using their data, their baseline, and their definition of success, is what makes an outcome-based conversation possible later. It also gives the CX leader something they need just as much as the solution: the ability to stand in front of Finance and explain why the investment is worth making.
DOWNLOAD The ROI Imperative: Building the Business Case for Exceptional CX report to see what CX leaders say they need from their partners →
Procurement is Part of the Partnership Equation
The changing economics of CX partnerships also raise questions about procurement’s role. For many organizations, procurement is under pressure to secure better pricing, reduce costs, and demonstrate financial discipline. Those objectives are understandable, especially when technology budgets compete with other enterprise priorities.
But the lowest-cost arrangement isn’t always the most valuable one. When negotiations focus too heavily on reducing rates, organizations may unintentionally limit a provider’s ability to invest in innovation, talent, technology, or the resources needed to improve service delivery.
This is especially relevant in BPO relationships, where pricing pressure can directly affect workforce investment, operational flexibility, and the ability to introduce new capabilities. If an organization expects its BPO partner to continuously improve performance, adopt new technologies, and deliver better customer experiences, the arrangement needs to support those expectations. The same principle applies to technology providers. Organizations cannot reasonably expect extensive advisory support, implementation expertise, ongoing optimization, and measurable outcomes while treating every engagement as a negotiation over the lowest possible price.
Being a good client is part of being a good partner.
Shared Risk Requires Shared Responsibility
The move toward outcome-based partnerships creates an opportunity to rethink the relationship between corporate organizations and their providers. Rather than approaching negotiations as a process of determining who assumes the greatest financial risk, both sides can begin by identifying what they need from one another to achieve the desired result.
That means establishing realistic expectations, agreeing on meaningful performance measures and the baseline they will be measured against, defining responsibilities, and being transparent about the factors that could influence outcomes. It also means recognizing that not every engagement should use the same model.
Some solutions have clearly measurable financial returns. Others deliver value through customer trust, employee experience, risk reduction, or long-term operational improvements that are harder to quantify. In those situations, a traditional structure may still make sense, as long as the parties are aligned on expectations and value.
The goal shouldn’t be to adopt outcome-based pricing simply because it sounds more progressive. It should be to create a relationship that reflects the work being performed, the results being pursued, and the degree of accountability each party can reasonably assume.
The Next Generation of CX Partnerships Will Require a Different Conversation
The economics of CX partnerships are changing because the expectations surrounding them are changing. Corporate organizations want more accountability, more innovation, and a clearer connection between their investments and business results. Providers are being asked to contribute more expertise, assume different levels of risk, and demonstrate value beyond contractual deliverables.
Neither side can navigate that shift independently. The organizations that build successful partnerships will be those willing to have more transparent conversations about economics, expectations, investment, and shared responsibility, starting with the business case rather than the contract. That may mean rethinking procurement practices, developing new performance measures, or finding structures that better reflect the realities of modern CX operations.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t simply to price a partnership better. It’s to make the partnership’s value provable. Providers that help CX leaders translate outcomes into the financial language their CFOs trust, and then stand behind those numbers after implementation, will be the ones invited into outcome-based conversations. As our research concludes, the ability to communicate impact may become just as important as the impact itself.
That’s a conversation Execs In The Know has a unique view into. Through our research, virtual executive roundtables, in-person outsourcing briefings, CX Insight magazine, and Customer Response Summit (CRS), we hear directly from the corporate CX leaders who build these business cases and sign these contracts, including what they wish their partners would do differently.
The economics of CX partnerships are changing. Is your organization part of the conversation?
The shift toward outcome-based models raises important questions for corporate CX leaders and business partners, and we hear the buyer side of that conversation every day. Connect with Scott Moberly, Vice President of Partner Advocacy at Execs In The Know, at [email protected] to share perspectives and connect with others navigating what the future of CX partnerships should look like. Or download our 2026 Media Kits to discover upcoming partnership opportunities.
