William Carson

Firstsource

I lead the implementation of marketing strategy across the EMEA region for Firstsource, the 'service-as-a-software' customer contact and management pioneer. Working collaboratively with the global team, I drive brand growth and recognition and market impact initiatives, to attract and engage new client partners, to help them solve for 21st century customer contact challenges and unlock new opportunities.

Firstsource has a great story to tell as a customer contact & engagement services provider, with its determination to rewrite the rules of engagement for client partnership. 

Today, Firstsource provides customer management and contact services to national and international brands across retail & ecommerce, banking and financial services, healthcare, telco, media and utilities, supporting their corporate growth strategies across the UK, Europe, and North America.

VP of Marketing EMEA

LDB London

LDB London is a consultancy practice operating in the outsourced customer management and engagement sector. The practice provides support to CXM BPOs across all stages of market engagement - network and pipeline building, social sales enablement, content creation, PR and events (online and live).

Director

New Ways

Responsible with fellow directors to provide sound governance and direction for the mission and operations of New Ways and its development work in Africa.

Ascensos

Ascensos has a great story to tell as a renowned retail & ecommerce customer contact & engagement services provider.

In my role, I support the growth of the Ascensos business by initiating, orchestrating and curating the global networks of partnerships, connections and communities necessary to ensure that story is heard, attracting and engaging with new client partners, and solving for 21st century customer contact challenges and opportunities.

Ascensos provides customer management and contact services to national and international retailers and ecommerce platforms including much loved fashion, beauty, new economy, and homecare brands, supporting their contact strategies across the UK, Europe and the World.

Director of Market Engagement

Global Sourcing Association UK

I will be working with Council members to further the aims of the GSA in support of buyers and vendors of sourcing services.

GSA Council Member 2017 - 21

Project Lockdown

An experiment in virtual music for CX BPO and possibly LinkedIn's first ever virtual band. Think Blue Man Group without the blue paint, bald heads...or money...fame......money, just money.

Musician

CX Club Vlog

Contributor

Concentrix

CX Growth Hacker

Teleperformance UK and South Africa

Brokering key market, partner and client relationships to help drive growth and thereby sustain careers for the more than 10,000 fabulous TP'ers who manage the thousands of daily customer experiences with and on behalf of our clients - major National and International brands, central government and non-departmental bodies.

Bid and Solutions Manager

Conduit

Bid management of major public sector and utilities client tender proposals leading to full contracts.

Head of Bid Management

I'm the VP of Marketing for EMEA at Firstsource, a global customer management and services provider that partners with national and international businesses across retail & ecommerce, banking and financial services, healthcare, education, publishing, telco and media, and utilities, accelerating their transformation programmes to meet the challenges of 21st century CXM.

With over 20 years of experience in the customer contact and engagement sector, I am a CX zealot and focus relentlessly on creating and delivering end-to-end business conversations with clients that focus on developing better experiences for their customers and achieving their strategic goals.

Firstsource helps our client partners address CX modeling in all its aspects - process, people, platforms, and technology. By identifying, visualizing, and determining right-fit solutions for their customer experience management and contact strategies, we enable them to achieve cost-effective, meaningful, and relevant customer management and engagement. 

Visit www.firstsource.com to learn more, or message me to discuss how we can help you grow and transform your business.

Thank you European Contact Centre & Customer Service Awards (ECCCSA) 2025 for a wonderful evening!

I was delighted to present the gong on behalf of Firstsource to EE & Lightico for Most Effective Application of Technology to Enhance the Customer Experience.

Credit as ever to Leigh Hopwood and the ECCCSA team for a slick event at such scale! Great to see my fellow Derry man and friend, Martyn John McCafferty on the mic performing Greatest Showman. 

Thanks to The Knowledge Group for hosting pre's Joel Walker and Spencer Brooks. 

Always a pleasure to bump into former colleagues and industry chums Catherine Rider, Rachel Robinson, Sasha Jenkins, Karl Wise, Sarah Hunt, Emma Dark CCXP, Helen Hickin, Iain Banks, Ray Biggs, Sumudu (Simma) Kularatna, Jon Yarlett, Ninela Sanchez, as well as Ascensos and Firstsource pals Kim Canning, Kelly Williams, John Devlin, David Campbell, Richard King, Andy McDonald, Nabil Lauder, Geogy George, Sonali Parande, Shamas Aziz, Carolyn Lowe and Phil Cochrane (congrats on the win)! And of course, wonderful to spend time with our clients - thank you for joining us! 

Gerry Brown - CCXP, FRSA sorry we didn't get to chat! 

Traci Freeman (she / her), Peter Ryan - see you very soon, somewhere in our mindshare universe! 

A++ for a fabulous end of year celebration of our industry, C- for charity donations, still only managed to raise barely the cost of three tickets for last night's chosen charity, Mental Health Europe. What gives folks? 

#strategy #business #management

"D'you want onion vinegar"?

That question alone tells you, you've come to the right spot! 

A top highlight of last week's CCExpo was when AmplifAI's Adrian Valenzuela decided he had to have proper fish n' chips!

We hot-footed it away from Excel off to the Lucas Fish Bar, London E16, in the good company of Ninela Sanchez, Sumudu (Simma) Kularatna, and Nathan Muniz. 

Main man Peter sorted us some chairs and a table, and Deborah and Diane hung back from their usual 9pm close to chat and joke. 

Opened in 1975, 50 years later it continues to serve the local community with great grub at keen prices! I went for a steak & kidney pie, saveloy, and chips - and looooaaads of onion vinegar. 

Fabulous service, wonderful food! Great finish to a great few days. 

#fishandchips #ccexpo #eastlondon

CxOutsourcers London pow-wow this year took place in the perfect location to reflect the dynamic changes ongoing in buyers' outsourcing demands and providers' evolving propositions. 

The Trafalgar in Greenwich opened in 1837, and today looks directly across the Thames at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, which opened in 1991. 

When we consider how the boats, ships, and docks - once the economic heartbeat of a global empire, have all disappeared, how they've been replaced by altogether different economic mechanisms, which now themselves (post-Brexit and COVID), are undergoing their own reinvention, it's easy to appreciate how change indeed is the only constant we should be prepared for. 

As the ever eloquent David Rickard from Everest Group  painted the new horizons for our sector in terms of tech, people, and platform necessities, it's clear we're at a pivot point between buyer wish-lists and relevant supplier solutions and commercial models fit for 21st century CX. 

That, I've decided, is the point of the Firstsource UnBPO narrative - seeking obliquely to redefine the problem, making 'constant change' the drumbeat and rhythm of partner engagement - between clients, colleagues, and the eco-system of platform providers, and the contracts and commercials that underpin them. 

A key call out however that BPO's lack 'differentiation' seems to me to be more of a mirror to buyers about what they need (unknown unknowns), what they want (known unknowns), what they eventually procure for (known knowns), that dictates how 'differentiated' (or not) the services are that providers actually get to deliver. 

Thank you Peter Ryan, Traci Freeman (she / her), and Mark Angus for yet another perfectly curated coming together of outsourcers from across the UK, EMEA, and LATAM - always fascinating, and now established as a bellwether for our industry. Ottowa will be another highlight in 2026!

#strategy #management #business

I enjoyed a great evening in London last night at the Women and Diversity in Credit Awards alongside clients and my Firstsource colleagues Martin Pearson and Nicola Graham.

Thanks to all our guests for making it an evening of wonderful conversation and fun!

We have deep roots in the financial services sector and it was a pleasure to support these industry awards that spotlight individuals and companies who are turning the page on how the sector benefits from the role of women and diversity across leadership, management, and suppliers.

Great job Kitty Wood and the whole Credit Strategy team!

#business #management #strategy

Ah. My old enemy...stairs!

Contact Centre Expo, co-located with Customer Experience Expo UK will kick off tomorrow at Excel for two days - November 19th & 20th.

I will be clambering up and down these stairs both days, and look forward to catching up with industry friends from around the globe, attending sessions, and getting the inside track on what's rocking the CX world.

Reach me on 07734220058 to grab a brew and a chat.

Steve Sullivan - you're officially invited to this one!

#strategy #management #business

Working in a great industry that aligns with impact sourcing to create job and careers means we must also acknowledge our responsibilities to address the challenges faced by our colleagues - other than unemployment.

Today, November 21st, women in South Africa,  across the country, will step away from their participation and contribution to every-day life, social and economic, to highlight the tragic issue of gender based violence.

They have the full support of Ascensos, our parent company Firstsource,  and our clients. 

At noon, our women will pause while our men in solidarity continue working. 

It's in all our gift to be part of the solution, not the problem. 

#womenshutdown

Tomorrow night I'll be joining my Firstsource colleagues Nicola Graham and Martin Pearson at the 𝗪𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 & 𝗗𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀.

Hot-footing it from CC Expo to the Hilton, London Bankside, I can think of no better way to round off the day than celebrating inclusivity and excellence in the credit and financial services industries - in which our contact centres and customer management operations play such a significant role.

Best wishes to all finalists at this years awards - especially clients and their teams!

#strategy #finance #credit

It's Black Friday 2025, and while the original mayhem and apoplectic shopping behaviour has perhaps plateaued, it remains a significant retail and ecommerce annual event.

This year more than ever, the focus is on cyber secruity and the challenges for brands that Black Friday 'deal-mania' can have on customers who unwittingly become victims of scams.

On a virtual round table this week focused on ABM and GTM, I was flabbergasted to learn that the number of digital communications and activities across the internet, including those perpetuated by malevolent automation in all of its forms, is now greater than the number of activities created by people!

So whatever your retail go-to is for Black Friday - from subscriptions, to products, services to software - take care what links you click on, what URL in text messages you respond to, and what emails you open - and don't pay anything until you are absolutely sure you're secure.

When I consider we used to have to put our hand up at work to request taking the modem home over the weekend, it shows that with every great technical leap forward, there are bad operators just waiting to profit from the confusion!

#strategy #management #business

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