102 Years in CX, Marketing, Data Services, & Customer Care with Alex Gill of Harte Hanks

In this week’s episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast, Derek sits down with Alex Gill, the Global Head of Strategy at Harte Hanks. Harte Hanks has been in the marketing and go-to-market game for over a century now.

Alex brings a large amount of experience, covering the evolution of CX, its best practices, and the march of technology in the field. 

Harte Hanks

Alex introduces Harte Hanks. 

“Harte Hanks has been around for 102 years now. We’ve been a customer engagement and marketing and customer care company on a long journey through that time. 

Today we are very much focused on front-office customer experience and fulfillment experience-type operations, [helping] big and mid-sized brands with their different CX, marketing, and sales challenges.” 

Historically, Harte Hanks has had capabilities in numerous areas, such as data, marketing, sales, customer care, fulfillment, and logistics. 

“We bring those together in an end-to-end journey where we help companies define their go-to-market strategy and execute marketing to acquire customers or build up their brand.” 

The firm primarily focuses on the high-touch, highly-regulated, high-value industries like healthcare, finance, consumer products, and technology. 

Evolving amidst CX trends and disruptions

Having been around for over a century, Harte Hanks has seen “pretty much every market shift.” 

Alex explains how the firm initially had some roots as a mailing company before pivoting to digital. 

“And in the last five or six years, accelerated by things like the pandemic and technology, it’s shifting into this more modern CX world that we play in where people expect great experiences.” 

He emphasizes that while adapting to new technology is essential, old systems may still play a part. 

“There’s no one right way to do anything. Every situation is a bit different. Different channels, different tactics, different pieces of technology. 

Some of the legacy tech still has a role to play. You don’t necessarily need to jump on the latest shiny object. And in fact, the end customer, the human, appreciates different things.” 

Alex believes that despite the “noise” of new trends in the market, the core still lies in the messaging.

“You’ve gotta get messaging out there, you’ve gotta do it well, it’s gotta be impactful, it’s gotta be consistent. 

And then you’ve gotta be ready to react when people come into the buying process.”   

The 3 Rs of comprehensive CX management

When it comes to growing with a client, Harte Hanks typically establishes itself in one area first. 

“[It may be] the revenue services like marketing and sales [or] CX services. So providing customer care, tier one and tier two technical support, back-office and front-office customer experience-type solutions. Once we’ve established there, we can grow and expand.” 

Alex explains their innovation of Business Experience Outsourcing, or BXO. He describes the three Rs of their experience loop: Revenue, Relationships, and Resolutions. 

“On one end of the loop, we have Revenue, [where] we try to help brands grow their business. In the middle of the loop, we have Relationships, and this is where we deliver the products. And on the [other end], we have the Resolutions, the CX side, and this is all about resolving customer problems. 

And we think about another R, which is Reductions, saving money but in a way that can be reinvested to drive more growth.” 

Embracing new BPO technology

Alex highly recommends building in things like strategy, technology, and AI as basic, foundational elements of the process. 

“AI and technology is one of our three pillars. So our mantra now is relentlessly humans powered by technology driving results.”

He heavily emphasizes both elements (human and technology) to provide a more balanced result. 

“We realize AI and technology is very much an enabler or accelerator, [but] it’s not the only thing. If you don’t have the right people doing the right things, [like] configuring the technology well or [not] using [it] properly, it doesn’t do the job and it doesn’t bring the value that you hope to get.” 

A stat he likes to bring up is that “93% of humans prefer humans over AI in terms of the interaction for speed, for accuracy and empathy.”

He’s also cautious about using their resources to build their own technology, instead focusing on the verticals they already know. 

“If you can work with the right ones, you can optimize how you deliver things. And we bring the strategy, the front-office execution, and we leverage some of these key technologies…

We bring all these different tools together, we configure them. You’ve gotta have a way of looking at tech and choosing the right tech and becoming experts.” 

To learn more about Harte Hanks, you can visit their website. You may also reach out to Alex Gill through his LinkedIn profile for more conversations about the direction of the industry.  

If you’d like to learn more about what we do in the outsourcing space, send us an email at ask@outsourceaccelerator.com.