How to become a billionaire? Xavier Niel and the customer experience, subscriber. Agenda

How to become a billionaire This autumn, Xavier Niel, Jeff Bezos, John Cochet, Antoine Compagnon and Manuel Jacquinet share their tips, regrets, reasons for delight and suggestions. The reading experience and the customer experience seem to be two promising avenues for those who really want to enrich their lives. Tours too.

Oasis, Xavier Niel, a sold-out tour and show. At Outsourcia, the recruitment of Chloé Beauvallet.

Call centres paid off (to become a billionaire)

The BPO sector (telemarketing, customer service and outsourced customer experience) is in the doldrums, and yesterday the SP2C, in conjunction with E/Y, published its 8th barometer. Contact flows have fallen by around 20% to 30% compared with forecasts and Covid years, while telephone canvassing is living out its final hours, largely handicapped by the declining reachability of prospects. So things are not looking good for specialist service providers, whatever their size. Among the world leaders, Teleperformance is having some difficulty explaining its strategy, while Concentrix is making a shift towards technology. In Division 2, among the mid-market players, some founders were cherishing the hope of selling their group to a more significant player or bringing in an investment fund on the basis of multiples similar to Teleperformance's valuation two years ago (14 times Ebitda). They would be delighted to find one now that valued their company at 6 or 7 times its operating profit. And no one is quite sure what impact AI will actually have on the sector and when. Catastrophic announcements are mixed in with balderdash or seductive announcements, such as those from Klarna and Salesforce with Einstein. 

Daniel Julien, Jacques Berrebi (Teleperformance), Frédéric Jousset, Olivier Duha (Webhelp), Bernard Caïazzo (CCA International), Claude Briqué (Adm Value by Tessi) and a few others have become millionaires thanks to call centres, but they are not among the 53 billionaires mentioned by the founder of Iliad. In BPO Divisions 1 and 2, some entrepreneurs, such as Youssef Chraibi and his majority shareholder SPE Capital, still believe in the business, and are therefore hiring new recruits at general management level. This is what happened recently at Outsourcia and Majorel. Read more here.

Reduce acquisition costs, simplify customer journeys, digitise.
Those who are moving in this direction, in many sectors, are attempting to replace call centres and their associated costs, to automate customer service and experience, and to monitor conversations. Sometimes to excess and without measure, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

At Acheel, Magnolia, Santiane etc - to take only the insurance or brokerage sector - the cursor is set differently on these subjects but, everywhere, entrepreneurs know that it costs a lot to acquire customers. So they need to build loyalty. The smooth, rapid handling of a claim, in line with the promise made, is the moment of truth in this sector of activity, which makes it possible to win over customers and thus build loyalty. The most effective players, such as Acheel, have found alternatives to traditional acquisition strategies, while others, such as Magnolia and Santiane, have identified before their competitors the importance of supervising the quality and compliance of telephone sales.

These last two dynamic players have set up the same French Quality Monitoring tool, analysing verbatim and key moments in conversations in near real time. A French tool, developed by an already profitable company that has not raised any funds, spotted and chosen over Anglo-Saxon competitors. 

Literature pays! Books and literature serve no purpose, we often hear, nor should art, and that's fine, as those who don't read and those who have made a profession of creating often say in chorus. In a book that sounds fascinating (I've only read extracts from it so far), Antoine Compagnon, Academician and Professor Emeritus at the Collège de France, explains, on the contrary, that books are useful to us and allow us, at little cost and in so little time, to enter into the life and mind of another, to be enriched by their journey, their vision. Reading would be the best investment. When I was young, I loved reading Rock and Folk, Radiguet and Michaux. Antoine Compagnon is absolutely right, as is Bruce Springsteen. The Boss once wrote that you can learn more from a 3.45 minute song than from many other serious things. I've listened to Darkness on the Edge of Town a thousand times. The Boss wouldn't have so many fans and buyers of his records or his fascinating biography if he hadn't given new meaning to the concert experience. 

Xavier Niel at the Olympia, 18 September, sold out. His autobiography, Entretiens XN (Flammarion), is due for release on 25 September. The book is billed as a series of interviews with Jean-Louis Missika, a politician and director of Iliad. He was also sentenced in April by the criminal court to a fine of €90,000 and two years' ineligibility for conflict of interest. A deputy for innovation and then urban planning at Paris City Hall from 2008 to 2020, the 73-year-old then joined a mission committee at Novaxia and a steering and forward planning committee at Gecina.

We can be richer because we have Salesforce, or another CRM tool (software used to store customer data from all channels and make it available to all those who need it). Because you know how to make the most of your data or your address book. Or because you've skirted the yellow lines, but learned from your mistakes. On 8 June 2004, Judge Van Ruymbeke questioned XN and discovered the reasons for the hidden accounting in one of the entrepreneur's businesses. He later gave him some good advice, which apparently was heeded.

However, don't try to buy a ticket for How to become a billionaire? Xavier Niel's show is sold out, just like the Oasis tour. Tours make money. And Live Nation is the new Universal. 

The book is not the first devoted to the billionaire businessman and omnipresent in French capitalism and technology, it is his first autobiography... official. Gilles Sengès, a former journalist with L'Opinion, has already written a fascinating book on the rise of the Free boss: Xavier Niel, l'homme Free. He did not sell fortunes, despite his interest. Do entrepreneurs prefer legends over which they have some control?

Laetitia Raiteux felt rich.
You can feel rich, in a way a billionaire (?), because one day you rediscover: the joy of living, the sense of smell, someone you loved, someone you've lost sight of, photos, slides you never knew you had. And they bring the past back to us like a piece of ice.

That's what happened to Laetitia Raiteux, whose father set up a memorable recording studio in Nogent-sur-Marne a long time ago, but no one had ever heard of it. The studio had windows, which was very rare at the time, so you could see the day. Laurent Voulzy recorded Rockollection... there.

How to become a billionaire is not... ‘THE question that everyone is asking’, contrary to the tagline of Xavier Niel's show, but it is a fascinating one. And the art of the hook is part of the talent: when the costs of customer acquisition and lead generation, on and via Google, Meta, in SEA, are becoming stratospheric, getting people talking about you, with effective punchlines, is proving to be a vital asset. (I write asset on purpose, because nowadays, for VCs and certain young entrepreneurs, a serious article has to be peppered with lots of English words, such as KPI's, workflow, ARR. The dream, at the moment and in the hotel industry for example, is to be assets light).

If Free could stop pestering me by phone with its old-fashioned cold calling, that would be great. As a professional, I'm already a customer of Free Pro, which works well! And Orange, its competitor, who installed fibre in Savoie for me this summer and was remarkable: the phone call - to get some information that wasn't available on the website - was picked up very quickly, the sales pitch was effective, and the up-sell was mastered. Appointment made and honoured within seven days. Effective use of SMS and other CpaaS tools. First breakdown resolved in five days, in the middle of August!

So long live the competition, Konecta*, Constructel, the operator's first-tier subcontractor. And hats off to the two foreign technicians who spent three hours deploying, installing and testing the ducts. These second-tier subcontractors were working for the first-tier subcontractor. Identifying, selecting and motivating employees or partners is, in my opinion, the most difficult challenge in France for anyone wishing to delight customers. UX+ CX+ IA+ Employee Experience=NPS to the power of N.

In twenty years, customer journeys, the digitalisation of processes and the measurement of customer, patient, visitor and employee satisfaction have all taken giant leaps forward. That's what we're talking about and analysing at ECTFF, trying to identify the real game changers.

The 12th Customer Experience The French Forum kicks off at La Baule on 23 September, at the Hermitage Barrière. The theme of this year's event is customer acquisition and loyalty - the complex alchemy of the customer experience. Pre-programme, rules and conditions for registration here.  

But we're going to do it and play it Xavier Niel style. If you're a company director, operations manager, UX designer, executive or employee looking for a job, and want to raise your game on these issues... But you don't have the resources to pay the registration fee, call the ECTFF hotline*. First, we'll check that you're not lying too much about your resources. Then we'll see what we can do to personalise your application. Stop being taken in by forums that are useless, where you don't get your money's worth, and where you don't meet any real, fruitful people. Virginie Pons-Pascal, Franck Benoit and Cyril Fontaine all say that La Baule and ECTFF are unique. They work, or used to work, for Hello Bank, ING, SNCF and Canal +, and know a thing or two about it.

*Hot-line: 07 68 81 92 44. No surcharge.

In the next issue of En-Contact, you'll find a detailed account of the fibre installation with these two sub-contractors.