Redefining Service Excellence: Ask The Expert
Agentic AI, Tariffs, the Back-to-Office debate, there are a myriad of trends shaping the business world in 2025. But how are they impacting the Global Business Services space? Are they world-defining or something that will pass us by? At the Shared Services and Outsourcing Week Europe 2025, SSON spoke to some of the world’s best Global Business Services leaders about their take on big business trends. This time, we sat down with Marcus Millership, SVP for Enablement and Solutions at Rolls-Royce, to understand how one leading organization is redefining service excellence in this shifting landscape of how enterprise services are delivered.
I know that in the B2C space, customer expectations are quickly changing, and now customers expect faster response times, they expect personalization, and they expect omni-channel consistency. Do you feel that's been reflected in GBS’ approach to its customers? How has your GBS adapted to that?
For many GBS teams, the gap between customer expectations internally and externally is closing. Millership offered two perspectives. On one hand, he says that “generally customers internally are looking for simplicity... and are looking for better technology solutions.” As customers increasingly have better technology in their own homes, this has, in turn, raised the bar for organizations as well. On the other hand, he highlights the challenge that “sometimes customers perhaps don't know what good looks like… so they might put up with a service that is not equal to what they receive in their personal lives.”
And how can GBS adapt to new expectations for CX and service excellence? You mentioned a little bit already about AI. Can you expand on that?
According to Millership, companies are adapting their interfaces to reflect what customers ultimately want: “ease of access and simplicity with the least effort possible.” AI and better process design play a large role in customer experience. Millership resonates with this point, stating that “if there is a good design, then it will be labelled as a good service.” Through making customer touch points that are effective, intuitive, and create a smooth experience for customers, the customer experience is elevated to adapt to new industry standard expectations.
So, how do you tailor customer experience strategies across different regions or business units in GBS? We all know GBS is a model built on standardization and centralization, but often customer experience best practice is based on personalization, and that's a difficult thing to balance, so how can you ensure both consistency and localization?
Millership admits that “this is a tough one,” as he explains that “scale often plays a part in how a service is designed,” especially if the region is small or is very different in terms of legislation. However, he firmly believes that if a “GBS had a good service management framework, then this ‘DNA’ can be adapted even in those smaller countries where localization is really important. Millership adds to this “technology can drive a common experience regardless of scale and regardless of how complex legislation might be in a particular country…it's all about does GBS have a really good service management framework and is there some level at least of standardization of process in terms of how you deliver to your internal customer.”
My last question is, how do you build trust with your GBS customers so they feel comfortable working in partnership with you and maybe offering you more higher-value services?
Millership believes “predictability is essential in building trust and partnership with any customer.” Do your services do what they say they will? Are they effective, and can they be relied on as a GBS organization? Ultimately, he states that if you can “build that trust,” tying in the predictability aspect, you can “foster the trust, and inevitably customers will want to come back and build services with you. To gain more insights from our SSO Network, please join us for our upcoming HR Transformation and Automation Virtual Summit.