Infotech Lead Asia: European, Middle Eastern and African contact center outsourcing markets generated revenues of €12,874.5 million in 2011 and will reach €14,732.6 million in 2017.
Frost & Sullivan said the contact center outsourcing market in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) reported relatively low growth in 2011 against other major regions in the world.
This trend is expected to continue over the next 5 years due to the prevailing economic situation in Europe and stiff competition from in-house contact centers.
“Cost savings for enterprises, multi-shoring options and customer contact expertise offered by providers in the market, together with a large, educated labour pool will promote the outsourcing of contact center services,” said Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst, Sathya Subramanian. “The current economic situation, which has resulted in enterprises demanding higher quality customer services, will add further impetus to market development.”
Frost & Sullivan finds that deteriorating margins in certain sectors due to the recession has resulted in the need to revise cost structures. In addition to slowing business conditions, heightened focus on high quality customer interactions prompted enterprises to seek expertise of third party outsourcers.
Growing demand for low-cost, high-quality customer contact solutions are primary drivers of the market. Multi-shoring capabilities for the various languages in the region and the presence of a large workforce that can offer multi-lingual contact center services will boost the industry’s growth in the forecast period.
Though the contact center outsourcing market expands, it will face several challenges. These include in-house contact centers, impact of the economic recession, labor laws, presence of unions and increasing demand for more self-service options.
Enterprises prefer in-house contact centers over third-party outsourcers due to quality and security concerns.
