Infotech Lead America: Global Information Inc (GII) has shared global reports on contact center market opportunities and growth areas.
Firms are recognizing that customers have increasingly more influence over how they interact with companies. Contact centers are changing in terms of their strategy and operational delivery. A few noteworthy trends to watch out for include: implementing more advanced knowledge management tools; moving to cloud-based infrastructures; and optimizing through IVR analytics.
Global Information Inc (GII) said the Great Recession opened the door for the cloud to finally become a reality for contact center solutions. Companies that needed contact center infrastructure but did not want to make large capital expenditures gave the cloud a try as a short-term solution, and soon realized there were more benefits than challenges. DMG expects to see the rapid adoption continue, even as the economy strengthens, now that organizations appreciate the benefits of these solutions.
Over the last three years, adoption has nearly tripled from 2.2 percent to 5.9 percent, with the number of seats growing from 268,794 in 2008 to 871,717, as of the end of June 2012. Rapid adoption will continue to drive and speed the pace of innovation as larger companies consider moving their contact centers to the cloud.
Cloud-based contact center infrastructure vendors are agile, innovative, and delivering new functionality to market quickly. DMG projects that the cloud-based contact center infrastructure market will continue to build momentum, growing by 45 percent, 40 percent, 40 percent and 35 percent, each year, respectively, between 2012 and 2015. DMG estimates that a minimum of 18.1 percent of all contact center seats will be in the cloud by the end of 2015.
The global market for IVR has changed and advanced tremendously in recent years, due to improvements in technology and best practices. IVR systems handle between 10 percent and more than 90 percent of incoming calls in the contact centers that use them. While IVRs help reduce agent time and costs, most of them are neither utilized effectively nor optimally designed to deliver the best possible customer experience. IVR analytics is a first step in the optimization process. By systemically evaluating the “whole call”, companies can improve the overall customer experience across all channels, automated and live, and increase containment rates.
Contact center performance management (CCPM) is a mission-critical tool for capturing and analyzing all aspects of a contact center or department’s performance, and for rapidly identifying when goals are not being met. Although it has many benefits for agents, contact centers, enterprises, and customers, CCPM’s adoption has been slow – a key issue being lack of clarity about its contributions and benefits. Despite these challenges, however, the number of agents using some CCPM increased in the calendar year 2012.
Total CCPM seats grew from 483,949 in September 2006 to 1,731,138 in April 2012, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.6 percent. DMG projects the number of CCPM seats to grow by 12 percent, 14 percent, 14 percent and 12 percent in each of the four years from 2012 to 2015, respectively. DMG also expects downward pressure on the price per seat, as vendors compete aggressively to win customers. This will give prospects a great opportunity to negotiate a favorable deal.
