Small call centers offer the most attractive opportunities for hosted call center technology.
Increasing numbers of call centers in North America and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) are replacing premise-based technology with hosted technology. Currently 9.7% of agent positions in North America and 2.1% in EMEA are in hosted call centers. By 2007, these numbers will have increased to 13.4% and 8.4% respectively. Unlike many other types of hosted and ASP (application service provider) solutions that have not lived up to the hype, hosted call center solutions look set to be a success with small businesses, spelling good news for service providers.
Hosted call centers are those that host their call center applications (including ACD, CTI and IVR), in a service provider’s network rather than invest in premise-based technology. This enables the call center to gain access to leading edge applications at a fixed monthly cost, avoiding many of the headaches of installation, maintenance and integration. Hosted call centers especially appeal to the low end of the market because of their relative simplicity and the emphasis on operational rather than capital expenditure.
Even governmental bodies and small retail chains with ten 20-seat call centers, some of which could not previously afford to purchase call center technology, can afford to implement hosted solutions.
Smaller call centers – those containing between 10 and 50 agent positions – are the fastest growing sector of the market in both North America and EMEA, so the potential market opportunity is huge. In addition, hosted call center solutions appeal to service providers, who are looking to increase their share of the call center market, leverage investments in IP networks, and move up the value chain and away from their reliance on just providing call minutes to call centers.
