By IP-enabling the contact center, organizations can utilize geographically dispersed call center agents and also, if need be, involve employees that are not normally part of the customer service process, such as branch workers, home workers or back office workers. Datamonitor predicts the market for global contact center technology routing will be worth $4.7 billion by 2009. Much of this growth will come from developing markets such as India, China, Brazil, eastern Europe, Mexico and North and South Africa.
IP telephony is driving virtual contact centers
The contact center environment has never been more complex. Aside from the traditional pressures to reduce operational costs, contact centers also face the challenging task of providing exceptionally high-quality service in order to retain current customers and attract new ones. They are becoming the hub of customer interaction within organizations, taking on a more strategic role in building and maintaining customer relationships.
These changes have meant that the focus has moved away from answering calls as quickly as possible to first call resolution. However, contact center managers often find it difficult to accomplish this objective just using traditional contact center staff, especially during peak hours and unexpected call spikes, or when the enquiry resolution requires the assistance of knowledge workers with specialist skills. Very often, these workers sit outside of the traditional contact center environment.
The problem with the traditional contact center model is that it creates a silo for customer service expertise and fails to take advantage of all the expertise that sits outside the contact center in the branches and back office. IP telephony really is the key enabler that allows the contact center to become more ‘virtual’, and more and more organizations are realizing the benefits that this can bring.
The aim of a ‘virtual’/’distributed’ contact center is to identify the contact as it enters the organization and then use intelligent contact routing technology at the network level to route the contact to the most appropriate customer service resource. This routing decision should be based on a number of criteria, including for example the value of the customer, the resources available, the type of media and the time of day.
Surging growth to 2009
A survey of 400 contact center managers found that 19% of North American and Western European contact centers are using remote workers.
Over 20% of new contact center agents shipped in 2004 were IP agents, double the number that were shipped in 2003. By the end of 2005, 11% of all global agent positions will be IP, and Datamonitor estimates this will grow to 37% by 2009.
According to Datamonitor the global contact center technology routing market was worth $3.6 billion in 2004. The combination of investment in new IP-based technology and more organic growth in less developed markets means that it will grow by 30% between 2004 and 2009, with Asia the fastest growing segment of the market, though North America the largest overall.
