The contact center industry in the U.K. could be losing $200 million a year due to the use of antiquated working practices. This estimate is according to virtualization
software provider, CosmoCom.
That equates to the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the Central African Republic, and is more that the GDP of many Caribbean economies, such as Grenada and St. Lucia.
CosmoCom has estimated that of the 960,000 U.K .agents in the roughly 6,000 contact centers, only eight percent work in ‘hosted’ environments, or contact centers that have run over an operator’s network and provide all the necessary hardware and software.
Relying on its own return on investment (ROI) calculator, CosmoCom estimates that the set up costs, per seat overheads and IT support and equipment costs using hosted ‘on demand’ contact center environments dramatically reduce the operation expenses of an on-premise site. These savings can run as much as hundreds of millions pounds.
"Hosted contact centre environments provide savings and operation efficiency improvements in a number of areas," said Mike Adolphy, UK managing director of CosmoCom, in a statement.
"With IT managers stretched, having contact centre technology hosted reliably and securely by experts provides piece of mind, improves customer service and frees up the IT manager to focus on other mission critical operations. It is truly mind-boggling the amount of savings that the UK contact centre industry is missing out on by continuing with cumbersome on-premise systems."
CosmoCom’s estimates are based purely on IT and staff. Adolphy noted that at a time of rising fuel prices, reducing real estate and power requirements could also provide extra savings on the bottom line.
Mona Sultan, Datamonitor, an industry analyst group, highlighted that contact center managers would increasingly need to look at hosted communications environments to further improve customer service and reduce overheads.
"The contact centre is often seen as a cost centre, when in fact consolidating technology onto one platform that can enable staff to operate from any location while operating as if in one single site could help firms make significant cost savings," Sultan said.
Hosted environments can present significant cost savings to the contact center and its supporting organization, but not all centers can support a hosted environment that will deliver cost savings.
It is important that the contact center identify its current needs, operations and solutions before making a move to either hosted or on-premise solutions that are designed to enhance operations.
