More than Half of German Contact Centers Lack Channel Integration

While we often take it for granted that a properly functioning contact center has integrated all its customer contact channels – telephone, Web, e-mail, brick-and-mortar store and others such as social media – this isn’t necessarily the case. As anyone who has ever had a teeth-grinding exchange with a company who doesn’t seem to know you (in any channel!) can attest, many companies still lack this critical integration of channel.

It’s even more likely if it’s a contact center in Germany. According to a new report, to be released by STRATECO and unified customer interaction solutions provider Altitude Software (News - Alert) during the CCW 2013 trade show in Berlin, the unified management of communication channels in a single platform is a reality for only 47 percent of contact centers in Germany.

Pity the customers in Germany (not to mention the contact center agents). The good news is that an additional 17 percent of German contact centers have plans to unify communications in the future.

The report, “Perspectives 2015: Status Quo and Trends in the Contact Center Market,” is based on telephone interviews completed in January with decision-makers in more than 100 contact centers all over Germany. It provides a picture of the industry and an analysis of current trends and developments concerning technology, communication channels and business processes in contact centers.

The contact center sector is the fifth-largest industry sector in Germany, and the largest contact center market in the Eurozone, with 14 billion Euros in revenue, the report found.

When it comes to social media integration in German contact centers, the picture gets even dimmer. Social media accounts only for 2 percent of all interactions in the contact center. The phone is still the first choice of customers (71 percent), followed by e-mail (14 percent) and fax (11 percent).

Finally, only 15 percent of German contact centers operate on cloud-based solutions.