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NICE Releases Results of First Benchmark Report for Contact Center Business

October 14, 2009

NICE Systems Ltd., a global provider of advanced solutions designed to enable organizations to “extract insight from interactions to drive performance,” has announced the results of its first annual benchmark of contact center business and technology trends.


A comprehensive global research project, NICE’s efforts focus on growth expectations, technology investment priorities, operational tactics and strategies and market trends and initiatives. The benchmark aims to assist contact center business and technology professionals in better assessing their own plans and strategies.

Charles Born, corporate vice president of marketing at NICE Systems shared in a statement, “We are excited to launch NICE’s first annual benchmark of the contact center market. What we found with this first research is that although businesses are paying attention to costs, they are being careful to ensure that customer satisfaction does not suffer. Forward thinking companies are positioning themselves for quick performance improvements by planning investments in technologies that help promote customer satisfaction, including speech analytics, better utilization of cross-channel information, and smart-agent desktops.”

Commissioned by NICE and conducted by Ventana Research, the results were published in a whitepaper, “Preparing for the Upturn: Research on Contact Center Operational and Investment Practices.”
 
Key findings from this research include:
 
  • Top operational priorities include customer satisfaction, operational efficiency and compliance.
  • Forty-four percent of respondents expect increases in customer interactions as a result of availability and maturation of alternate communication channels and the current economic turmoil.
  • Speech analytics deployments are expected to grow by 182 percent by 2011.
  • More than 50 percent of infrastructures will be VoIP-based by 2010.
  • Workforce optimization investment growth will be greater than CRM.
  • Staffing levels will remain steady in 81 percent of companies.
  • Thirty-seven percent anticipate an increase in home-based agents.
 
Mark Smith, CEO of Ventana Research commented, “The importance of contact center interactions across multiple communication channels continues to be at the center of business strategies to optimize operational outcomes from customer relationships. Though the global economic climate has created challenges for contact centers, the need to operate more efficiently and ensure the optimal customer experience continues to be a top priority as it is directly linked to customer profitability.”

NICE was recognized last month as a winner in the 2009 INTERNET TELEPHONY Excellence Awards. The company was honored for delivering excellent IP communication solutions.

In July, NICE announced its second quarter results, while also highlighting opportunities for growth. Non-GAAP revenue for the second quarter was $140.5 million, which was 9.6 percent down from $155.3 million in the second quarter last year. At the same time however, this revenue was up 0.9 percent from $139.2 million in the first quarter.


Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for ContactCenterSolutions and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Erin Harrison



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