Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Report Reveals Trends in 2008 Contact Center Market

March 14, 2008

The call center market is nothing if not dynamic. It offers a constantly changing landscape as customer demands change, industries change and the global economy changes. In order to remain competitive, those organizations operating these call centers must be able to keep up with these changes, if not anticipate them.



Reportlinker.com recently announced the availability of a new market research report related to the Call and Contact Centers industry, “2008 Trends to Watch: Contact Center Markets and Technologies.”

According to this report, economic indications are showing that 2008 will be a tough year for many on the financial front. The contact center projects most likely to be hit hard are those large infrastructure and architecture refresh initiatives. By contrast, contact center technology remains the best lever for getting more value from employees and by making better use of customer data.

Hosted contact centers are expected to reach prime time, while mid-market applications will flourish. Market data also suggests that workforce optimization will mushroom as enterprises turn chaos into predictability. As call and contact centers strive to dominate their respective industries, partnership and channel strategies will be shaken up in an effort to initiative internal change.

This report also highlights that organizations are expected to quickly reduce costs. This fast reduction is expected to hit the contact center the hardest, despite the fact that there are front-end operations for many companies. At the same time, these companies will expect that standards within the contact center to remain high.

The management and maintenance of customer relationships will gain even more importance if an organization expects to remain solvent and competitive. Several contact center vendors have started to expand their product offering to large enterprises. In an economic downturn, however these organizations may not have the resources for expansion.

Those vendors who are trying to sell contact center solutions to the large enterprise may find themselves hitting a wall and changing their sales strategy as a focus on new markets becomes imperative.

These vendors must understand how to changing work patterns and the economic climate will affect the industry. The proper identification of key trends in the contact center market will enable these companies to plan their go-to-market strategy.

The report also highlighted that Voice-XML will likely displace proprietary IVR solutions in the enterprise and service provider markets. Outbound IVR is expected to become a key enabler of proactive communications. Traditional directory assistance is also expected to experience a disruption that will likely change its direction.

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

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