Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

October 06, 2009

inContact Clear Leader in Growing Hosted Contact Center Market

By Brendan B. Read


If there is any doubt that obtaining contact center solutions from ACDs to workforce management via hosting rather than buying, installing, and supporting them is the way to go a new survey and analysis by DMG Consulting, “Hosted Contact Center Infrastructure Market Report” should dispel those doubts.
 
According to the paper, the hosted contact center market was one of few industries to show healthy growth in the recession and projections are for it to increase. DMG forecasts the hosted contact center market will continue to grow at a rate of 30 percent in 2009, accelerating to 35 percent in 2010.
 
Hosted contact center solutions are an extremely attractive offering, particularly during recessionary times. Quick deployments, minimal cash outlay, a rapid and quantifiable return on investment, a reduced maintenance burden and the opportunity to “try before you buy” were identified by DMG among the top reasons for growth.
 
“The recession has been very kind to many hosted contact center and CRM application providers,” Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting, said. “End users who can’t afford or do not have cash available for a major capital investment are seeking alternatives and turning to hosted solutions.”
 
The company that is leading the way in hosted solutions is inContact. Among the nine companies analyzed by DMG for number of implementations, inContact had the most in 2008. inContact continues to enhance its offerings and draw new customers to them. The firm appears to be on track to stay in front for 2009 going into 2010. Here is just a sample of recent developments:
 
A strategic partnership with Smoothstone (News - Alert) IP Communications which provides cloud-based unified IP communications services.  The alliance allows inContact and Smoothstone to offer joint solutions to customers. 

The two companies recently signed their first joint customer, a 211 information referral organization. This social service non-profit organization processes calls involving community, health and disaster response information for municipalities in California. The organization needed a flexible solution that could deal with the unpredictable nature of their communications needs in a cost effective and reliable way. 

Integration with Microsoft (News - Alert) Dynamics CRM. inContact for Microsoft Dynamics CRM improves both the agent and customer experience by automatically providing information to the agent about the caller. For example, if a customer calls into the system from a number in the CRM, all of the information about the customer automatically pops up for the agent
 
New and expanded customer applications with Salesforce.com (News - Alert) applications integrated with the inContact platform.  In-Contact signed up U-Store-It for its national sales center. U-Store-It will combine the inContact platform with Salesforce.com’s CRM technology.

Also a claims processing firm that has been an inContact customer for nearly two years will expand the Salesforce.com presence enterprise wide and are expanding into various other offerings from inContact to improve the agent training and customer experience. The company processes calls from thousands of repair facilities and over 200 insurance companies.

New contracts including outsourcer Vector BPO for its operations in Reno, Nevada and The Philippines for up to over 800 seats and three new contracts with direct response marketing companies involving 300 additional agents
 
“We are certainly seeing continued adoption of our Software-as-a-Service, or hosted solutions across a wide segment of the contact center market space,” Paul Jarman, inContact CEO, said. “We have seen steady quarter over quarter growth for the past two years, and anticipate that growth to continue in the coming year, as a result of our superior product offerings, quarterly software enhancements and our never-ending improvements in customer support.”
 

Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Kelly McGuire


Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

    From Contact Environment to Interaction Ecosystem: The Future of the Customer Contact Center

    Few areas of business operation have been called into greater question in recent years than customer contact centers. Between impersonal automated systems, frustrating menus, and the hot potato topic of overseas outsourcing, the operational model of the customer service contact center has lost touch with its core reason for being - to service the customer. [ Read More ]
    02/13/2012

    TMCnet Contact Center Solutions Week in Review

    It is almost difficult to know where to begin, given all of the interesting contact center activities around the world. However, a great place to begin is with the Editors Choice feature by TMCnet contributor Tracey E. Schelmetic about a terrific webinar sponsored by Interactive Intelligence, "2012: Key Contact Center Trends and Priorities for the Upcoming Year - How you can be read.," The webinar featured Forrester Research principal analyst, Art Schoeller, Interactive Intelligence senior vice … [ Read More ]
    02/11/2012

    Aegis Lands in Magic Quadrant

    Global outsourcing provider Aegis Limited has been named as one of 16 firms in Gartner Inc's 2011 Magic Quadrant for Customer Management Contact Center BPO Worldwide. [ Read More ]
    02/10/2012

    Interactive Intelligence Hires Mitchell Phillips as Australian Territory Manager

    Interactive Intelligence Group, Inc., a global provider of unified business communication solutions for contact centers, unified communications, and business process automation, was in need for someone to take over their Australian territory. The company announced that Mitchell Phillips seems to be the new man for the job. [ Read More ]
    02/10/2012

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

Socialize with us

FREE Contact Center Solutions eNewsletter

Click here to receive your targeted Contact Center Solutions Community eNewsletter.[Subscribe Now]

Industry News

Featured Resources

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

Press Releases

About the Contact Center Solutions Community

    Welcome to the Contact Center Solutions Community The Contact Center Solutions Global Online Community, Sponsored by Interactive Intelligence, is designed to serve as the industry's premier resource for information and research on Contact Center Solutions technology and deployment strategies.