What are contact centers planning for 2010 in the way of improvements, innovations and investments? Here are several key likely trends for next year based on Frost & Sullivan End User Contact Center survey results:

 

*          The primary channel for customer interaction continues to be phone calls, but support for e-mail and Web contacts are growing. IVR support is found mostly in larger centers. Other Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) research indicates the use of SMS/text and video are growing, particularly in some industries and among some demographics, but the survey found little current contact center support for these channels. Most companies have no plans to add support for new customer interaction channels, but some that don't currently support Web interactions are adding it.

 

*          Almost all companies are aware of and track their customers’ multimodal interactions. One multimodal interaction example would be a prospect starts browsing on a company’s Web site and ends ups on a telephone call with a live agent. Multimodal interactions are growing and higher rates are reported most often by companies in communications, healthcare and travel/hospitality.

 

*          A majority of companies (51 percent) plan to increase their use of outbound customer interactions; financial, healthcare, and outsourcing reported the most interest.

 

*          Most companies (68 percent) plan to increase their use of outbound IVR/voice portal-based applications. A similar number (58 percent) plan to increase their use of outbound dialing systems.

 

*          While only a small number (25 percent) of companies have integrated their customer interaction channels many more (46 percent) plan to, with larger contact centers showing more interest than smaller ones.

 

*          The majority (60 percent) of companies have already deployed speech-enabled customer contact applications, with those in communications, healthcare, and retail reporting the highest use of speech. But a larger number of firms (69 percent) plan to build new speech-enabled applications, with the most interest shown by companies in the travel/hospitality, communications, and outsourcing industries.

 

*          Similar numbers of companies plan to add/increase support for security/privacy (52 percent), for analytics in support of contact center operations 44 percent), analytics for customer insights (42 percent) and mobility (40 percent).

 

*          Only a very few companies (2 percent) are planning to implement Web 2.0 technologies in their contact centers.