The global recession has led businesses to shift their focus to improving customer service and retention, says Datamonitor.
According to the independent market analyst firm, the sluggish economy has prompted a change in contact centre strategy with focus shifting from customer acquisition to customer retention. Clients' budgets are tightening and consumer confidence is in decline along with consumer spending.
Datamonitor's report, entitled 'Decision matrix - selecting an IP contact centre vendor', says IP contact centre (IPCC) vendors have started offering unified product lines, aiming for common administration and reporting, common user interfaces and functionality far beyond basic routing.
An IPCC is any contact centre that does not use traditional circuit switching; that is, all calls are voice-over-IP or converted from TDM to IP.
Ian Jacobs, senior analyst for customer interaction technologies at Datamonitor and the report's author, says: “In order to offset markedly slower growth in the traditional stronghold of the large enterprise market, IPCC vendors that had traditionally sold technology for very large contact centres will continue to try to find ways to package and sell products for smaller customers.
“This means increased competition for companies that have already created small and mid-sized enterprise products. It also means increased competition for technologically and business process-savvy channel partners from which smaller companies typically buy such products.”
Datamonitor identified Avaya and Alacatel-Lucent/Genesys as market leaders in the IPCC industry. Jacobs notes that while the contact centre industry is intensely competitive, companies have different priorities and roadmaps and will not necessarily directly compete for the same client accounts.
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