Contact Center Key Trends Highlighted
Israel - NICE Systems announce results of contact center benchmarking
NICE Systems Ltd, provider of Insight from Interactions
solutions, has announced the results of its first annual
Benchmark of contact center business and technology trends.
The Benchmark, conducted by Ventana Research aims to assist contact center business and
technology professionals in better assessing their own plans and
strategies in light of the overall industry.
Key research
findings include:
Customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and compliance
are top operational priorities: companies are focused on
increasing customer satisfaction and reducing operating costs.
For financial services companies, regulatory compliance was a
key priority, along with increasing customer satisfaction.
Growth in contact center interactions:
44% of respondents expect increases in customer interactions,
both in phone interactions and as driven by the availability and
maturation of alternate communication channels, such as instant
and text messaging and web self-service.
Growth in customer interactions is also attributed to the
economic turmoil; for example, in the financial industry, many
more customers are calling to receive information about their
finances, voice their personal financial concerns, and to
refinance their mortgage.
Speech analytics deployments to grow by 182%:
Respondents foresee planned speech analytics deployments growing by 182% by
2011from first half 2009. Interviewees noted that speech
analytics presents an opportunity for obtaining valuable
insights on key business issues from a readily available and
historically overlooked information source-call recordings.
Over 50% of infrastructures to be VoIP-based by 2010:
As a technology that helps reduce operating costs, VoIP was noted as
a high investment priority, with 70% of respondents indicating
that they plan to have more than half of their infrastructure
VoIP-based by 2010. Furthermore, large multi-site enterprises
are centralizing their contact center operations, made possible
by advancements in VoIP-enabled solutions, and as a result are
prioritizing investment in VoIP.
Workforce Optimization investment growth greater than CRM: Agent
workforce optimization and performance management systems also
ranked high, significantly outpacing expected growth in CRM
investments.
Staffing levels to remain steady, growth in home-based agents:
81% of respondents expected staffing levels to remain steady or
increase slightly, with 37% anticipating an increase in home-based agents
Charles Born, corporate vice president of marketing at NICE
Systems stated, "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."
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."
More info:
www.nice.com/benchmark.
