A majority or 80% of contact centers believe their current IT systems won’t meet future needs, while up to 40% of those organizations said that IT doesn’t meet their current needs, according to Dimension Data’s annual Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report (GCCBR) which surveyed 901 organizations across 72 countries.
“Non-voice traffic (digital) is set to rise in 87% of contact centers within the next two years, and voice traffic (talking to a customer center agent on the telephone) will drop in 42% of contact centers during the same period,” said Adam Foster, Dimension Data’s Group Executive – Communications. “Indeed, based on the information we’ve gathered over the last 10 years, digital will overtake voice in the contact center in the next two years.”
Foster says this trend needs to be addressed urgently, and the good news is there are lots of options when it comes to procurement and consumption options.
“Escalating IT dependency is already driving cloud and hybrid ownership, and technology – not dependencies – will force improved integration across hybrid architecture models of hosted and owned IT. In the last 12 months, contact centers choosing pure ownership models have reduced by 23%. Of contact centers that aren’t using hosted/cloud solutions yet 34% are considering a hosted technology model in the near future.”
According to Nagi Kasinadhuni, Dimension Data Asia Pacific’s General Manager – Communications, systems in the contact center have fallen short of expectations year-on-year over the last four to five years, and organizations will need to refresh, change, and adapt to the emerging digital revolution which will see seven new digital channels come on board by the end of 2015.
“The combination of technology that’s creating an omnichannel environment, coupled with the ability to analyze and act in real-time, and personalize customer service, provides powerful resources for organizations to create a productive, digital customer engagement model,” explains Kasinadhuni.
Investments in new technology solutions such as cloud and hybrid are delivering results in the short term. This is encouraging news for organizations considering new technology investments. They’re much quicker to deploy, so the return on investment for new technologies will be achieved quicker.
“In addition, our case study evidence validates the significant benefits enabled by cloud solutions. What’s more, over 89% of the current users polled by Dimension Data agreed that cloud has reduced costs, while 88% said that cloud offers access to new functionalities, says Kasinadhuni.”
