North American Outsourced Contact Center Services Market Shows Increasing Use Of Self And Automated Services Technologies

Business Wire, Nov 22, 2006

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c45735) has announced the addition of North American Outsourced Contact Center Services Markets to their offering.

This Frost & Sullivan research service entitled North American Outsourced Contact Center Services Market provides an overview of this subset of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. It includes a complete analysis of key market challenges, drivers, restraints, and trends that are impacting market penetration and growth. In this research service, Frost & Sullivans expert analysis thoroughly outlines market size, market share of major providers, and pricing strategies.

Market Sector

Expert Frost & Sullivan analysts thoroughly examine the following market sectors in this research service:

By Vertical Industry:

* Financial

* Telecom

* Health

* Travel/ Hospitality

* Government/ Education

* Consumer/ High-tech

* Insurance

* Other

By Type of Contact Medium:

* Voice

* E-mail

* Web collaboration

* Fax/other

Technologies

The following technology is covered in this research service:

* Customer Care Outsourcing: This is a subset within the much broader business process (BPO) outsourcing industry. Business clients contract suppliers to manage inbound and outbound call volumes for customer care, telemarketing, and help desk. Services can range from simple call handling to handling complex business processes. This could include technical support and customer self-service via interactive voice response (IVR) applications or the web.

Market Overvie

Overall Growth of Market Likely to be Slow but Steady

The need for companies, both large and small, to achieve significant cost savings and enhance the overall customer experience are two of the biggest factors driving the continued growth of the outsourced contact center services market. Outsourcing offers companies a highly efficient and cost-effective alternative to maintaining large and expensive in-house contact centers. This trend is expected to continue to gather momentum as outsourcers offer superior technology, integrated services, and clearly defined value propositions irrespective of whether their operations are located onshore, nearshore, or offshore.

Frost & Sullivan believes that the current positive economic climate in the United States, coupled with a greater acceptance of outsourcing across business verticals, will result in a promising, though slow, market growth in the future, says the analyst of this research service. However, this projected growth is dependent on the ability of outsourcing companies to contain costs and remain competitive. Essentially, the demand for outsourced services focusing on inbound customer care is expected to continue growing, while outbound calling is also likely to see increased volumes as companies seek to provide proactive customer care.

Offshore Outsourcing Services to See Sustained Growth

The outsourced contact center services market is both fragmented and highly competitive and is home to literally thousands of providers. Despite the fierce competition among vendors, this market is dominated by a few global major outsourcing companies - in fact, less than a dozen - that account for the bulk of the business. In such a competitive scenario, participants with large outbound practices that do not transform the focus of their services could experience declining revenues due to the adverse effects of the nationwide do not call (DNC) legislation, observes the analyst.

Major trends in the market include outsourcers' increasing use of self and automated services technologies such as automated interactive voice response (IVR), e-mail management, and Web self-service. This trend, expected to continue throughout the forecast period, is likely to enable outsourcers to provide more services using the same number of agents. This will allow them to handle a greater number of transactions but will conversely result in lower revenue derived per transaction. The increasing trend toward self-service technologies combined with the distributed contact center capabilities of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is also expected to drive continued growth in offshore services throughout the forecast period, although not as rapidly as initially expected.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c45735