The contact centre of an enterprise is gaining importance with increased emphasis on customer service in the Indian market. It is not only a point of contact for customers, but also a platform for enterprises to provide customer service and marketing activities, create brand loyalty, and retain customers. Core verticals dominating the contact centre solutions market, such as BFSI, telecommunications, and BPO, along with other emerging verticals are now adopting contact centres.
Some major vendors in this market are Avaya, Aspect, Genesys, Cisco, NICE, and Verint. These vendors have a whole suite comprising off-the-shelf applications, customised applications, and also certain vertical- and horizontal-specific solutions. The market has also evolved in terms of growing number of domestic participants, third-party applications, and inter-operability of applications among different vendors for smooth integration.
Changing Customer Needs
The contact centre solutions market continues to be dominated with the adoption of basic solutions like Automatic Call Distributor (ACD), Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), and Outbound. The adoption of outbound application declined in 2010, due to the dip in outsourcing demand for telemarketing activities in the international market. Adoption of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems and self-service portals is increasing on the customers? side. Speech technology and Workforce Management showed good traction in 2010, and are expected to grow in future.
Customer demands are evolving with time. Earlier, customers used voice calls to connect to an enterprise, but now they are using multi-channel communication. From a basic telephone call, to IVR, email, SMS, chat, fax, web, video, and even social media are now being used. Customers want seamless transfer of data from IVR ports to live agents, without the need for them to repeat information. The enterprises also want to leverage the presence capability, and integrate their experts and supervisors, along with the contact centre agents, to attain customer first-call resolution. Hence, enterprises are increasingly demanding more unified technology solutions and multi-channel customer contacts, both in their contact centres and beyond, to ensure successful customer service delivery.
Social Media Integration
Growth of social media, as an additional communication channel, is paving the way for evolution in customer management. Today, every company wants to integrate social networks with its contact centres. Enterprises want multi-channel communication and unified communications to empower their agents with callers? information. There is also the need to proactively respond to customers and prospects, by communicating through public social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, other public forums, or blogging sites. Today, social media is a buzzword among customers and many enterprises are inquiring about it. The real deployment in volume is yet to happen, but, increased demand and integration of social media for customer management is expected soon.
Decline in Outsourcing
The economic downturn had affected the contact center industry in India in a big way. With cost-cutting exercises implemented across countries, there was a decrease in off-shoring activities in dominant markets such as the UK and the US. The shift in government policies in these countries added to the woes. With decrease in international business from the UK and US, the service providers are looking at newer markets such as Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific for growth. India is also facing tough competition from upcoming outsourcing countries like Philippines and some Eastern European countries, in terms of both voice quality and cost-effectiveness. Now, with improved conditions, outsourcing business from the Western market is expected to grow.
Promising Domestic Market
Most contact centres that were initially targeting international businesses, have now started extending services into the domestic contact centre space. The contact centre applications market in India performed well in 2010, primarily due to steady domestic demand and some international expansion deals. The domestic market, with its improved economy, increased consumption, and a number of large enterprises, is set to lead the demand for the contact centre industry in India. Even the SMB segment, with increased customer focus, is expected to boost this growth further.
Emerging Trends
Emergence of the hosted contact centre market in India is providing customers with an on-demand, easily scalable, opex model without any capital investments. The pricing model is shifting to pay-per-use/pay-per-IVR port/pay-per-agent
Another visible trend is virtualisation. Customers are consolidating their multiple contact centres into one virtualised contact centre and spreading in various geographical locations
With the rising demand for domestic contact centres and with escalating real estate costs in tier I cities, more contact centres would be set up in tier II and tier III cities to save costs and tap the resources available there
Adoption of VOIP-based contact centers is evolving with the availability of a thin client.
With thin client, no installation is required at the agent?s desktop; hence, the setup for new agents is minimal with low maintenance costs
With steady rise in cost input, labor wage, and operations, the price advantage in the BPO market is eroding in India. High attrition rate in this industry, along with increasing infrastructure costs are adding to the woes. In spite of these challenges, the contact centre solutions industry is expected to grow steadily over the next few years, especially due to strong domestic demand. Overall, the long-term growth prospects in this industry are high, as increasing cost pressures will ensure that off-shoring becomes imperative.
