As the market for cloud contact centers continues to increase, the acceleration of omnichannel and digital transformation, coupled with the C-suite demand for stronger and swifter growth, is driving technology acquisitions in the contact center market, according to research from Frost & Sullivan.
"Hosted/cloud contact center solutions will benefit from converged tools, newer social channels, and deeper integrations to expand their footprint from 24 percent of the total seats base in 2015 to a likely 40 percent by 2020," said Frost & Sullivan Digital Transformation Principal Analyst Nancy Jamison, in a statement. Contact center service providers "can drive home the advantage by delivering an omnichannel CX that aligns with the needs of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, prospects, suppliers, distributors. and partners."
Furthermore, the analysis indicates that major process transformation and top-down cross-organizational support can make omnichannel customer care a success.
The research also found that while there are many benefits to operating in a cloud, businesses with unamortized and functional premises-based, solutions perceive no economic benefits in an infrastructure upgrade, including a switch to hosted/cloud contact center services. Additionally, contact center service providers have to battle persistent customer concerns regarding reliability, security, and privacy. In spite of these challenges, it is clear that cloud-based applications are the way forward, as pure-play cloud providers continue to expand offerings at a rapid pace and traditional contact center systems suppliers begin to offer add-on cloud offerings.
"Overall, contact center vendors need to find a way to tap green-field opportunities while still catering to their large installed base of premise products," Jamison said. "Vendors that deliver a comprehensive suite of cloud contact center solutions comprising mobile, social, web real-time communication, analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, automation, and personalization technologies, will grow faster than best-of-breed solution providers."