Research firm MarketsandMarkets projects the global contact center software market to grow from $24.1 billion in 2020 to $75.5 billion in 2026, expanding at a compound annual rate of 20.9 percent.
Major factors driving this growth include the rising adoption of advanced contact center technologies, the need for handling contact center attrition and absenteeism, the emerging role of social media in contact center operations, increasing adoption of virtual and cloud-based contact center solutions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the growing need for omnichannel solutions to minimize efforts in reaching end customers, continuous transitions to cloud-based contact centers, and rising demand for personalized and streamlined customer interactions to achieve high customer satisfaction, according to the research.
The report identifies contact center solutions as those that include omnichannel routing, workforce management, reporting and analytics, customer engagement, computer-telephony interchange, messaging, compliance, and data integration). These solutions address critical contact center needs related to the management of agent performance and inbound and outbound operations, such as customer query resolution, selling and prospecting, and information delivery and customer communication management, it said.
The need for minimizing handling times, call bounces, abandoned calls, and call waiting and increasing customer satisfaction, customer effort scores, Net Promoter Scores, and customer life time value are expected to drive the demand for omnichannel routing, reporting and analytics, and customer engagement solutions.
The report also uncovered a growing use of contact center software by small businesses, which had traditionally relied on manual processes in the past. The intensely competitive market has encouraged smaller firms to invest in automated solutions to achieve high business efficiency, minimize costs, and optimize their workforces are driving the adoption of contact center solutions among these smaller firms, it said.
The report also highlighted the retail and consumer goods industries as the largest contact center software adopters, citing their highly customer-centric natures and the need to enhance customer experiences and improve customer retention.
IT budgets are huge as retail and consumer goods companies try to maintain a certain brand image for both employee and customer retention, which is key to higher revenue, the report stated. The need to capture market share, increase sales, and enhance customer experiences with the accurate management of customer profiles and agent interactions with customers is driving the use of contact center solutions in the retail and consumer goods industry, it found.
The report identified NICE, Genesys, Cisco, Avaya, Five9, Talkdesk, Vonage, 8x8, Amazon Web Services, Atos, SAP, Oracle, RingCentral, IBM, Lifesize, Content Guru, Aspect, Enghouse Interactive, 3CLogic, Ameyo, Verizon, Intrado, AT&T, BT, Twilio, Vocalcom, NEC, EvolveIP, Mitel, and ZTE as key players in the market.