November 20, 2014
A study on the Asia-Pacific Contact Center Applications Market found that, in terms of employment and revenue figures, the contact center industry in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region has been quite strong. There was growth in the number of contact center seats, and revenues are expected to grow over the next few years.
Despite these positive findings, the industry has shown some reluctance to invest in application technology and is focusing more on improving the customer experience. This will result in limited revenue growth for vendors providing call center technology.
The APAC contact center applications market generated revenue of $676 million in 2013 and is expected to generate $1.1 billion in 2020, at a CAGR of 7.2 percent. Revenue from core applications such as call distribution, monitoring, and IVR is declining.
The two factors that will have the greatest impact over the next few years are the shift to an omnichannel system for customer interaction and analytics that track operations. According to research conducted by Ogilvy ( – ) & Mather, the number of social media users in the APAC region is expected to increase from $970 million this year to $1.23 billion in 2017.
This increase, along with a rise in mobile device use, will lead to a shift toward . Customers will expect retailers and other businesses to communicate via text, email, and social media, as well as by phone or in person.
They will also expect that when they raise an issue on one channel, they will be able to seamlessly continue the discussion on another channel. Demand for self-service applications is also increasing, as a growing number of customers prefer to have some autonomy in resolving issues. This suits customer support centers just fine, since it reduces customer service representative labor costs per customer.
The results of Frost & Sullivan’s ( – ) report might seem to be a mixed bag of positive and negative news, but such a conclusion is too simplistic. It’s more accurate to say that what was previously a relatively untapped market for mobile devices and social media is growing in both of these areas. The APAC region is following the same trends as other regions, and businesses that want to have many satisfied customers need to change the way they provide support if they want to remain competitive.
