Features

VoIP Adoption in Contact Centers to Triple by 2007 End

By Sophia Mayengbam

The boom for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has already taken place. According to In-Stat, the global market for VoIP was 16 million in 2005, and is expected to grow to over 55 million in 2009. Low cost and its functionality for distance working has contributed to its growth and adoption in several industry sectors. One of the sectors which is increasingly deploying VoIP is contact centers.

Research firm Yankee Group has revealed that VoIP penetration in the contact center and sales of related products are poised for significant increase by year end 2007. The research firm finds that already 38 percent of contact centers are researching and investigating VoIP and the trend already shows a dramatic growth in the deployment of the technology as these investigations drive VoIP conversion decisions in the future. Yankke said the Next 3 years will be prime growth period for VoIP technologies, with deployment tripling by end of 2007.

With the use of VoIP phones call center agents can work from anywhere with a sufficiently fast Internet connection. Incoming phone calls can be automatically routed to users VoIP phone, regardless of the location. Additionally, phone service via VoIP is free or costs less than equivalent service from traditional sources.

The firm said that a primary driver of the transition to VoIP is a desire to effectively and efficiently place and manage remote agents; contact centers view the technology as a way to implement an ‘agents anywhere’ strategy and to manage the remote workers more cheaply and flexibly.

According to Yankee’s report, “Migration Costs, Vendor Loyalty and Need for "Agents Anywhere" Define Contact Center VoIP Adoption Plans,”, the VoIP adoption rate in North American contact centers will grow from approximately 17 percent in 2005 to greater than 47 percent by the end of 2007.

In addition, the study predicts that the VoIP penetration rate of agent seats will increase from 16% in 2005 to more than 60% over the next three years. While the significant growth in VoIP adoption in the contact center spans centers of all sizes, the most aggressive segment for growth appears to be centers with 500 or more agent seats.

Yankee said the preferred channels for increased VoIP product acquisitions will be the traditional telecommunications companies and telephony hardware/software vendors over system integrators and value-added resellers. And while customers report data networking vendors will certainly be involved in the planning phases of VoIP, it is unlikely they will overcome traditional contact center providers in application sales in the near term.

"'Agents anywhere' including home agents will be the consistent theme for contact center VoIP transition justification," said Ken Landoline, Yankee Group Customer-Centric Strategies Senior Analyst.

The growth of VoIP in the next three years is good new for vendors of VoIP contact center solutions. It is an opportunity for the vendors to capitalize on this growth. Landoline said it can be best capitalized opportunity by articulating VoIP lifecycle savings along with voice quality and security issues in their sales and marketing plans. Landoline said, "These are areas in which users indicate they need the most help in VoIP acquisition justification."


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