Despite healthy growth in the cloud contact center market in 2016, the market for on-premises contact center systems recovered slightly after several years of decline, according to data collected by Research and Markets.
Contact center analytics, quality monitoring, and recording were particular bright spots for growth, as companies seek to get the most out of their existing investments, the research found, while inbound contact routing, outbound dialing and IVR systems showed less of a decline than in previous years.
Contact center analytics systems include speech analytics, multichannel customer interaction analytics, and contact center performance analytics applications. Analytics, the analysis found, is of utmost importance to companies as they move towards providing omnichannel customer care and digital transformation. While traditionally divided between agent performance analytics and customer interaction analytics, developments include bridging the two sets to improve the customer experience and worker experience, as improvements in one are reflected in benefits in the other and vice versa. These new analytics offerings focus on customer journey analytics to provide insights into the customer journey and sentiment to improve the customer experience, fuel proactive outreach, and generate revenue.
Research and Markets also reports that tools such as speech analytics, combined with voice biometrics and other technologies, are being used for fraud detection and prevention. Additional advancements have been made in workforce optimization suites, social customer care, and mobile applications, reinforcing emphasis on catering to the preferences of the Millennial consumer and worker, improving operational efficiencies, and agent empowerment.
The study also uncovered growth opportunities in emerging areas within analytics, such as robotic process automation, Big Data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, speech technologies, personalization technologies, IoT, and applications such as virtual assistants, chatbots, messaging bots, video, and gamification. For all of these solutions, enterprises are increasingly looking to source them from their primary contact center infrastructure or workforce optimization vendors, the research firm concluded.