News Feature | March 6, 2015

New Report Reveals Contact Centers Still Playing Catch Up To Digital Demand

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

New Report Reveals Contact Centers Still Playing Catch Up To Digital Demand

Global ICT services and solutions provider Dimension Data has found that, despite the continued explosion of digital contact as a customer engagement tool, contact centers are still playing catch-up when it comes to digital demand.

The data collected as part of the 2015 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report, the result of a survey of 901 participants covering 12 industries in 72 countries around the world.

The study concludes with digital contact continuing to grow at its current pace, digital will overtake voice-based contact in contact centers within two years. Further, 80 percent of respondents don’t believe their current IT system will meet future needs, while 40 percent of those organizations said that their IT system does not meet current needs.

“Systems in the contact center have fallen short of expectations year-on-year over the last four to five years,” Scott Cruikshank, director, communications, Dimension Data, explains in the press release.

Of contact centers that have not yet adopted hosted/cloud solutions, 34 percent said they are considering a hosted technology model in the near future. The study shows almost 9 out of 10 current users agree that cloud reduced costs, while 88 percent said that could offers access to new functionalities.

The majority of contact centers view analytics as the most likely factor to shape the industry over the next five years, yet 40 percent of contact centers currently have no data analysis tools. The research also shows most organizations are unclear on how they can leverage this information.

“Organizations will need to refresh, change and adapt to the emerging digital revolution. The combination of technology that is creating an omni-channel environment, coupled with the ability to analyze and act in real-time, and personalize customer service, provides powerful resources for organizations to create a productive, digital customer engagement model," Cruikshank says.