Global call center business to reach $337.8 billion by 2018: GIA Report

Global Industry Analysts Inc. (GIA) in its new report on the global call center business has quoted that the industry is poised to reach a whopping $337.8 billion by 2018. The key factors that would drive this industry growth are the increased focus on customer service as a means for business development as well as the growing reliance on IT technologies to perform call center functions.

Trends in the call center market

• Growing reliance of call centers on innovative information technology options and adoption of technology like call routing, VoIP, ACD, automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer-telephony integration, interactive voice response systems, latest CRM tools is increasingly getting adopted in the industry.
• The merging of social media with call centers for the purpose of image management of its client companies is a growing trend witnessed in the industry. Social media context modules have been integrated into their solutions which helps the agents identify conversations relevant to the businesses of the clients in the social network.
• Lately, call center services are also being delivered through mobile applications. The Smartphone revolution has triggered call centers to come out with mobile application which allows the customers to contact the call centers through the mobile application via their Smartphones. This indicates an industry moving with the times, geared up to provide improved value-added services by means of mobile applications.
• Hosted contact centers are becoming increasingly popular with the tough economic situation due to their many benefits financially and otherwise. They have lower upfront costs, easy and low cost access to up-to-date technology as well as the higher levels of visibility and control.
• Internet is effectively used as a medium to deliver lower cost as well as lower-end services including technical support and help desk.
• Advanced functionalities are also being offered by hosted call centers such as monitoring of quality, speech self-service, outbound dialing and workforce management.

The global market share of the industry is dominated by the United States which takes up a considerable share as the biggest regional market. The report also shows that Asia-Pacific market is the fastest growing market poised for a fast rate of growth, with revenue obtained from the region expected to increase at 18.9 percent annual growth rate through 2018. Some of the major companies in the call center market are Acumen Telecommunications, Expert Global Solutions, Capita Customer Management, Datamatics Global Services etc. -http://www.bpmwatch.com/research/global-call-center-business-reach-337-billion-dollars-by-2018-gia-report/