Datamonitor Report Claims Hosted Call Centers on the Rise

A new report by independent market analysts Datamonitor says that increasing numbers of call centers in North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are replacing premise-based technology with hosted technology.

According to the report, Hosted and Networked call centers, currently 9.7 percent of agent positions in North America and 2.1 percent in EMEA, are in hosted call centers. By 2007, these numbers will have increased to 13.4 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively.

Unlike many other types of hosted and ASP (application service provider) solutions that have not lived up to the hype, Datamonitor is confident that hosted call center solutions will be a success with small businesses. Hosted call centers are those that host their call center applications (including ACD, CTI and IVR) in a service provider's network rather than invest in premise-based technology. This enables the call center to gain access to applications at a fixed monthly cost.

According to Datamonitor, smaller call centers (between 10 and 50 agent positions) are the fastest growing sector of the market in both North America and EMEA. "Many large organizations have multiple call centers that work poorly together," said Robin Goad, managing analyst at Datamonitor Networking. "These will allow organizations to manage call centers as one without the need to physically re-locate agents. This will enable them to unify and centralize business processes and as a result increase customer service levels and reduce costs. Call center networking technology allows organizations to achieve this goal across geographical and departmental boundaries. Networked call centers don't have to be restricted to traditional call centers. The great thing about lots of this new technology is that it allows organizations to cost effectively link back office and branch employees (e.g. bank tellers), offshore centers (e.g. those in India and elsewhere) and third parties (e.g. outsourcers) into one unified, centrally managed call center network."