Call Center Recording Market Sees Tremendous Growth
Worldwide sales for contact center interaction recording and related products and services hit $1.05 billion in 2014, up 8.7 percent from 2013, according to new research from Pelorus Associates. Dick Bucci, principal at Pelorus Associates, expects the market to hit $1.6 billion in 2020.
According to the research, the growth is being fueled largely by a recent surge in customer centricity, new governement regulations, and a rapidly growing contact center agent population. Also driving adoption is the fact that “speech analytics and voice of the customer software are no longer options but must-haves for the modern contact center,” Bucci maintains.
Add to that the fact that many vendors have started to combine solutions--either developed on their own or with partners--into larger product suites. “It’s a combination of thinking more creatively and smarter marketing,” Bucci says.
The hosting model is also boosting adoption. In 2010, only one vendor—TelStrat—offered a hosted recording solution; now nine other vendors, which collectively control more than 90 percent of the market, also offer a hosting option, according to Bucci. They are ASC Technologies, Aspect, Envision Telephony, HP-Autonomy, inContact, NICE Systems, OnVisource, Tantacomm, and Verint Systems.
NICE and Verint continue to dominate the market, with a combined 80 percent share, up from 72 percent in 2013. Despite high market concentration, ASC Technologies, Calabrio, VPI, and ZOOM International are outpacing the overall market.
Bucci was also pleasantly surprised to see HP-Autonomy make a resurgence. The company, he says has been “very aggressively beefing up its offerings" in the past year or two.
Not surprisingly, North America continues to dominate the market, while Latin America and Asia Pacific continue to lag, the research found. In 2014 recording purchases were $171 per agent in North America but only $63 per agent in Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Those countries still rely heavily on outsourcing, and lower wages make it harder for companies in those locations to justify the expense, according to Bucci.