VoIP Adoption in Contact Centers on Accelerated Rise, Finds Yankee Group
Tuesday, 29 August 2006
Yankee Group last week revealed that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) penetration in the contact center and sales of related products are poised for significant increase by year end 2007. With 38 percent of contact centers currently researching and investigating VoIP, the technology deployment rate will likely grow even more dramatically as these investigations drive VoIP conversion decisions in the future.
According to Yankee Group’s recently published report – entitled “Migration Costs, Vendor Loyalty and Need for ‘Agents Anywhere’ Define Contact Center VoIP Adoption Plans” – VoIP adoption rate in North American contact centers will grow from approximately 17 percent in 2005 to greater than 47 percent by the end of 2007.
While the significant growth in VoIP adoption in the contact center spans centers of all sizes, the most aggressive segment for growth appears to be centers with 500 or more agent seats.
The report said a primary driver of the transition to VoIP is a desire to effectively and efficiently place and manage remote agents; contact centers view the technology as a way to implement an "agents anywhere" strategy and to manage the remote workers more cheaply and flexibly.
In addition, the study predicts that the VoIP penetration rate of agent seats will increase from 16 percent in 2005 to more than 60 percent over the next three years.
The preferred channels for increased VoIP product acquisitions will be the traditional telecommunications companies and telephony hardware/software vendors over system integrators and value-added resellers.
And while customers report data networking vendors will certainly be involved in the planning phases of VoIP, it is unlikely they will overcome traditional contact center providers in application sales in the near term.
"'Agents anywhere' including home agents will be the consistent theme for contact center VoIP transition justification," said Ken Landoline, Yankee Group Customer-Centric Strategies Senior Analyst. "VoIP market growth in the next 3 years is encouraging news for vendors of VoIP contact center solutions. Vendors can best capitalize on this growth opportunity by articulating VoIP lifecycle savings along with voice quality and security issues in their sales and marketing plans. These are areas in which users indicate they need the most help in VoIP acquisition justification."
VoIP is a technology that allows one to make telephone calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line. Some services using VoIP may only allow you to call other people using the same service, but others may allow you to call anyone who has a telephone number –including local, long distance, mobile, and international numbers. Also, while some services only work over your computer or a special VoIP phone, other services allow you to use a traditional phone through an adaptor.