Hosted contact centers can inherently deliver considerable benefits to those organizations who decide to go this route. The challenge is that these benefits are not always made readily clear when evaluating such options. With the level of technology involved, some contact center managers may be left scratching their heads, instead of making a decision that lowers costs and improves efficiency.

Research firm Yankee Group (News - Alert) recently evaluated this industry and published “VoIP and Lower TCO Will Drive Adoption of Hosted On-Demand Contact Centers”. In this report, the company declares that IP telephony has changed the market landscape in terms of economics, global reach, ubiquity of service and resource availability.

It is becoming more common for contact centers to operate multiple sites and support remote workers. IP-hosted contact center solutions provider easy-to-implement features that are simple to install, yet sophisticated and robust enough to handle even the most challenging contact center environment.

In addition, such solutions can also deliver a lower total cost of ownership, higher return on investments, better customer service and reduced operating costs. With so much to gain, it only makes sense to investigate hosted contact center options.

Businesses that are operating in this tumultuous market today must develop a flexible, responsive and cost-effective infrastructure to provide customer service and support. Contact centers are under increased pressure to increase effectiveness and efficiency as a result of globalization, continuing competitive pressures and fluctuating markets. The hosted IP contact center could provide the answer.

Yankee Group believes there are a number of key trends converging that will enable positive future market growth of hosted contact centers: the transition from circuit-switched voice to packet; the increased demand for integrated suites versus best-of-breed components; and the TCO-driven shift to technology on-demand instead of owned.

Contact centers throughout the world are preparing for the transition to VoIP and as a result, will increasingly look to hosted solutions instead of premises-based models. The main driver for the move to VoIP is the center’s ability to employ agents who do not need to be tied to a physical contact center location.

Contact center managers are increasingly migrating to integrated suites over best-of-breed components to reduce cost and improve utilization of their technology infrastructure. Yankee Group has found that the core features of contact center components have matured and a more tightly integrated suite will improve manageability and control.

Hosted technologies have experienced recent growth due to a response to the enterprise’s requirement for a demand-driven cost model instead an architecture that is structured on capital expenditures. As the hosted model continues to roll out more applications and infrastructure, market awareness and acceptance for this deployment model is expected to increase rapidly.