The economic downturn is finally shifting directions for the Asia-Pacific contact center market, as the region is seeing a rise in customer demand. Market intelligence from Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) projects that, due to the need for better systems to meet this demand, investments in enhanced customer service systems will be on the up and up.

Specifically, by 2019, the analyst firm predicts that as the Asia-Pacific area grows its contact center market, investments in advanced systems are likely to hit $1,160.8 million USD.

Legacy systems have not been replaced quickly due to uncertainty in the economic climate. However, social media’s rise in popularity as it relates to the customer experience has contact center managers looking to update and refresh their systems as a means to keep up with the times.

"With limited green field opportunities, vendors have turned their focus to upgrades and new technology advancements," said Frost & Sullivan information and communication technologies research manager Krishna Baidya in a statement. "Solution providers are helping enterprises to offer seamless service experience across myriad of channels to their customers. This is also meant to integrate existing systems with new channels of communication and business applications to effectively manage the increasing use of multi-modal customer contacts."

Hosted contact center solutions address many of the concerns contact center managers face today; keeping up with the newer communications tools that customers are using, maintaining relevance and satisfying customer demands.

Solutions like Five9’s hosted contact center suite offer multichannel tools that maximize agent productivity. By being able to integrate the solution right into a website, customers can email, chat and reach out to agents without picking up a telephone or waiting in a queue. With a multichannel offering, sales are increased, support costs are reduced and customers are engaged.

Hosted contact center infrastructure offerings themselves are not new; the variety, capabilities, and sophistication of the current generation of hosted applications, however, are.

Hosted solutions, like that of Five9’s (News - Alert) offering, are an attractive approach to acquiring updated and enhanced technology without a large capital investment.