Revenue for the North American contact center market, both on-premise and in the cloud, grew by 12.5% in 2018. It is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12% through 2023.
While rapidly losing ground to the cloud, during 2018 system revenue grew by 3.8% year-on-year and is projected to increase to a CAGR of 2.9% over the same forecast period. However, a caveat is that as of the publication of this guide the 2019 market share and forecast are still being determined. Frost & Sullivan expects that the forecast for the different application segments, both cloud, and on-premise, will shift, due to the effects of rapid change, to a home-based model because of the COVID-19.
Impacts of COVID-19 on the Contact Center Industry
Impossible to predict or ignore the impact that the VOC-19 epidemic has had on client contact. 2020 added the pandemic to the list of events in the phrase “unforeseen events.
Along with fires, floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, COVID-19 brought to the forefront the need for contact center backup plans that the industry has long championed. Almost overnight, millions of people, including contact center employees, were recruited as candidates for telecommuting.
The industry responded quickly with Work at Home (WAH) models, free or trial offers for remote agents, and generous pricing models, even while working their own shift at WAH.
Activation to the Cloud
The whole situation with the COVID-19 only accelerated the movement to the cloud for millions of agents from all vendors.
This also somehow drove another trend we are seeing in the cloud, but in a particular segment: telecom providers. When Frost & Sullivan published its first Cloud Contact Center Guide in 2018, most telecom providers were offering enterprise customers on-premise systems from the same vendors they use for BPO and managed service offerings. A few had also offered customers the ability to license the cloud as well. Now all of these providers have forged deep relationships with other cloud platform providers.
That’s how this guide examines the North American contact center market, covering on-premise contact center systems and hosted/cloud markets. This study is based on extensive primary and secondary research and is divided into 2 sections.
Section 1
- Provides analyst commentary on the major forces affecting the North American hosted/cloud contact center market.
- Trends: A number of trends, including the move to the cloud, have been gaining momentum for a decade. Others, such as creative pricing strategies or the creation of application stores for customers to more easily add new capabilities from outside vendors, are gaining momentum. Frost & Sullivan expects these trends to extend well beyond 2023.
Section 2
- It highlights and evaluates the capabilities of high-performance providers.
- North American Cloud Contact Center Providers. Frost & Sullivan chose vendors based on the strength of vision and execution capability; some offer complete contact center solutions while others offer compelling suites focused on areas such as agent performance optimization. Solution providers are listed in alphabetical order.
In short, this Frost & Sullivan Guide takes an in-depth look at the North American contact center market for both cloud-based and premise solutions. It looks at vendors that provide on-premise, cloud-based and hybrid solutions. It also includes a number of telecommunication-based providers that offer business process outsourcing (BPO) and hosting, as well as cloud and premise-based solutions directly to enterprise customers.
