London: After years of hype, the next generation 'virtual' or 'distributed' contact centre is finally becoming a reality says London-based Datamonitor. The key enabler of the 'virtual' contact centre is internet telephony. This technology makes it possible to have a phone conversation over the internet or a dedicated internet protocol (IP) network.

By IP-enabling the contact centre, organisations can utilise geographically dispersed call centre agents and also if need be, involve employees who are not normally part of the customer service process, such as branch workers, home workers or back office workers. A new report by Datamonitor, Contact Centre Component Technologies 2005, predicts the market for global contact center technology routing would be worth $4.7 billion by 2009.

Much of this growth will come from developing markets such as India, China, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Mexico and North and South Africa.

The contact centre environment has never been more complex. Aside from the traditional pressures to reduce operational costs, contact centres also face the challenging task of providing exceptionally high-quality service in order to retain current customers and attract new ones. They are becoming the hub of customer interaction within organisations, taking on a more strategic role in building and maintaining customer relationships.

These changes have meant that the focus has moved away from answering calls as quickly as possible to first call resolution. However, contact centre managers often find it difficult to accomplish this objective just using traditional contact centre staff, especially during peak hours and unexpected call spikes, or when the enquiry resolution requires the assistance of knowledge workers with specialist skills. Very often, these workers sit outside of the traditional contact centre environment.

"The problem with the traditional contact centre model is that it creates a silo for customer service expertise and fails to take advantage of all the expertise that sits outside the contact centre in the branches and back office," says Robin Goad, senior contact centre analyst at Datamonitor. "IP telephony really is the key enabler that allows the contact centre to become more 'virtual', and more and more organisations are realising the benefits that this can bring."

The aim of a virtual or distributed contact centre is to identify the contact as it enters the organisation and then use intelligent contact routing technology at the network level to route the contact to the most appropriate customer service resource. This routing decision should be based on a number of criteria, including for example the value of the customer, the resources available, the type of media, the time of day.

Global contact centre routing technology market is expected to grow by 30 per cent between 2004 and 2009.

A survey of 400 contact centre managers found that 19 per cent of North American and Western European contact centres are using remote workers. Over 20 per cent of new contact centre agents shipped in 2004 were IP agents, double the number that were shipped in 2003. By the end of 2005, 11 per cent of all global agent positions will be IP, and Datamonitor estimates this will grow to 37 per cent by 2009.

According to Datamonitor the global contact centre technology routing market was worth $3.6bn in 2004. The combination of investment in new IP-based technology and more organic growth in less developed markets means that it will grow by 30 per cent between 2004-2009 to reach a value of $4.7bn. While North America will remain the largest segment of the market, Asia will be the fastest growing.