Contact centres are becoming the hub of customer interaction within organisations, taking on a more strategic role in building and maintaining customer relationships. 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, for example in the branches and back office.

However, after years of hype, the next generation ''virtual'' or ''distributed'' contact centre is finally becoming a reality. Internet protocol (IP) telephony is the key enabler and, according to a recently published report by UK-based independent market analyst Datamonitor, uptake of the next generation ''virtual'' contact centre model is on the rise as more and more organisations begin to realise the benefits.

The adoption of IP is enabling more organisations to deploy ''virtual'' contact centres. The contact centre environment has never been more complex. Aside from the traditional pressures to reduce operational costs, contact centres also face the challenges of providing exceptionally high-quality service in order to retain current customers and attract new ones.

Switching from traditional circuit-switched telephony to IP telephony allows organisations to deploy the technology centrally at the network level rather than using separate technologies at each site. This enables the creation of a ''virtual'' contact centre and makes it much easier to deploy new sites and agents when and where they are required.

The aim of a ''''virtual'''' centre is to identify the contact (for example a telephone call or email) as it enters the organisation and then use intelligent contact routing technology at the network level to route it to the most appropriate customer service resource within the organisation. This resource could sit in a traditional contact centre, but it could just as easily be a geographically dispersed employee not normally part of the customer service process. This routing decision should be based on a number of criteria, including the value of the customer, the resources available, the type of media, and / or the time of day.

The benefits of going ''virtual''
The benefits of the ''virtual'' contact centre model are:

• Cost reductions: Both in terms of reduced technology costs, and also the more efficient use of customer service resources
  
• Increased customer satisfaction: The ''distributed'' model allows for calls to routed to the right place first time, improving first call resolution rates and therefore customer satisfaction
  
• Increased profitability: Happy customers are better customers, helping companies to improve their up-sell, cross-sell and customer retention rates. Combining these increased revenues with reduced costs leads to an increase in profitability.

In terms of deployment costs, it would be wrong to claim that there are immediate cost savings — moving to the ''virtual'' model requires spending money upfront to upgrade networks and technology, this is why most organisations go for a gradual migration or choose to purchase the applications as a pay as you go hosted service.

In the long term, however, most large organisations should see significant cost savings. Coming up with an average number is always very hard and will vary greatly with each organisation. Datamonitor estimates a 10 per cent to 25 per cent reduction in long term operational costs.

Datamonitor''s report, Contact Centre Component Technologies 2005, looks at how contact centre technology has changed significantly and has become simpler due to the convergence of what were once separate applications onto one single, unified contact centre platform.

According to this report, the global contact centre technology routing market was worth $3.6 billion 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 $4.7 billion.

Analysing the global market for inbound and outbound contact centre routing technology, the report points out that though North America will remain the largest segment of the market, Asia will be the fastest growing.

India and China lead the way in terms of investment and account for the majority of contact centre growth in Asia. India is leading in terms of IP telephony and the ''distributed'' model due to its role as the number one offshore location.

Asia''s top five ''virtual'' contact centre adopter hotspots are expected to be:

1. India
2. China
3. The Philippines
4. Japan
5. Australia

Source: Datamonitor