2009 Business Trends: multichannel strategies in the contact center

This business trends study is part of our Customer Interaction Technologies research. A survey was taken, asking 200 contact center managers about their IT budgets, investment plans, and channel priorities.
The study is broken down into five sections. Each section is summarized at the beginning before being shown graphically. The report includes segmentation by region and vertical.


? Section 1 – Demographics: This provides a breakdown of the sample by country, contact center size band, number of employees and vertical market.
? Section 2 – IT budget trends: This covers how IT budgets have changed from 2008 and if enterprises are planning to increase or decrease them in 2010. It also provides information on how enterprises’ IT budgets are split by technology and provider and which positions have the most influence over contact center decision making
? Section 3 - Strategic goals and business objectives: This section indicates enterprises’ key goals and business objectives for 2009 and 2010. It looks at how IT budget trends affect priorities in the contact center.
? Section 4 - Multi-channel priorities: This addresses enterprises’ most used channels, looking at investments in emerging channels such as social media, SMS and video. It includes information on use of web self-service tools, customer surveying and training needs.
? Section 5 - Vendor selection criteria: Enterprises were asked about their key criteria for choosing a multi-channel contact center vendor and hosted services provider.