Implications of the Frost Radar™ European Contact Centre as a Service Market 2020 Report

“Steady as she goes,” might have been the motto for the contact centre as a service (CCaaS) segment until early 2020. Not complacency: simply allowing market forces to act as the cloud becomes business as usual and on-premise contracts expire. But the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown that all up in the air.

Genesys innovation leads the pack

When it comes to predictions, the Frost Radar™ report on the European Contact Centre as a Service Market published by Frost & Sullivan in 2020 might have come a tad late to the party. The report says 2019 showed nearly 18% growth over the previous year, while cloud-based solutions will increase from 17% of the European market in 2019 to 33% by 2024. It’s too early to tell exactly what effect the new normal might have on CCaaS take up, but it’s arguable the charts are likely to point even more strongly north.

Nevertheless, among some 150 participants in the European market, the Frost Radar™ supplier-side findings are bang on. Genesys software outranks the competition on both growth and all-important innovation indices. That leadership stems from the ability of Genesys to offer an all-in-one cloud contact centre platform, a myriad of high-quality native features, a simple user interface, and unmatchable customisation capabilities.

In particular, the report remarks how Genesys has invested heavily in the development of state-of-the-art applications for predictive engagement and embedding artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in customer experience (CX) tools. That has established a clear Genesys lead in “the cloud-based customer engagement market.”

“Genesys is innovating faster than anyone in the industry,” says the report. In fact, in recent years our company’s R&D efforts have been supplemented by a dozen strategic acquisitions. They bring into play, for example, new speech analytics, self-service, and native cloud technologies much quicker than we could develop them ourselves. Or than our competitors could, come to that.

Strategic insight informs the future

So far, so fabulous. However, returning to volume-related predictions, the Frost Radar™ report notes the number of cloud-based agents in Europe grew from 420,000 to 780,000 between 2015 and 2019 and is expected to increase to over 1.5 million in the next five years. In the wake of COVID-19, changes in industry dynamics (like department stores and chains dropping like dominoes and service interactions going virtual) may drive those numbers even higher. The question is, where are all those agents going to be and what will they be doing?

One of the three strategic insights offered by Frost & Sullivan is that work at home agent (WAHA) models were relatively slow to take off in Europe. However, “significant growth is expected over the coming years [and] CCaaS platforms are necessary for WAHA systems in the CX space.” Against that background, all companies were caught short by COVID-19. Many had to make do and mend to allow their agents to take refuge in their own homes. They definitely won’t make the same mistake again.

Be sure then that the pandemic and its aftermath will be not only a major driver of WAHA growth, but also a wake-up call for organisations to revisit their business continuity plans. Both will be CCaaS-enabled; on-premise models simply don’t have the flexibility to operate under extreme, disrupted business and social circumstances. And note that WAHA isn’t the only remote working scenario we’ll have to plan for.

Meanwhile, first-rate WFO tools operating around new metrics will be complemented by more flexible deployment options and even-simpler-to-use interfaces. And, once the poor relation, HR angles are already coming straight to the CX technology cause.

Addressing such matters is front of mind for the Genesys R&D program. As well as maintaining our CX market lead underlined in the Frost Radar™ report, our scientists are focusing on new scalability, availability, WFO, and WAHA wellbeing techniques to keep our customers and their people secure in the new normal. And, even, thinking far enough ahead to whatever next normal might succeed that.

To find out more get your copy of the full report here.