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Hosted contact center services present a particularly lucrative opportunity for carriers to offer high-margin services that are in growing demand and could prove to be the "killer app" for next-generation networks.
There is a strong need for contact center solutions, especially among small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) looking to retain business through high-touch customer care. Many of these enterprises cannot afford the high investment and ongoing maintenance costs associated with building in-house contact centers. SMBs can, however, afford reasonably priced hosted services from a trusted carrier paid for in manageable monthly increments. This creates a new, steady revenue stream for carriers.
While call centers are a product of the telecommunications industry, they have matured to include new IP-based channels, such as VoIP, video-over-IP, interactive voice response, online chat, SMS text messaging and e-mail. To be successful, carriers will need to provide a blend of both the traditional call capabilities and Web-based online customer interaction channels in a single, managed offering. With an IP-based contact center platform, carriers can reclaim the call center as a new offering. If carriers are unable to provide multimedia, multichannel hosted contact center services, however, they could forfeit this opportunity to other service providers and miss out on an opportunity to reverse revenue drain.
In fact, carriers stand to benefit from 'contact-center-on-demand' clients as they expand customer service capabilities. Today's consumers are empowered to choose how they interact with a business. Carriers can help SMBs become more competitive by providing customer care services that are on par with or better than those provided by very large competitors with in-house contact center operations.
Carriers already have sophisticated networks in place that can leverage new IP technologies for multimedia, multichannel contact center services that are both efficient and cost-effective. Carriers can eliminate costly upfront hardware investments as well as regular maintenance and upgrade costs while providing customized customer care services -- all over the existing network. Several leading carriers, including Sonera (formerly Finland Telecom) and Cable & Wireless, already have launched contact center on demand offerings. Both were able to leverage their existing network infrastructure to provide hosted contact center services. Other carriers should consider this logical offering as a way to expand business among current enterprise clients as well as to attract new business clients. It can help to stem the drain of revenue by building up new high-margin services while filling a market gap for much-needed affordable, manageable customer care solutions.
Steve Kowarsky is the senior vice president of CosmoCom Inc., a provider of all-IP Contact Center On Demand solutions. He can be reached at skowarsky@cosmocom.com
