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Top Trends in the Contact Center Infrastructure Market

August 1, 2022
Donna Fluss

The contact center infrastructure market has become one of the more attractive technology sectors during the past two years, catching the attention of some of the big names in the technology world, including Salesforce, Zoom and Facebook. This is due to its sizeable total addressable market (TAM) and “stickiness” with enterprise buyers. DMG expects to see additional enterprise software vendors enter the cloud-based contact center infrastructure market in the next few years as contact center functionality is rolled out more broadly within organizations and ultimately becomes a standard productivity tool that is available to most knowledge workers. 

R&D is on the Rise

As interest in and the market opportunity for sales of contact center technology and applications grows, so too does the level of research and development (R&D) in these solutions. The cloud-based contact center infrastructure (CBCCI) vendors are making major R&D investments and, in some cases, “bets” to broaden their solutions in response to the demands of their enterprise customers. The most significant areas of investment are in artificial intelligence (AI), automation and analytics to enable companies to improve the performance, effectiveness and productivity of their service organizations. This includes investments to enable companies to deliver a proactive and personalized service experience. These enhancements are attracting the attention of managers outside of contact centers who are seeking similar capabilities to improve other aspects of the customer journey. Executives are also looking for systems that provide oversight of work-at-home employees, as this trend is here to stay for the foreseeable future in many organizations. 

Agent Desktops and User Interfaces are Getting a Refresh

The increase in sales and adoption is also fueling a major replacement cycle for some standard features of CBCCI solutions. The market is undergoing a very needed upgrade to agent desktop and user interfaces (UIs) to enable agents to pivot easily from one channel to another. The CBCCI vendors are also updating design and development environments that are used to configure system routing and self-service logic. They are providing next-generation administration modules that are built to support the low-code/no-code preferences of business managers who do not want to be dependent on IT to support them. Even better, the more flexible routing and queuing capabilities are incorporating AI-based logic that can “self-improve,” as needed, on the fly. 

Improving Self-Service

Self-service is another area of major investment for the contact center market. Customers are demonstrating a desire to help themselves, and ask for assistance from live agents only when the automated systems fail to provide them with the information they need. The CBCCI vendors are in the early stages of enhancing their self-service capabilities. They are striving to deliver conversational bots or intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) and expand them beyond the traditional voice channel.

Customers are Asking for More

Customers are asking their CBCCI vendors to provide much more than an automatic call distributor (ACD) and/or dialer capabilities. The CBCCI vendors are responding by enhancing their omni-channel solutions, frequently with native or fully integrated third-party workforce optimization (WFO)/workforce engagement management (WEM) modules, context-sensitive knowledge bases, intelligent self-service and automation, and an expanding list of new capabilities not previously seen in contact center solutions in the past. 

Final Thoughts

Vendors are happy to invest in their solutions when they expect a return on investment. As demand for CBCCI solutions continues to increase, so will vendors’ investments in their solutions to make them more attractive to buyers. Now is a great time to purchase a CBCCI solution, as there are many good choices, and vendors willing to make enhancements to close a deal.