Contact Center Purchase Plans And Trends In 2009

Major software investments in existing contact centers will grow at 40% in 2009 according to Forrester's recent survey of contact center decision-makers. However, new licenses for agents' positions will experience only modest growth, as expansion plans in some organizations are offset by declines in others. Organizations that currently outsource some of their customer support operations will continue to expand their services, which is in contrast to 67% of companies that do not outsource today and have no plans to do so in the coming year. Investments in contact center applications indicate a high interest in improving basic services such as workforce optimization, interactive voice response (IVR), and computer telephony integration (CTI). This year, IT decision-makers are focusing on core operations, placing more emphasis on managing a positive customer experience and improving existing services than adding more advanced functionality and multimodal services.