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Call center
statistics
Customer Satisfaction
| • |
A
5% improvement in customer
retention improves profitability
by 25 to 100%. (Bain &
Co.)
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Cutting
customer defections by just
5% has the effect of boosting
profits between 25% and 95%.
(Harvard Business Review.)
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The
availability of support centers
seems to be increasing. A
survey showed that 60% of
respondents currently provide
round the clock support for
customers. (Support Industry,
12/2001.) |
Technology
Growth
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The
size of the service automation
software market, worth $2.32
billion in 2001, will grow
to reach $4.4 billion by the
end of 2006. (Datamonitor,
2/5/2002.)
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Circuit
switched technology still
makes up over 90% of investment
dollars being spent on telecommunications
networks. (Venture Development
Corp., 9/2001.)
|
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About
90% of call centers use some
kind of agent monitoring,
mostly through manual systems,
while only 20% of call centers
employ some type of recording
product. (Frost & Sullivan.)
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A
typical Global 3,500 firm
will spend $15 to $30 million
per year on software and services
for its customer conversation.
(Forrester Research, 3/2001.)
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Staffing
Issues
| • |
Call
Center Careers surveyed 492
call center professionals
to determine what their staffing
plans were for the remainder
of 2001. 48% said that they
would be increasing the number
of staff in their call center
despite the softening of the
US economy. 38% said that
they would be reducing headcount
and 14% voted that they would
neither be expanding or reducing
headcount.
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| • |
1,000
call center job seekers were
polled to determine what they
disliked most about their
most recent job. The leading
responses were a lack of promotional
opportunities (26.4%) and
a feeling of being unfairly
paid for the work they perform
(24.2%). Other sources of
job dissatisfaction include
employees feeling they are
not recognized for their hard
work (20.4%), employees feeling
bored and unchallenged by
their job (17.8%), and employees
feeling they have not received
enough training to perform
their job well (11.2%). (Call
Center Careers, 1/2002.) |
E-Commerce
|
• |
More
than 2 billion people will
use Internet voice portals,
voice-enabled Web sites, and
Web-based IVR systems by 2005.
(Davidson Consulting.)
|
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• |
There
will be 71 million voice portal
users by 2005, up from 4.4
million users in 2001. (Allied
Business Intelligence.)
|
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• |
By
the end of 2001, 25% of customer
contacts will come through
IP-based channels. Accordingly,
purchases of IP contact center
solutions are expected to
grow by more than 100% annually
from 2001 to 2004. (Gartner
Group, via Aspect, 6/2001.)
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IVR
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• |
In
2005, sales of speech recognition
software engines, the basis
for all speech recognition
products, will reach $2.7
billion. (Cahners In-Stat,
7/2001.)
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• |
Speech
interaction reduces the time
of a banking call by 35% compared
to a touchtone call, according
to a benchmark study on bank
call centers by the Center
for Customer-Driven Quality
at Purdue University. The
Purdue study on banking call
centers also states that agent-assisted
calls in banking cost almost
$4 per call compared to 45
cents per call for automated
speech recognition. (Purdue
University, 12/2001.)
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• |
Research
suggests that the worldwide
market for telephony speech
processing software might
grow to over $3.5 billion
by 2005. This represents a
2001-2005 compound annual
growth rate of 52.1%. Automatic
speech recognition (ASR),
one of three core speech technologies,
will account for 96.2% of
the total 2005 revenue. The
conversion of text into speech
(TTS), another speech technology,
will account for 3.1% of total
revenue in 2005, while voice
recognition (VR) will account
for only 0.7%. (IDC, "Worldwide
Telephony Speech Processing
Software Market Forecast and
Analysis, 2001-2005,"
12/2001.)
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