Market Trends of Contact Center Outsourcing Industry
The Email Support Segment is Expected to Hold Significant Market Share
- Email support can be described as an asynchronous communication channel through which customers and teammates are not required to be simultaneously involved in a conversation to resolve and manage customer queries, challenges, and concerns connecting to a product or the offered service.
- Critical tasks for the email support role comprise developing good relationships with customers, solving their issues, endorsing products and services, maintaining their knowledge of the job, reporting to supervisors, and forwarding unresolved questions to experts. Email support is one of the most commonly used methods and a mission-critical service offering. According to Cisco Talos Intelligence Group, as of April 2023, the United States had the highest number of emails sent daily, with approximately ten billion. Overall, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, India, and Germany each had 8.3 billion emails sent per day.
- Numerous people consider it more suitable than phone support, although the timing could be improved. One of the main benefits of email support is the constant thread of ongoing or past communication, so the same person is not needed to answer multiple communications that happened over email. This offers optimal agency effectiveness.
- The trust factor in an email is far superior to other available support channels. When a complaint is written and documented over email, the customer seems to be at ease, keeping in mind that their concerns are being taken seriously. Also, with the augmented penetration and adoption of smartphones, most users nowadays always have quick access to their emails, even though they are not at home or office or have access to a PC. With emails being available on these smart devices, consumers can now get ready support at their convenience.
- A company’s email support system can be integrated into voice or chat support channels. It does not cost the company much of a fortune but delivers concrete results, continuously increasing its ROI. Additionally, emails allow customers to attach bills, tickets, and interesting graphics, which helps keep them engaged and allows better control over the process. Customers and operators alike can attach documents and showcase them with email support. Customer support via email also offers the customer base an option to attach damaged deliverables for which they may be asking for support. With the help of ticket numbers or user IDs, support conducted through emails can be traced back by the team carrying out support procedures and the user. This permits both parties to keep a check on whether an issue was solved in time.
- With AI and chatbots now present in every aspect of support processes, email support also integrates such technology to keep up with the industry's pace. In 2023, many companies, such as Google, launched several AI applications for email support. Such advances are projected to fuel the overall segment’s growth in the market during the forecast period.
North America is Expected to Hold Significant Market Share
- In North America, numerous contact center outsourcing businesses switched from old-fashioned on-premises arrangements to cloud-based contact center solutions. These solutions have provided the contact centers with greater scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, allowing these companies to establish and manage their contact center operations speedily. The demand for remote work competencies, a better-quality client experience, and augmented operational effectiveness were the trends that fueled this development.
- Customers in North America are becoming more familiar with the expectation of dependable, smooth experiences through several channels. Outsourcing companies of contact centers have been incorporating channels such as voice, email, social media, chat, and self-service alternatives to offer omnichannel customer support. This offers simplicity and raises customer satisfaction by allowing firms to cooperate with customers on their favored channels.
- With the increasing importance of customer data and its confidentiality, contact center outsourcing providers in North America were consolidating their data security measures and ensuring compliance with industry regulations. In addition to privacy concerns, data protection boosted the implementation of vigorous security frameworks, protected data storage, and adherence to standards such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
- In July 2023, the US embassy in India announced to its visa applicants that its customer service center is shifting to a fresh platform. Customer calls, in addition to appointment booking, are anticipated to shift. Such developments are projected to fuel the region’s development as the US government controls the contact center, although it is in India.
- The region is largely known for its outsourcing of contact center operations, especially to the countries in Asia-Pacific, including countries such as India, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Malaysia. However, the demand for Customer contact services is anticipated to grow in the future considering the high adoption of technology, significant penetration on the internet, and increasing dependability on the technology of the regular population for everyday chores; such factors are projected to fuel the development of the market in North America during the forecast period.