Contact Center Outsourcing - Market Share Analysis, Industry Trends & Statistics, Growth Forecasts (2024 - 2029)

The Contact Center Outsourcing Market size is estimated at USD 109.34 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 156.79 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 7.48% during the forecast period (2024-2029).

Key Highlights

• The contact center outsourcing services help decrease operating costs and improve the efficiency of organizations that outsource these services. Also, the seller uses professionals to work quickly. In addition, third-party service providers have to keep up with the times by utilizing new technologies such as voice bots. Advanced technologies like social media management tools, process automation tools like artificial intelligence and RPA, and considerable investments in the cloud will facilitate and streamline business processes.
• A cloud contact center is an online service that delivers outbound and inbound telephone connectivity to agents through the Internet. Agents generally operate a cloud contact center to accept incoming and place outgoing calls from their desktops. Unlike business VoIP, cloud-based contact centers streamline client communication across multiple channels, including text, phone, email, and social media.
• Due to the growth of communication channels, customers anticipate frictionless interactions across several touchpoints. To provide omnichannel assistance, contact center outsourcing businesses are enhancing their capacity and combining channels, including voice, email, chat, social media, and self-service alternatives. This enables companies to provide reliable and practical client service, increasing customer satisfaction.
• Contact center outsourcing companies invest in cutting-edge technologies and qualified personnel to deliver effective and efficient customer service. The expertise of the outsourcing partner's team in areas like multilingual support, technical debugging, and knowledge of a particular industry can be useful to businesses. As a result, companies can increase operational effectiveness while concentrating on their core capabilities.
• Airbnb, the online marketplace for lodging and experiences, partners with contact center outsourcing firms to offer multilingual customer support. As Airbnb caters to a global user base, outsourcing its customer service operations helps assist in multiple languages, ensuring a seamless experience for hosts and guests worldwide.
• The contact center outsourcing market faces several challenges related to data security, customization, and migration restraints. Contact centers often handle sensitive customer data, which makes compliance with data protection regulations (such as GDPR, HIPPA, and CCPA) crucial.
• Due to the pandemic, call volumes for businesses in the healthcare, travel, and e-commerce sectors increased. Regarding COVID-19, customers made more requests, inquiries, and complaints, which raised the need for contact center help. During the pandemic, contact center outsourcing firms were forced to make immediate adjustments to accommodate the increased call volumes and address the changing demands of their clients, including disseminating advice on safety precautions, handling cancellations, and giving assistance for remote work arrangements.

Contact Center Outsourcing Market Trends

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.

Contact Center Outsourcing Industry Overview

The contact center outsourcing market is semi-consolidated due to the presence of both global players and small and medium-sized enterprises. Some of the major players in the market are Atento SA, Sykes Enterprises, Incorporated, DATAMARK Inc., Scicom Berhad, and Teleperformance SA. Players in the market are adopting strategies such as partnerships and acquisitions to enhance their product offerings and gain sustainable competitive advantage.

In March 2024, ArenaCX announced that Atento joined the marketplace of BPO providers. For ArenaCX, this new addition to the BPO marketplace means more choice within the arena marketplace for customers looking to outsource key business functions.

In June 2023, Microsoft, the leading artificial intelligence (AI) tech provider, signed a USD 185 million deal with France's Teleperformance to help the outsourcing company launch its proprietary TP AI GenAI tec. Through the collaboration, Teleperformance is also leveraging Microsoft Azure artificial intelligence (AI) to launch TP GenAI, a new suite of AI solutions that enable faster, more efficient, and enhanced business processes that deliver improved customer experience.

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