The North American contact center systems market in 2010 went through a tough phase with key industry participants reporting low post-recession sales of core technologies. According to a new report from CompaniesandMarkets.com, the sales of outbound dialing systems, ACDs, switching and premises-based IVR experienced a significant decline. However, Infrastructure investment is now on the rise with a number of contact centers striving to diversify and add value to their operations.

Contact centers were spending money during 2010 and most of their investments were purchases that were focused on quality management and analytical applications. This provided them with a fast return on investment, minimal installation and downtime and low initial outlay when compared with core contact center infrastructure.

Since contact centers generally function via telephone, e-mail, SMS and the Internet they generally opt for equipment which can be easily integrated and adapted to help facilitate a consistent and accurate response to the customer, regardless of their contact medium.

However, after the recession, the contact center system market is experiencing growth due to an increase in investment in fundamental software/hardware and also because of the adoption of new technologies which are being acquired to support novel customer contact channels such as social networking sites.

This 126-page report, which was first published in June, offers a detailed analysis of the North American contact center systems market, including historical and forecast data for the period 2007-2017. The report states that in the near future, the demand for upgraded technology and infrastructure will boost the value of the North American contact center systems market, especially particularly for core IVR and switching systems.

Some of the technologies covered within the contact center systems market research report include interactive voice response and voice portals; outbound dialers; quality monitoring; inbound contact routing (including ACD and CTI (News - Alert)); contact center analytics (including speech analytics), and workforce management.

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