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San Jose, California — November 10, 2011

Follow us on LinkedIn – Factors such as globalization, cutthroat competition and ever-changing customer demands are forcing companies worldwide to adopt new and improved process strategies in wide ranging areas of business operations. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one such area that has gained utmost importance over the years. Companies have been focusing their efforts on improving various aspects associated with CRM in order to provide better customer services. Against this backdrop, the importance of interactive voice response (IVR), an integral part of the customer service strategies, comes to the forefront. With an intention to cut down costs and improve system functionality and efficiency, these companies have started strategic value assessment of their IVR systems. Given that most of the legacy IVR systems are expensive to maintain, highly rigid and largely incapable of addressing the fast changing customer service requirements of large enterprises, several companies are deploying new, open-standard IVR technologies such as VoiceXML. These new technologies enable companies to customize phone-based customer services to suite their requirements and are therefore fast growing in prominence.

Although growth in new orders slowed down during 2009 due to recession induced cutbacks on technology spending and investments, the global Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems market staged a quick comeback in the year 2010. The resurgence in market was primarily led by companies re-focusing on customer retention, new customer acquisition, and customer satisfaction ratings. Contact centers especially have a compelling need to strategically invest in technologies and tools that help differentiate themselves, ever more so in challenging times like the economic recession. Growing focus on benchmarking customer experience and the ensuing emphasis on IVR optimization also helped bring in fresh opportunities for product replacements and upgradations. Additionally, contact centers cannot afford to scale back investments on customer service for long as prolonged deeper cuts can raise the risk of loss of customers as fickle loyalty during challenging economic times leads to migration to competitors who favor their patronage. The disproportionately higher costs associated with loss of clients and loss in productivity/performance, and significant costs associated with new client acquisition, additionally discourages prolonged investment cutbacks. Therefore scaling back customer service budgets is a perilous, high-risk high-wire act for companies, which can result in high customer churn rates, and dissolve brand equity, in the medium to long term.

The market in the future will be driven by growing prominence of outbound IVR as a cost effective solution. Outbound IVR is changing the traditional image of organization-customer interaction and will continue to evolve as IVR capabilities are extended to handle newer channels, such as SMS and video. With outbound IVR technology, enterprises are empowered with the ability to deliver important notifications, provide proactive and personalized customer service, and expedite collections. Companies, which earlier shied away from hosted/managed service IVR offerings as a result of disadvantages such as, issues related to confidentiality of crucial customer information and difficulty in accurately monitoring efficient handling of customer calls, are now investing in these solutions. As hosted IVR services storm into the limelight by virtue of their numerous benefits, such as, rapid, less expensive and affordable deployments, influx of new hosted/managed service providers is expected to translate into increased demand for IVR systems.

The market will also be driven by the demand from the financial services industry, which is forecast to increase especially after the recession triggered consolidation leaves a need for standards-based interactive voice response and customer interaction solutions in the newly merged, acquired and established companies. Another key factor for growth is QM/Recording solutions that play an important role in helping boost productivity. QM/Recording solutions are now made available on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or a hosted basis instead of conventional, premise-based licensed product delivery model. In their effort to tackle the IT budgetary issues, companies are displaying greater keenness on SaaS subscription based model. With this hosted/SaaS arrangement call centers can implement new solutions without significant capital investments in installation and license fees.

As stated by the new research report on Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems, the US continues to represent the largest and one of the fastest growing regional markets for IVR systems, waxing at a CAGR of about 10.32% over the analysis period. Growth in the US IVR Systems market will be especially driven by robust demand from domestic financial services industry, which is undergoing significant restructuring post recession, and the presence of several leading players with advanced proprietary technologies. Although large enterprise segment (65+ IVR ports) has been the traditional revenue contributor for the IVR systems market, future growth will largely stem from small and medium business opportunities. 25 to 46 Ports market represents the fastest growing product segment.

Major players in the marketplace include Aspect Software Inc, AT&T Inc, Avaya Inc, BCE Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Convergys Corp, Dialogic Corporation, Enghouse Systems Limited, Syntellect Inc, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc, Healthcare Technology Systems, IBM, Mitel Networks Corporation, Nuance Communications Inc, Philips Speech Processing, Verizon Communications Inc, Voxeo Corporation, West Corporation, Holly Connects, among others.

The research report titled ?Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems: A Global Strategic Business Report?, announced by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., provides a comprehensive review of market trends, issues, drivers, company profiles, mergers, acquisitions and other strategic industry activities. The report provides market estimates and projections (in US$ Million) for major geographic markets including the United States, Canada, Europe and Rest of World. Product segments analyzed include Less than 24 Ports, 25 to 46 Ports, 47 to 64 Ports, and 65 and Above Ports. Additionally, the US IVR Market is analyzed by following end-use sectors ? Banking/Finance, Telecom, Insurance, Travel/Hospitality, Healthcare, and Others.

For more details about this comprehensive market research report, please visit ? http://www.strategyr.com/Interactive_Voice_Response_IVR_Systems_Market_Report.asp

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (GIA) is a leading publisher of off-the-shelf market research. Founded in 1987, the company currently employs over 800 people worldwide. Annually, GIA publishes more than 1300 full-scale research reports and analyzes 40,000+ market and technology trends while monitoring more than 126,000 Companies worldwide. Serving over 9500 clients in 27 countries, GIA is recognized today, as one of the world’s largest and reputed market research firms.

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