Companies Seen Shifting Towards Customer Engagement From Customer Service, Says Frost & Sullivan

HONG KONG--(Marketwire - Nov 28, 2011) - Companies are moving towards customer engagement from customer service and new technology such as cloud and social are becoming more critical for customer care delivery, says Frost & Sullivan.

Andrew Milroy, Vice President, Asia Pacific ICT Research at Frost & Sullivan said that it is critical for companies to understand customer's behavior to drive revenue growth, build experience & improve operations and margins.

He added that on-demand contact center technology is expected to drive cost optimization and increase access to larger labor pools.

"Analytics plays a key role in enabling Enterprises to deliver differentiated experience, and create a winning strategy," he said, adding that strategic contact centers report on customer-centric insights, not on operational metrics.

Mr. Milroy added that new business models are emerging. "On demand business models, self service and co-creation are having major impact on customer care," he told delegates attending the 2011 Frost & Sullivan Customer Interaction Hong Kong Summit.

He also said that organizations can use internet and social networks to extend span of influence and analytics can be used to make decisions based on this influence.

Mr. Milroy said there is strong interest from Enterprises to use social media for customer care or customer engagement, adding that the telecoms, hospitality and banking industry are already experimenting with social media.

"However, there are no real standard yet, only 3-7 people teams that are using publicly available social media monitoring tools," he noted. He added that there is a need to integrate social media as one of the channels in the contact center. "Creating processes on how to screen and respond on social media is critical," he said.

Mr. Milroy noted that there are close to 100,000 contact center seats on a hosted platform in Asia Pacific. He added that contact center in the cloud is gaining strong interest, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 20% in the next 5 years.

"Flexibility, Scalability, Peak Demand, Cost and Remote Agents are key drivers for Contact Center in the Cloud," he added, noting that more than 30 service providers offering hosted contact center services in Asia Pacific.

Speakers who presented at the summit include:

• Marc Halbfinger, Chief Executive Officer, PCCW Global
• Dr Nicola J. Millard, Customer Experience Futurologist, BT
• Robert Lattuca, Vice President - Strategic Solutions Asia Pacific, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
• Eric Yee, Head of Enterprise Sales, Greater China, Google
• YS Lee, Channel Director, APAC South, RightNow Technologies
• Christopher Rowley, Head of BT Contact Specialists (Asia), BT Global Services
• Josef Halbherr, RHI Regal Hotels International Group Director of Projects and General Manager Regal Riverside Hotel
• Jennifer Cheng, Vice President, BeeCrazy
• Douglas White, Founder/ CEO, PRDA

BT is the Platinum Sponsor while Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and Polycom are the Gold Sponsors for the summit. Partner Sponsor is RightNow and supporting organizations include Asia Cloud Computing Association, Hong Kong Association for Customer Service Excellence and Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing. Media Partner for the summit is Media Outreach.

For complete details of the summit please contact loraine.marasigan@frost.com or visit http://www.frost-apac.com/ci/hongkong

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