London, 13 March 2008 The ability to provide wide ranging contact center services across verticals and geographies has long been the goal of players in this space. To do so with high levels of customer satisfaction is an even more ambitious goal. However, in a new report, Decision Matrix: Selecting a Contact Center Outsourcing Vendor', independent market analyst Datamonitor reveals the five players that have proven themselves capable of doing so.

Datamonitor's report critically assesses nine global contact center outsourcers across three dimensions, which include client satisfaction (based around feedback from clients of contact center outsourcing services), services & technologies assessment (based on the services, standards and technologies provided by contact center outsourcers) and market impact (derived from market awareness of the outsourcer, as well as their revenues). The result was the classification of these firms into shortlist, consider and explore categories.



Among the nine firms examined for this report, Datamonitor classified five as market leaders and shortlisted candidates for prospective and existing outsourcing users. Specifically, Datamonitor's research indicated that Convergys, EDS, Sitel, Teleperformance and TeleTech had sufficient levels of market impact to provide their clients with the stability needed for long-term relationships.

In addition, each firm had varied and sophisticated offerings that could satisfy the needs of clients across vertical markets in multiple geographies and languages. It was also noted that each of these companies were strong with regards to the various contact center services that they had on offer.

When it came to client satisfaction, results among the market leaders were varied, with some performing significantly stronger than others.

Consider: Minacs and Sykes
Datamonitor determined that both Minacs and Sykes deserved to be classified in the Consider category, meaning that prospective clients should examine each to assess whether they would be able to meet their exact needs.

The research notes that while each performed relatively well in terms of client satisfaction, market impact scores were somewhat lower than those of the shortlisted candidates. In addition, specialization in particular functions or verticals were seen as potentially limiting.

Explore: ICT Group and Stream
Candidates considered for exploration in Datamonitor's assessment of contact center outsourcer included the ICT Group and Stream. While both have demonstrated leadership in their own right within the contact center outsourcing space, Datamonitor's research indicated that Stream's focus around technical support may lessen its chance of winning contracts in other functional areas. In the case of the ICT Group, its low market impact score coupled with limited capabilities in languages means potential concerns when bidding for global contracts.