A comprehensive, global overview
The 2019 International Customer Contact Benchmark maintains its ambition to purvey the European Contact Centre market with this seventh annual comprehensive overview. This 7th edition of the Whitebook, see below for key findings, covers 30 countries within and outside of Europe.
Key Findings
- 4.31 mil. jobs, 1.23% of active population in Europe
- 3.5 mil. positions (seats)
- 40.400 contact centres
- Market Growth – 2,36% per annum
- Outsourcing – 26.5%
- 80% Validity
Outsourcing Activities 2019
Companies are willing to invest in customer service
Companies are increasingly understanding the profiling potential of customer service and are obviously also willing to invest. The investment rate measures the average share of investment on total operating costs over the last 3 years. We see a clearly positive trend for the service centres surveyed.
Increasing strategic awareness of customer service
Behind this is a desire to differentiate on the basis of excellent customer experiences. Today, 87 percent of the service centre Management surveyed ascribe a very important or important strategic importance to the service centre within the company.
Businesses are investing in Chat and Video
We also see companies are investing in online channels for some years now. As early as 2014, around one third of all companies planned to introduce chat. Today, this share has risen to 50 percent and almost 30 percent of respondents said they already use chat. Consistent developments can be seen for the web portal. The video channel is also increasingly being tested and introduced.
As a Lawyer specialized in Social Law (Law School @ ULB and University of Virginia) and before entering the customer contact centre business, Vincent vanden Bossche built up his purchasing knowledge and experience on strategic & operational level in several companies like, the Ministry of Economy of the Brussels Capital Region and after at Price Waterhouse Coopers as worldwide director of location study for customer contact centres.
In 2004 he decided to create Contactcentres.be (the local professional body) and Call Communications.eu. In 2006 he became President of ECCCO (European Confederation of Contact Centres Organizations), and in 2008 he decided to leave the Belgian professional body. Vincent is also the author of Author of Belgian Contact Centre Benchmark (2009-2014) and of European Contact Centre Benchmark (since 2012)
Since 2000 involved as consultant in the field of contact centre management (Price Waterhouse Coopers and Call Communications.eu), including, location studies, Greenfield setup, project management, integrated training and change management. Combines strong analytical skills with creativity, covering several main areas of competency: HRM, Auditor, Process Analysis and Contact Centre Management.
You want to know more about the evolution of the contact centre industry in Europe? Please feel free to download the executive summary and to take contact with us via v.vandenbossche@callcommunications.eu or info@service-excellence-cockpit.ch
Rémon Elsten is Managing Partner at Crystal Partners in Switzerland, a consulting firm focusing on customer experience, customer management and customer service topics. He started his career for about 25 years in the Netherlands and is now working mainly in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.
He was Vice President of the Swiss Contact Centre Association (CallNet.ch) from 2006 to 2018, Board member of the European Confederation of Contact Centre Organizations from 2010 to 2018, he is still a teacher on the topics customer management and customer service at several Swiss business schools and author on several books and articles on these topics.
Rémon Elsten is convinced that an excellent customer service is the increasingly becoming an important and the most sustainable competitive advantage for companies, particularly as products become more interchangeable. Therefore he founded Service Excellence Cockpit in 2013 believing
