Retail driving spending in CX market

Earlier this week Connect Managed Services and G3 Comms merged with the joint business stressing it was now in a stronger position to deliver unified comms and customer experience (CX) technology.

Last month CX intelligence firm Calabrio picked up workforce management software player Teleopti as it took steps to add more muscle to its offering, with Tom Goodmanson, president and CEO at Calabrio, pointing out that without the technology customers were often left with a "cold interaction".

Both examples underline the jostling for position in the CX space as those serving that market look to take advantage of increasing growth. The sense that momentum is building in the market is not just a gut feeling but has some impressive numbers behind it.

IDC has underlined the strong prospects for the CX market in Europe, with the analyst house predicting a 7% CAGR up to 2022, when the market will be worth $128bn globally.

The analyst house has revealed that the European verticals spending most on CX this year willl be banking, retail and some parts of manufacturing. In the next couple of years there will be a change in that order with retailers spending more on the technology.

At the moment the main drivers of spending on CX is to use technology to improve customer care and support, help with digital marketing and order fulfillment. But in the longer-term there will be a growth in omni-channel content with the technology making it easier to make sure that whichever way a business interacts with the customer is kept at the same standard.

Things are not standing still with the analyst house noting that the continued roll out of AI and ARVR will create more opportunities for customer interaction and the development of further features and services.

"Customer Experience is the top business priority for European companies in 2019," said Andrea Minonne, senior research analyst, IDC Customer Insight & Analysis in Europe.

"Businesses are moving from traditional ways of reaching out to customers and are embracing more digitized and personalized approaches to delivering empathy where the focus is on constantly learning from customers. As a customer-facing industry, retail spend on CX is moving fast as retailers have fully understood how important it is to embed CX in their business strategy," he added.