Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Debt Collection Drives Up Dialer Demand in Europe, Middle East: Frost and Sullivan

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor

A tight economy means both more past-due bills and a greater urgency by organizations to collect them so that they can pay their bills, and avoid having them go past-due. This is prompting more outbound calls: with predictive and progressive dialers that make them more efficient, resulting in higher net proceeds.

At the same time companies are discovering that proactive outbound calling can improve customer service and retention by alerting customers of issues, such as potential credit card misuse or service changes again with high-efficiency dialers. These dialing solutions continue to be the most important tool in telemarketing campaigns.

These trends—and markets—are driving up sales of both new and add-on dialer solutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), with the United Kingdom and Germany leading the way  reports Frost & Sullivan in a new report:  “EMEA Outbound Dialer Systems Markets.” The EMEA markets earned revenues of EUR 54.8 million ($77.2 million( in 2009 and estimates this to reach EUR 90.2 million ($127.1 million) in 2016.

"Support for debt collections continues to be a major driver for the sales of OBD (outbound dialer) systems in EMEA,” said Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) Principal Analyst Joe Outlaw. "Proactive customer contact will emerge as the most significant long-term driver of growth for outbound customer contact solutions across regional and vertical markets in EMEA.”

The use of outbound dialer system as a single tool for pro-actively contacting customers primarily with service-related information is increasing rapidly across all industries, said the research firm. The largest consumers of OBD systems are the banking/financial services sector, followed by outsourcers and telecommunications companies.

Limiting dialer use in EMEA for debt collection are increasingly restrictive and overlapping government regulations. Other methods and the media are supplementing the use of agent-assisted outbound calling to comply with laws and reduce campaigns cost. There is a heightened demand for unified campaign management tools: which include OBD systems.

“The market for standalone OBD systems in EMEA is gradually diminishing,” noted Outlaw. “The rising need for pro-active customer contact and the increasingly restrictive government regulations are driving the demand for multi-function and unified outbound suites of applications as well as blended inbound and outbound customer contact.”

Point solutions for outbound customer contact are increasingly being viewed as less efficient when compared to multifunction and unified outbound customer contact campaigns. Demand in the EMEA markets is swiftly shifting away from point solutions to outbound contact.

“To handle the growing demand shifts for unified outbound and blended inbound/outbound functionality it is imperative for vendors of outbound solutions in EMEA to build out suites of outbound functionality and make them interoperable with the inbound customer contact applications,” concluded Outlaw. “Minimum functionality for pro-active customer contact application suites would include support for the predictive dialer, outbound IVR/voice portal applications, notifications and alerts, pro-active survey and unified campaign management.”