Studie - Green technologies in the contact center come of age

Consumers and enterprises alike suffer from ‘green fatigue’ — an ennui born from too much hype and too little substance around green technology. But as green technology becomes more synonymous with cost-saving technology, enterprises have begun to warm to the idea. Contact centers, in particular, have begun to explore the homeshoring or work-at-home agent model, a model with many green benefits. Longer term, new technologies and new uses for existing technologies including application and call routing virtualization will gain traction in the contact center arena. The economic recession has forced many contact centers into cost-cutting mode; contact center and IT decision-makers should therefore be closely examining green technologies and processes that help trim costs.

Executive summary

In a nutshell

Ovum view

Recommendations

Green contact center investment is timely

Green contact centers mean cost-effective contact centers

Market opportunity

Green fatigue breeds skepticism

Contact centers have seen a great deal of green marketing

Most enterprises expect green to cut costs, not enhance reputation

Cost-effective may not be truly green

Separating efficiency from ecology

Enterprises and technology vendors both face increased legislative pressure to adopt green IT

Customer impact

Homeshoring already on the rise

Reducing commute reduces resource use

Calculating the benefit in fuel and CO2 emissions

Work-at-home agents reduce power consumption — at least by companies

Technology evolution

New technologies with green applications

Turn off, tune out…

Erlang saves agents which save power

The cloud is theoretically green

Data center-style virtualization could bring green benefits

A virtual softphone without voice quality loss

Definitions

Cloud computing

CSR

Green IT

Homeshoring

Virtualization









List of Tables

Table 1: Non-green benefits of homeshoring













List of Figures

Figure 1: How do current economic conditions change your perception of the value of green IT?

Figure 2: Power reduction mandates by US state

Figure 3: Software-based virtualization: a ‘greener’ deployment model

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