Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/v9bnq5/customer) has announced the addition of the "Customer Engagement in Retail and Consumer in Europe and North America" report to their offering.

This study's objective was to review current and future adoption of customer contact strategies, enabling technologies, and services in the retail and consumer vertical.

About 55% of North American and European contact centers are mostly integrated, with full integration expected to reach 55% in 2016. About 46% of customer interactions are fully automated. Email (27%) is preferred over LiveAgent voice (20%), and Web self-service trails at 11%. Mobile apps and social media will increase, while IVR and video will remain virtually unchanged. Personalized marketing is expected to grow by 18% by 2016. The systems/applications that show the most growth are Web collaboration tools and Web interaction analytics.

Key Findings:

  • Understanding Customer Behaviors: Respondents report using APO applications to understand customer preferences better and to drive actionable intelligence for marketing and sales. Leveraging customer insights, however, may not be a top priority for European and North American companies.
  • Use of Hosted/Cloud Solutions: In 2014, North America has the highest cloud adoption in the retail and consumer vertical. Europe will post higher adoption rates in 2016. The top factor in moving to hosted/cloud solutions is improved business continuity/disaster recovery capabilities.
  • In the Cloud, Outbound Applications are Favored: Outbound applications have the highest adoption level in a hosted environment, followed by customer surveys and workforce management. In 2016, chat will have a higher adoption rate in Europe.
  • Top Cloud Vendor Types: Specialist hosted/cloud solution providers and telecom service providers are the most popular in 2014 and will continue to be favored in 2016. North American companies, however, are disposed to use a contact center outsourcer/business process outsourcer (BPO) as a hosted/cloud contact center provider in 2016.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Research Background, Objectives, and Methodology

2. Executive Summary

3. Customer Interaction Channels

4. Integration across All Customer Contact Channels

5. Prevalence of Automation

6. Prevalence of Speech Recognition in Interactive Voice Response Interactions

7. The Future of Outbound Customer Interactions

8. Social Media Customer Contact Strategy

9. Mobile Customer Contact Strategy

10. Potential Restraints to Achieving Multichannel Customer Contact Center Goals

11. Prevalence of Systems and Applications

12. Number of Agent Performance Optimization Vendors Sourced

13. Integration of Agent Performance Optimization Applications

14. Primary Use Cases for Agent Performance Optimization Applications

15. Restraints to Leveraging Customer Insights

16. Current Use of Hosted/Cloud Solutions

17. Important Factors in the Decision to Move to Hosted/Cloud Solutions

18. Hosted/Cloud Contact Center Applications

19. Hosted/Cloud Contact Center Vendors

20. Restraints to Moving to Hosted/Cloud ContactCenter Solutions

21. Customer Care Functions Outsourced

22. Outsourcing Customer Contact Channels

23. Priority of Consistent and Seamless Customer Experiences

24. Outsourced Contact Center Seats/Agents

25. Outsourcing Locations

26. Number of Outsourcers Used

27. Important Factors in Outsourcer Selection

28. Restraints to Using Outsourcers

29. Key Takeaways

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/v9bnq5/customer