Senior Frost & Sullivan Analyst Discusses Top Contact Center Trends at Interactive Intelligence 2010 User Forum

Frost & Sullivan’s global program director, Ashwin Iyer, shared emerging contact center trends in a keynote he delivered last week at the 2010 Interactive Intelligence (Nasdaq: ININ) User Forum.

The forum, held at the company’s global headquarters city of Indianapolis, Indiana, drew approximately 350 customers and more than 500 total attendees.

In his keynote titled "Your Passport To The Future Of Customer Care,” Iyer discussed the following contact center trends: customer interaction channels; proactive customer contact; hosted contact centers; and social media customer engagement.

Highlights about these emerging trends, which were based on a Frost & Sullivan North American customer survey conducted in April, included the following:

• Customer satisfaction back as a top priority – A full 50 percent of respondents were profiled as "customer-oriented,” with 35 percent profiled as seeking the "latest and greatest” applications, and the remaining 15 percent profiled as "cost-focused.”
• Growth of hosted services; increasing adoption by large contact centers – The fastest growing segment for hosted contact center adoption were respondents representing contact centers with more than 500 seats (from 35 percent in 2009, to 47 percent in 2010); among all size segments, a total of 30 percent indicated they would use hosted services in 2010, up from 24 percent in 2009.
• Rapid growth of social media customer interactions– Of respondents surveyed, 30 percent indicated they support social media customer activity and interactions on external social media sites (facebook, twitter, etc.), and 29 percent indicated they monitor and extract intelligence from this activity; of social media benefits, the top three cited were to "provide better customer service,” (75 percent), "drive sales,” (58 percent), and "drive customer loyalty” (54 percent).
• Growth of Web collaboration, text and video – Of supported inbound interaction channels, growth from 2009 to 2010 was highest for text/SMS (25 percent increase), video (15 percent increase), and Web-based interactions (8 percent increase).
• Consistent customer experience across channels continues to be a high priority across industries – The largest majority of respondents – 67 percent – rated ensuring consistent service across channels as a "very high priority” or "high priority.”
• Significant increase in proactive customer contact activity across industries – Of three types of outbound customer programs, the majority -- 65 percent -- indicated they would increase their "proactive, value-add customer contact” programs over the next two years; 43 percent said they would increase their "sales and marketing” programs, and 42 percent said they would increase their "collections” programs.

"It was good to learn that Interactive Intelligence has uncovered among its own customer base virtually the same trends Frost is seeing,” Iyer said. "Even more pleasing was learning how the company is working to address these trends.

"Examples shared at its User Forum included the vendor’s outbound agentless dialing feature, enhanced hosted services that now include a Web portal for simplified administration, and upcoming integrations with providers of social media analytics applications. Clearly, Interactive Intelligence is listening to its customers and responding with innovative and unique solutions,” concluded Iyer.

Frost & Sullivan is a global industry analyst firm that helps clients accelerate growth by providing disciplined research and best-practice models. The firm employs 1,800 analysts, consultants, and visionaries who cover more than 300 markets and 250,000 companies from its 40-plus global offices. To learn more about Frost, visit www.frost.com.

About Interactive Intelligence

Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ) is a global provider of unified business communications solutions for contact center automation, enterprise IP telephony, and business process automation. The company was founded in 1994 and has more than 3,500 customers worldwide. Interactive Intelligence is among Software Magazine’s top 500 global software and services suppliers, is a BusinessWeek "hot growth 50” company, and is among Fortune Small Business magazine’s top 100 fastest growing companies. The company is also positioned in the leaders’ quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide report (Feb. 22, 2010). Interactive Intelligence employs approximately 650 people and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It has 14 offices throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Interactive Intelligence can be reached at +1 317.872.3000 or info@inin.com; on the Net: www.inin.com.

This release may contain certain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are described in the company's SEC filings.

Interactive Intelligence Inc. is the owner of the marks INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, its associated LOGO and numerous other marks. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

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