With nearly 70 percent of the large contact center end-user market being saturated, vendors of automatic call distributors (ACDs) have started redirecting their product development efforts toward the under-penetrated small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) segment. Since price-to-performance ratio is the most important purchase criterion for users in this segment, vendors have to structure product packages to include all commonly used ACD features and functions. The downside of this initiative is that customization will have to be compromised on. On the other hand, vendors can expect a surge in revenue as this segment is expected to show robust growth rates of 15 percent from 2004.
