The growth within Australia’s call centre market is expected to be driven by SMEs and a new online hosted call centre technology established by NEC, branded Agent 99.

This leading-edge technology will not only be the catalyst which paves the way for SMEs to participate in an environment dominated by big business and specialist call centre houses, but come 2007, alters the call centre landscape where one third of all new call centre seats will be hosted.

Regional Australia is also expected to benefit significantly with the introduction of Agent 99 and hosted call centres - allowing them to deploy contact centre seats in smaller regional communities and create further employment opportunities.

Australia’s call centre industry, the most mature in the Asia Pacific, is currently valued at $10.9b, employs more than 250,000 people, has an annual technology expenditure in excess of $160m and is growing at a rate of eight per cent a year.

NEC expects the growth within Australia’s call centre market to come about as a direct result of this new technology and the opportunity it gives unilaterally to SMEs and large business. It delivers SMEs advanced capabilities and large enterprises the flexibility to manage campaigns with internal resources.

According to NEC Business Solutions group manager for solutions, Andre Szep, the introduction of this affordable big business technology for small business operators heralds a new era of customer service capability traditionally not available to the SME market.

”NEC’s delivery of this hosted service,” Mr Szep said, “provides customers with an additional level of flexibility because of its carrier and vendor independence which suits city and regional operators alike. It now becomes feasible to deploy contact centre seats into the smaller regional communities, thereby providing employment and improving regional community wealth”

NEC has during the past decade led the way by providing leading-edge call centre technologies to over 530 sites in Australia.

Mr Szep predicts Agent 99 has the potential to offset the exodus of call centre investment in Australia and help create new and sustainable business and employment in the Australian market to the tune of 10,000 jobs over 3 years.

“Our expectation is that the technology will produce an environment of confidence for Australian SMEs by providing customer service to match that of large enterprises.”

“The savings and competitive advantage for the SME market will be so significant small business operators will soon realise the positive reinvestment implications this has for their business,” he said.

The technology combines phone, email, live web chat and customer records together in a simple -to-use browser interface. Delivered via the net, Agent99 adopts a flexible pay-for-use fee. All the customer service agent requires is a web browser and a phone line.