The European contact centre market is recording steep and sustained growth, as the cloud makes sophisticated Contact Centre solutions more accessible to smaller companies. Yet these mid-sized SMEs demand more features and wider integrations – a potential challenge for service providers to overcome. Paul Holden, CallTower’s VP of EMEA Sales, explains how strategic partnerships position service providers to reap the rewards.
We live in economically unpredictable times, but there are still great opportunities for businesses that offer the products or services that markets demand. And that’s certainly the case if you’re a communications or contact centre provider looking to thrive in Europe.
The contact centre business is booming across the continent. Already valued by Fortune Business Insights at US$1.78 billion in 2024, the European Contact centre as a Service (CCaaS) market is expected to hit $7.53 billion by 2032 – an extraordinary compound growth of nearly 20% per year. What’s more, research by Cavell estimates that by the end of 2028, the wider cloud communications market in Europe will be worth nearly £5.5 billion.
Fundamental to this remarkable success is the increasing scalability of contact centre solutions, and their affordability to medium-sized businesses. At the same time, these mid-sized organisations are undergoing growth. The European Commission says the region’s 214,000 medium-sized SMEs (50-250 employees) add nearly £1.3 billion to the economy. It forecasts growth of 1.2% across SMEs in 2025 alone.
This growth is further accelerating the demand for CCaaS solutions. But what exactly can Unified Communications (UC) and CC do for medium firms, and how best can service providers position themselves to thrive in this dynamic market?
Convergence and CX in the cloud
At CallTower, we’ve seen first-hand how the availability of cloud-based solutions has been a game-changer for businesses. With workforces distributed between regions, countries, homes and offices, the flexibility of the cloud has become a prerequisite for supporting the best workers as they do their best work. Research by Cavell suggests that more than half of organisations now have sites or employees outside their domestic market who require cloud communications solutions.
Yet as staff and customers become more distributed and diverse, businesses need increasingly sophisticated communication backbones. Here, large businesses have gained an advantage, as their spending power has paid for contact centres, and unlocked the benefits arising from the convergence of UC and CC. With increasingly integrated internal and external platforms, large firms have the resources to offer more linked-up experiences, and deliver greater customer experience and satisfaction.
Until recently, smaller firms haven’t necessarily had access to the same benefits, but the cloud has become a great democratiser. As sophisticated business tools such as contact centres evolve from expensive, on-premises installations to flexible services enabled by software, comms platforms have become more affordable. Attracted by the lack of up-front costs, and flexible per-seat licensing, mid-sized organisations can now flex the same tools as their bigger competitors.
Informal contact centres
This convergence is giving mid-sized businesses access to features – for example queue call back – that may have previously been out of their reach. With converged comms stacks, available and supported across multiple territories, they can now extend a unified and consistent experience to all – regardless of where their staff or customers are based. Teams can connect and collaborate, working effectively across territories and projects. And customers have more seamless access to help and support, creating deeper engagement and higher satisfaction levels.
This trend is perhaps best typified by the rise of the informal contact centre, through which smaller businesses without the resources for a dedicated contact centre facility can lean on cloud-based solutions to provide coherent, high-quality customer service. Flexibility is key: while the informal contact centre typically has dedicated customer-facing staff, they can be supplemented at peak times with multi-skilled workers, temporarily seconded from their non-customer-facing roles.
There’s little limit to the way in which businesses can flex the informal contact centre, and here, medium-sized enterprises can gain an advantage over their larger rivals. For example, knowledge holders tend to be more available in smaller organisations. By including them in skill-based routing, a business can drive up call resolution and customer satisfaction rates, and potentially remove the layers between negative product or service experiences and the people best-placed to address them.
Partnership as a tool to unlock the market
Clearly, the expansion in mid-sized businesses and their demand for converged communications tools presents a great opportunity for communications service providers. But positioning yourself to share in this booming market requires deep technical capabilities, an understanding of diverse European markets, and the ability to deliver consistency across multi-country, multi-vendor stacks.
This presents a challenge for service providers, who may have limited multi-vendor expertise, or insufficient international presence and support capabilities. However, by working with established unified communications partners, providers can add key competencies, allowing them to deliver unified solutions that draw from a more comprehensive portfolio of products.
Through partnership, service providers can also access the expertise and certifications they need to deliver multi-vendor environments. Additionally, partners can provide the local market knowledge and skills necessary to provide the complex communications environments that European businesses demand. By combining deep technical expertise with a comprehensive portfolio and global presence, CallTower empowers organisations to provide efficient and consistent customer experience across this complex landscape.
Discover more about the challenges and opportunities for service providers as they deliver communications solutions for the future. Download the Global Calling white paper from CallTower in partnership with Cavell.
