As I’ve written in other posts, some of the emerging IVR markets are in unexpected places, such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, along with the more obvious European and Asian markets.

IVR has seen widespread growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), along with Asia. In Vietnam, for example, the market has grown as a result of a large, educated IT workforce that can funnel developers to companies looking to automate and update their communications technologies.

The hosting side of interactive voice response can take credit for much of the growth in recent years. With hosted IVR services, a vendor (like Plum) provides access to IVR systems via the cloud for a recurring fee—similar to mobile phone plans.

Hosting is particularly beneficial for smaller or mid-sized companies that don’t have the resources to house and maintain an IVR system, which seems to suit the EMEA markets.

“Given that the average contact center in EMEA is typically smaller than its U.S. counterpart, enterprise in EMEA will be drawn to the business benefits that hosting provides for their contact center application needs,” said Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Kunal Kakodkar, in an interview with Cellular-News.com.

Frost & Sullivan has predicted that hosted IVR will be one of the biggest and fastest-growing markets in the EMEA.

“The hosted model makes it easier for enterprises to deploy speech applications,” Frost & Sullivan Research Director Ashwin Iyer told Cellular-News.com. “Bringing together the best of both worlds—the business benefits of the software as a service (SaaS) model, and improving the customer experience by making IVRs more user-friendly.”