Market Overview

The domestic call center service market for FY2023 decreased by 25.6% from the preceding fiscal year to 1,090,200 million yen (based on the sales at businesses). The decline was primarily driven by the reduction in demand for large deals related to the COVID-19 crisis, particularly among clients in the public and government sectors.
Meanwhile, intensifying economic issues (such as the decline of the working-age population and the chronic labor shortage), along with the rise in demand for digital customer interactions like chatbots and social media, are driving the outsourcing demand for call center operations.

The domestic contact center solution market for FY2023 reached 481,100 million yen, which represents a 4.0% increase from the previous fiscal year (based on the sales at the businesses).
One of the factors contributing to market growth is the ongoing shift to remote call center jobs. Demand for solutions that provide the necessary network and security to support work-from-home call center operations is expanding.

Noteworthy Topics

Introduction of Generative AI at Call Centers and Contact Centers in Progress

Coupled with rapid advancements in generative AI technology, call centers and contact centers are increasingly adopting AI-powered conversation summarization tools to streamline operations. With growing interest, AI-powered tools to assist operators are being included in every business deal. Speech recognition is also a key component of these deals, as translating spoken language into text is essential for AI to analyze and condense conversations.
To address the chronic labor shortage and establish 24/7 customer support, the call center/contact center industry has high expectations for generative AI. As technology progresses, we believe that enterprises not only optimize operations but leverage call center/contact center as CX hubs capable of collecting customer feedback quantitatively and qualitatively.

Future Outlook

Associated with the closure of large-scale call centers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the size of the domestic call center market for FY2024 is forecasted to remain at the same level as the prior fiscal year.

On the other hand, the domestic contact center solutions market is projected to grow steadily in FY2024 and beyond. The introduction of generative AI and the rise in the proportion of cloud-based contact centers may lower unit prices, but they could expand the reach of contact center solutions to SMEs. Additionally, advancements in the development of multichannel call center solutions, which combine the convenience of web channels with traditional customer service via call centers, are expected.


Going forward, as more enterprises place importance on building customer experience (CX) and recognize the significance of call centers/contact centers as points of contact for capturing “raw” customer feedback, further expansion of the contact center solutions market is anticipated.

Research Outline