Many organizations are struggling to meet the rapidly changing expectations of their clients and employees in our current environment. Eighty percent of client engagements today are initiated by chat, email, or social media. Omnichannel solutions are critical to optimizing communication and client experience by supporting the preferences of Boomers, the forgotten Gen Xers, Gen Y, Millennials, and Gen Z.
As markets grow more hyper-competitive, the organizations that are figuring out new strategies to win the war on client experience (CX) and using technology as a competitive advantage, are the ones that will come out of the pandemic stronger. Contact Center technology is one tool in this fight, and cloud-based CCaaS solutions provide the ability to easily roll out enterprise-class solutions to a fully remote workforce.
CX is the biggest brand differentiator in today’s market. Data is effectively currency in the CCaaS market because there is real value in analyzing and understanding what is happening both internally and externally with your business’s communications. Our clients are using knowledge and insight about client communication preferences, resource utilization, and adoption statistics to improve their business processes in near real-time.
All relevant market players are largely investing in Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These tools reduce the human resources required to accomplish business objectives and create successful outcomes. For example, chatbots are making an impact in fielding most of the transactional responses needed today. If clients are provided timely and correct information, do they care whether that is handled by a human or a bot? Deploying these technologies also frees up staff for more complex responsibilities, enables a relationship focus, and can even predict next steps to assist with workflows.
In our thousands of client engagements over the past 8 months, supporting remote workers and integration/automation have been the top business drivers in CCaaS deployments after CX. CCaaS is built to support remote workers with full visibility and robust reporting capabilities. Integrations with CRMs and other applications allow for automation to increase productivity, simplify workflows, and increase management visibility across departments.
This past week, the new Gartner Magic Quadrant (GMC) for CCaaS was released. There were a few shake-ups in this round. Here are a few of the big takeaways and the trends we see among our thousands of client engagements in the past 8 months:
- Five9 shifted down from a leader (where they were for 5 years running). However, as we discussed in our UC Insights Document, this is all about the inclusion. This year, Gartner essentially combined what was historically 2 reports into 1. This meant that concurrent agent seat and revenue requirements in Western Europe had to be met and Five9 fell a little short of these. Here is a good article from Five9’s CEO that discusses this in-depth.
- Genesys shot up to vie with NICE for the top leader spot. They have reinvented their cloud offer with Genesys PureCloud and have had some excellent earnings reports. The inclusion of Western Europe helped them with their larger international footprint.
- Amazon Web Services made its first (and very prominent) appearance. AWS is one to watch given their level of investments in R&D and the strength of their market position as well as their AWS services stack this ties into. They are viewing the CX landscape through a true platform model and offer some unique approaches for clients living in AWS for cloud services.
- Other steadfast solutions such as 8×8, TalkDesk, and EvolveIP remain in the quadrant without much movement.
- There were a few new entries in “Niche Players” and one “Challenger,” Content Guru. Content Guru, which is better known in EMEA, puts a strong emphasis on organizations’ digital strategies and evolving eCommerce and outbound client engagement.
In addition to pure CCaaS plays, many clients also choose to leverage a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) provider that has Contact Center functionality. You can access additional information about the UCaaS marketplace in our UC Market Insights and Decision Guide. Feel free to reach out and schedule some time with us to review your business objectives and help identify the right solutions to achieve them. There is no charge to engage ARG. Click below to get started.
