RingCentral Brings Merit to Market for Contact Center in the Cloud

We are happy to share some insights about RingCentral drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Earlier this year we published the Ventana Research Value Index: Contact Center in the Cloud 2021, the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts. It is an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings will address buyers’ requirements for contact center software. The index is structured to replicate an RFI/RFP process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize and maintain technology, and maintain relationships with vendors.

In all of our Value Indexes we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for contact center in the cloud. We evaluated RingCentral and 13 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product and experience (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the customer experience (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our benchmark research. RingCentral’s overall performance rating in the Value Index is at 82.8%, with customer experience at 67.5% and product experience at 85.8%.

RingCentral is a more recent entrant to the contact center in the cloud market and focuses more on medium-sized organizations. RingCentral was ranked 10^th and was categorized as a Vendor of Merit. The product, RingCentral Contact Center, had its best performance in the category of Capability where it did well in support of unified communications and interaction support across a full spectrum of voice and digital interaction types. Many buyers will be attracted to its unified communications products.

RingCentral had its second-best performance in the category of Adaptability where it stands out for its configurability and its integration.

RingCentral can improve in many areas, starting with Customer Experience where it needs to address the TCO/ROI requirements and the validation of its support for customer processes. It also needs to improve in Manageability with business administration and investment for improvement, as well as in the Usability and Reliability of its offering.

This assessment was based on RingCentral’s cloud contact center products available at end of March in 2021. Since then, RingCentral has made several announcements regarding its partnerships, and added functionality to its video component and enterprise messaging.

When cloud contact centers first emerged a decade ago, the focus for many was on finding the lowest cost provider. Today’s organizations should consider a broader range of criteria in their selection process, which we outline in this Value Index. A modern contact center requires technology that provides continuous innovation and a product and customer experience to meet their long-term goals. With this in mind, when organizations begin the process of evaluating their efforts, they might consider RingCentral.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of contact center in the cloud software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.

Regards,

Keith Dawson