ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

The Consequences of AI-Induced Head Count Reduction for Contact Centers

Posted by Keith Dawson on 08 May 2025

Most of the discussion and planning around artificial intelligence (AI) tools for contact centers and CX has focused on finding appropriate use cases and understanding how to deploy these tools. There are already plenty of success stories about enterprises reducing friction for agents, saving time and expanding the breadth of interactions that can be handled automatically.

Verint Focuses Bots on Contact Center Outcomes

Posted by Keith Dawson on 05 November 2024

Verint is operating in quite a different marketplace for contact center and agent management technology than existed five years ago. We have seen tremendous innovation and expansion of the available technologies for running centers and optimizing the performance of the human labor pool, as well as an explosion of tools built to automate customer interactions.

Sprinklr Zeros in on a CXM Platform

Posted by Keith Dawson on 23 October 2024

Sprinklr’s analyst day in September was an opportunity for the company to dive deeply into its progress in pivoting its product offerings to align with a broader perception of the market for contact centers and adjacent customer-related applications.

Zendesk Shifts the Conversation from Service to Enterprise CX

Posted by Keith Dawson on 20 March 2024

The next phase of buying for contact centers and adjoining service/customer experience (CX) teams is going to be heavily influenced by how vendors develop tightly integrated ecosystems and define use cases and benefits across enterprise personas. There are more people involved in the work of delivering customer service, and a broader technology landscape from which buyers can choose their...

Uniphore Puts AI to Work Automating Interactions

Posted by Keith Dawson on 05 March 2024

The first wave of discussions around artificial intelligence (AI) in the contact center was focused on providing software buyers with a general understanding of what the technology could do. Now the conversations are becoming more specific, focused and direct. Buyers are more aware of the spectrum of available use cases and appear to be exploring how to map new tools to the particular business...

Content Guru Builds Out Its Brain with AI

Posted by Keith Dawson on 01 February 2024

The speed of innovation and transformation has picked up considerably in the 2020s, thanks to the confluence of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and the pandemic. Modern consumers have wildly different expectations than their predecessors when it comes to service delivery, whether that means a preference for digital channels and self-service or a willingness to do their own...

The 2024 Market Agenda for CX: The Steady Rollout of Gen AI

Posted by Keith Dawson on 25 January 2024

Ventana Research recently announced its Market Agenda in the expertise area of Customer Experience. CX has emerged as a way for enterprises to demonstrate value and stand out in the marketplace. The technology underlying modern CX is transitioning from tools that are based on communication to those centered on data analysis and process automation. No technology has had as dramatic impact as...

Calabrio Enables Contact Center Agent Productivity

Posted by Keith Dawson on 16 January 2024

Every contact center agent represents an incredible investment in time and money even before that person starts working with customers. The costs associated with the labor force — and the need to continually replace agents who leave — have long forced managers to use technology to optimize performance and processes. Much of the technology that was developed decades ago is still relevant and in...

Contact Centers Must Adapt to New Agent Tools and Practices

Posted by Keith Dawson on 02 January 2024

The pandemic laid bare the tenuous relationship between many contact centers and their agents. The abrupt shift to remote work was just one component of the changes still under way. The past four years have also seen enterprises reckoning with questions about how to hire, what to pay their employees, what skills are needed and how an avalanche of new technology will change their operations. 

ServiceNow’s Vancouver Is a Roadmap to the Future of Service Ops

Posted by Keith Dawson on 19 December 2023

It often takes longer to adopt new technology in the customer service delivery environment than in other business areas. In fact, service operations are among the most efficient and well-organized processes (despite what consumers might think). Because both the processes and the technology that drive them are deeply engrained in many companies, many people resist large-scale transformation...

Verint’s AI Strategy Takes Shape

Posted by Keith Dawson on 08 December 2023

Verint’s November analyst conference was an opportunity to flesh out the strategies unveiled earlier in the year on AI deployment and on “Open CCaaS,” a moniker describing how contact centers are provisioned going forward. The company displayed notable progress, particularly in rolling out AI bots for numerous real-world applications.

Decoupling Interaction Routing with BYOT in Contact Center Software

Posted by Keith Dawson on 21 November 2023

For at least five years, it has been clear that innovation in technology for communication and business processes is accelerating. This year, that trend has been especially notable with the explosive emergence of artificial intelligence in the contact center software market. But what tends to get lost in the excitement around innovation is what sits downstream of the development process: the...

NICE Puts Knowledge at the Heart of Its AI Strategy

Posted by Keith Dawson on 25 October 2023

NICE held its annual Analyst Summit this month in the magnificent high-altitude mountains of Peru, a fantastic environment in which to hear top executives share insights into the changing company and industry. NICE has been very successful in navigating the industry transition from voice-centric interactions to a digital-first posture. Consumer behavior is one of the underlying causes of this...

Cultivating Contact Center, Customer Experience Thinking for Success

Posted by Keith Dawson on 12 October 2023

The environment around customer experience is being disrupted by a series of technical and organizational shifts ranging from artificial intelligence to work-from-home to deep customer analytics. When times change, it’s helpful for people to have a framework to organize their thinking and actions. I believe there are two dominant frameworks used to organize business approaches to customers. One...

The Buyers Guide for Agent Management Classifies and Rates Vendors

Posted by Keith Dawson on 15 September 2023

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research 2023 Agent Management Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect the...

Agent Management Buyers Guide: Market Observations

Posted by Keith Dawson on 14 September 2023

The 2023 Ventana Research Buyers Guide for Agent Management research enables me to provide observations about how the market has advanced.

Balancing Agents and Automation Enhances the Customer Experience

Posted by Keith Dawson on 16 August 2023

A lot of conversations around contact centers deal with automation, particularly how to balance the way humans and automated systems work together. Self-service, the front end of the customer interaction, is where practitioners get a first taste of the marvels of increasingly advanced automation. As customer expectations ramped up and labor became more costly during the pandemic, deflecting...

Verint Wants You to Think Differently About Contact Centers

Posted by Keith Dawson on 30 June 2023

Verint came to its Engage customer conference in June with the goal of changing the industry’s conversation around Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS). The industry commonly considers CCaaS to be equivalent to cloud-based voice routing, an old and perhaps outdated way of thinking about provisioning contact centers. Verint wants to flip the narrative: voice routing is not special enough anymore to...

NICE Shines Spotlight on Enlighten AI

Posted by Keith Dawson on 28 June 2023

Since acquiring InContact in 2016, NICE has moved far from its roots in call recording and contact center quality optimization. That acquisition birthed what was effectively a hybrid that married cloud contact center operations (CCaaS) with a focus on advanced customer experience (CX) analytics. NICE held its annual customer event, Interactions 2023, in June in New York, gathering end users to...

The Path to Generative AI to Boost Contact Center Agent Performance

Posted by Keith Dawson on 16 May 2023

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become ubiquitous in discussions of contact center technology. Vendors are rushing to incorporate it into platforms and applications. And end users have understandably mixed feelings about where it makes sense to use and what its impacts will be. No one should be surprised that AI has arrived, especially for customer support: Software companies have been working...

Why Intelligent Self-Service Is the Tip of the Spear for CX

Posted by Keith Dawson on 29 March 2023

Organizations looking to improve the customer experience and contact center operations should closely examine the processes at work in the front-end self-service environment. Technology advancements are converging at this gateway, including artificial intelligence, chatbots and knowledge management. The front end of the customer interaction offers a greater opportunity for customer engagement...

Qualtrics XM Platform Zeros in on Customer Experiences

Posted by Keith Dawson on 27 March 2023

Modern business relies on having a clear, continuous understanding of customer perceptions and intentions. That insight is increasingly used to deliver them experiences that they would consider excellent, in turn leading to higher satisfaction and more profitable relationships. Qualtrics, a provider of Experience Management (XM) software, focuses on creating applications that analyze customer...

Making Automation Easier for Contact Centers

Posted by Keith Dawson on 02 March 2023

Contact centers are very often keen on optimizing their costs through automation. Technology vendors supplying this market have recognized this need, and in the past few years, they have been putting workflow and automation tools front and center in their offerings. This has raised some questions among practitioners about the most effective strategies for implementing automated processes.

The 2023 Value Index for Customer Experience Management: Vendor and Product Ratings

Posted by Keith Dawson on 25 January 2023

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2023 Ventana Research Value Index: Customer Experience Management is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories...

All-Inclusive CX Suites Reveal the Big Picture to Optimize CX Management

Posted by Keith Dawson on 19 January 2023

Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Value Index for Customer Experience Management, I want to share some of my observations about how the market has developed. We found that there are many tools available for various needs related to customer management and communication, ranging from marketing tools to contact center systems to data and analytics applications. It is rare to find all...

The 2023 Market Agenda for CX: Analytics Takes Center Stage

Posted by Keith Dawson on 12 January 2023

Ventana Research recently announced its Market Agenda in the expertise area of Customer Experience. CX has emerged as a way for organizations to demonstrate value and stand out in the marketplace. The technology underlying modern CX is transitioning from tools that are based on communication to those centered on data analysis and process automation. This allows organizations to build great...

Verint Bets Big on Engagement Automation and Intelligence

Posted by Keith Dawson on 11 January 2023

Since 2021, Verint’s message to the customer experience community has focused on the “engagement capacity gap,” a way of describing how the available resources for CX clash with the high level of customer expectations. The argument is that efforts to close that gap require a rethink of how contact centers (and their parent organizations) operate and plan.

The CCaaS Business Case Shifts from Costs to Capabilities

Posted by Keith Dawson on 14 December 2022

The market and buyer landscape for contact center operating services has changed significantly since the onset of the pandemic, now almost three years ago. Three years would have been enough time for some significant shifts, even without the pressure the pandemic put on service operations. Nevertheless, with on-premises systems now taking a backseat industrywide, it’s fair to say that CCaaS,...

Optimizing Customer Communication Channels

Posted by Keith Dawson on 09 November 2022

For quite a few years now, two trends have put the contact center on a collision course. First, the technology used to handle customer inquiries has been evolving quickly, moving organizations farther and farther away from the traditional mode of primarily answering voice calls. At the same time, consumers have become much more demanding. There’s no doubt that customers are more likely to use...

NICE Elevates Power of Customer Experiences

Posted by Mark Smith on 02 November 2022

Pressures to engage consumers through every interaction and provide a delightful customer experience are influencing advancements in business and technology. Organizations are challenged to manage friction points experienced by billions of consumers amid expanding digital channels. These issues must be addressed to engage and respond to customers every second of the day.

Contact Centers Should Revisit KPIs for Strategic Relevance

Posted by Keith Dawson on 02 November 2022

Traditional key performance indicators used for performance measurement in contact centers are no longer sufficient. These outdated standards don’t reliably inform mid- and upper-level leadership about the true impact of agent work and behavior. Organizations should begin to expand the notion of what’s important in order to make the contact center a stronger organizational institution, more...

Technology is Only Part of the Customer Experience Transformation

Posted by Keith Dawson on 06 October 2022

Through 2025, establishing customer experience application suites on a common platform will be the focal point of the drive to optimize customer and organizational engagement. Organizations that are passionate about improving the customer experience are choosing to empower processes and people with intelligence through smarter applications that embrace analytics, artificial intelligence and...

Agent Performance Management Changes With the Times

Posted by Keith Dawson on 20 September 2022

Today’s contact centers need to revisit core assumptions around measuring agent performance. Changes in business conditions influencing agent engagement raise new questions about whether traditional performance models are sufficient to address the more complex customer needs that have taken center stage in recent years.

Why Outbound Is a Smart Channel for Customer Communication

Posted by Keith Dawson on 13 September 2022

Outbound communication is used in a number of different contexts. For potential customers, traditional telemarketing still exists, though it is limited these days due to its minimal effectiveness. Instead, many customer-experience planners have substituted digital outbound over voice for lead generation and nurturing campaigns. Customers find text messages in the channel of their choice to be...

Preparing Agents for Success in Automated, Distributed Contact Centers

Posted by Keith Dawson on 04 August 2022

The contact center industry is reexamining how organizations engage with contact center agents. One thing that we learned from the forced movement to work-from-home was that organizations have to provide agents with appropriate tools to collaborate and communicate with peers and supervisors as well as workers in the back office who participate in all sorts of customer-facing or customer-adjacent...

Field Service Heads for Greater Automation and Integration

Posted by Keith Dawson on 26 July 2022

Field service is a segment of customer experience that is dominated by two elements: the complexity of the issues handled, and the high cost of providing on-site services. It is recognized as a critical component of the service experience, especially when managing the condition of high-precision equipment in the medical, manufacturing and utility industries. It is also a high-risk moment in the...

Work-From-Anywhere Has a Communications Impact

Posted by Keith Dawson on 10 May 2022

Contact centers are undergoing a radical reshuffling of the workforce, partly because the pandemic shifted agents to remote work. But the trends were in place to reorganize the world of work long before the pandemic. Digital contact channels, which are gaining in popularity, require workers that are better informed and capable of handling more complex and interdependent interactions and...

Why We Need a New Definition for CX Software Platforms

Posted by Keith Dawson on 18 March 2022

The technology underpinning customer experience (CX) is a hodgepodge of tools that have been developed for niche use cases and then expanded to fill broader roles. Examples include the old (CRM, help desk software and speech analytics) and the new (customer data platforms and conversational AI). This is because CX is a set of very specialized processes that happen in different parts of the...

Contact Center Cost Control, Part 2: Getting Granular

Posted by Keith Dawson on 01 March 2022

In a previous Analyst Perspective, we discussed some of the big-picture trends that are bringing cost control back as a core driver of contact center operations. In this report we will tackle some of the practical ramifications: how those trends affect decision-making and operations.

Contact Center Cost Control, Part 1: Rethinking Modern Operations

Posted by Keith Dawson on 22 February 2022

Contact centers have always been very cost-centric and attuned to the kinds of constraints that they have to operate in, but many organizations were diverted from that kind of focus when the pandemic first hit. In 2020, there was a sudden need for new tools and equipment just to keep centers running, and the costs involved in enabling agents to work from home — equipping them and their...

Top Trends in VoC Analytics

Posted by Keith Dawson on 16 February 2022

A formal Voice of the Customer (VoC) program is a necessity for any organization that wants to grow its customer base and differentiate from its competitors. Unfortunately, many organizations have not updated their notion of “formal” in quite a few years.

The 2022 Market Agenda for CX: Enabling Resilience in Experiences

Posted by Keith Dawson on 02 February 2022

Ventana Research recently announced its Market Agenda in the expertise area of Customer Experience. For the past several years, many organizations have found it challenging to provide excellent customer experiences in the face of drastic technology changes and the ongoing pandemic. These challenges have highlighted for many decision-makers how strategic CX can be in differentiating from...

Shifts in Agent Management Software Benefit Agent Experiences

Posted by Keith Dawson on 26 January 2022

The 2022 Ventana Research Value Index for agent management software is published, offering interesting observations about how the market is advancing to provide more sophistication to agents and the management of them. The market is now characterized by applications integrated into multifunction suites, a significant change accelerated by the pandemic in the short term and vendor consolidation...

Automating Workflows for a Better Customer Experience

Posted by Keith Dawson on 01 December 2021

Any organization that relies heavily on a large labor force looks to automation to reduce costs, and contact centers are no exception. They handle interactions at such large scale that almost any effort to automate some part of the process can deliver measurable efficiencies. Two factors have ratcheted up attention on automating customer experience workflows: the dramatic expansion of digital...

Vonage Buys Into Conversational Commerce With Jumper.ai

Posted by Keith Dawson on 12 November 2021

When migrating their communications stacks to the cloud, many organizations come face to face with a quandary: do they emphasize the business phone system and gravitate toward a unified communications vendor? Or should they focus on the specific applications needed for running their contact centers and seek out a CCaaS vendor?

NICE CXi Is a Pivot to the Post-Contact Center World

Posted by Keith Dawson on 04 November 2021

When NICE acquired inContact in 2016, it began a transformation that saw it broaden its product offering and positioned itself to play a larger role in the contact center and customer experience industries. It was a prescient move, creating a firm that could supply end-to-end contact center functionality in the cloud. And it anticipated today’s market dynamic, in which NICE and its competitors...

AI’s Value to Contact Centers: What Are the Use Cases

Posted by Keith Dawson on 28 October 2021

In part one of this Analyst Perspective on the use of artificial intelligence within contact center applications, we focused on the evolution — and resulting benefits — of tools embedded with AI, including ease-of-use for non-data-scientists.

The Digital Awakening of Business Process Intelligence

Posted by Mark Smith on 21 October 2021

The work environment today demands that your organization advances the efficiency to execute business processes for continuous operations to have a positive impact on business performance. The capability to be responsive to any range of minor to disruptive business events is required to support business continuity and level of organizational readiness to meet the needs of digital business....

AI’s Value to Contact Centers: Improved Customer and Agent Experiences

Posted by Keith Dawson on 21 October 2021

When artificial intelligence emerged from the labs and vendors started offering it as a component of their software, many contact-center buyers shied away from it. From their point of view, AI and machine learning tools were new, expensive, relatively untested and had an uncertain use case. This stance was understandable, as contact center professionals are traditionally expected to be...

Calabrio Brings VoC to Larger CX Potential

Posted by Keith Dawson on 14 October 2021

Tools for contact center agent management have changed considerably in the past few years. The suite of software applications has grown from those that perform core functions in scheduling and quality control to include more advanced solutions for agent guidance, integrated desktops, and workflow and automation design. One area of intense investment by vendors has been analytics, specifically for...

The Pandemic Heightens Need for Agent Management

Posted by Keith Dawson on 24 September 2021

The primary effect of the pandemic on agent/workforce management beginning in 2020 was a rush to re-site and re-equip contact centers and agents. This was achieved with a surprising speed and smoothness industrywide. But once achieved on a “temporary” or “emergency” basis, it became clear that this shift was going to be semi-permanent. Even if the majority of the agent population moves back into...

Uniphore Automates Intelligent Conversations

Posted by Keith Dawson on 16 September 2021

Customer support operations increasingly rely on automation and complex workflow processes to reduce costs and improve experiences. Automation also allows organizations to make their service processes richer, incorporating information and staff from back offices, for example, or embedding conversational tools into contact center processes.

Dialpad Stresses the Unity of UCaaS and CCaaS

Posted by Keith Dawson on 25 August 2021

Dialpad provides contact center and business phone services, a market that is in transition due to a convergence of technologies and business conditions.

Field Service Transformation for CX Differentiation

Posted by Keith Dawson on 10 August 2021

Field service is one element of the service-delivery process that an organization must get right or risk alienating important customers and causing friction in the relationship. The customer experience is directly affected by the timeliness, speed and accuracy of on-site work. Consequences of poor performance can hurt revenue, particularly in B2B situations where failures may cause expensive...

ServiceNow Earns Customer Experience Digital Innovation Award for 2021

Posted by Keith Dawson on 06 August 2021

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.

Palantir Earns Overall Digital Innovation Award for 2021

Posted by Mark Smith on 04 August 2021

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.

ServiceNow Brings Customer Workflows with Automation and Intelligence

Posted by Keith Dawson on 20 July 2021

Customer Service & Support (CSS) is a software segment that provides tools for tracking and resolving customer problems, primarily through contact centers. The segment has been mature for decades but today is reinvigorated by a new emphasis on workflows and automation. Vendors, like ServiceNow, have been innovative in developing new technologies for managing self-service and field service, and...

CX Suites Focus on Managing Customer Experiences

Posted by Keith Dawson on 14 July 2021

When we speak of the “customer experience,” we are really referring to the results of a broad spectrum of activities that collectively we describe as a journey or a lifecycle. In the past, how we spoke about customers was largely determined by the limited view of what transpired during short, contact center interactions. Customer experience (CX) evolved as a way to incorporate more facets of...

Twilio is Vendor of Merit in Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 08 July 2021

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

Amazon has Merit in the Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 07 July 2021

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

Vonage has Merit for Contact Center in the Cloud

Posted by Keith Dawson on 05 July 2021

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

Enghouse Altitude Rated with Assurance in Contact Center Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 03 July 2021

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

RingCentral Brings Merit to Market for Contact Center in the Cloud

Posted by Keith Dawson on 02 July 2021

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.

8x8 Provides Assurance in Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 30 June 2021

We are happy to share some insights about 8x8 drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Five9 is Innovative in the 2021 Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 29 June 2021

We are happy to share some insights about Five9 drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

Aspect has Assurance in 2021 Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 24 June 2021

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

Cisco is Innovative in 2021 Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 23 June 2021

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

Avaya is Innovative in 2021 Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 22 June 2021

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

Content Guru is Exemplary in 2021 Value Index for Contact Centers

Posted by Keith Dawson on 17 June 2021

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

Genesys is Exemplary in 2021 Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 16 June 2021

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

Zendesk Advances a Suite for CX

Posted by Keith Dawson on 15 June 2021

The outlines of a post-pandemic customer experience (CX) landscape are emerging, and it appears that the market dynamic is bringing companies from different segments into heightened competition with one another. Over the past few years, there has been a change in software-buying preferences from niche point solutions to packaged software suites. Organizations and buyers now want more capability...

Talkdesk is Exemplary in the Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index

Posted by Keith Dawson on 14 June 2021

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

NICE inContact is Exemplary and Overall Value Index Leader in Contact Center in the Cloud

Posted by Keith Dawson on 11 June 2021

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

The Value Index for Contact Center in the Cloud: Classification and Rating of 14 Vendors

Posted by Keith Dawson on 10 June 2021

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index: Contact Center in the Cloud 2021 is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories...

The Market for Contact Center in the Cloud Software

Posted by Keith Dawson on 09 June 2021

Having just completed the 2021 Ventana Research Value Index for Contact Center in the Cloud, I want to share some of my observations about how the market has advanced since our assessment three years ago. The trend towards cloud deployment for contact center infrastructure has accelerated, partly (but not exclusively) due to the urgency of the 2020 pandemic. CCaaS has been generally accepted as a...

Customer Service and Support: Expanded Role and Need for Software

Posted by Keith Dawson on 27 May 2021

Customer service and support (CSS) is a term with two meanings. Most generally, it refers to the functions of a contact center in handling post-sales customer inquiries that require some effort or action on the part of the business. More specifically, it refers to the elements of the software stack that facilitate those operations, primarily case tracking and trouble ticketing.

Zoho Builds a CX Suite Inside Zoho One

Posted by Keith Dawson on 11 May 2021

There are many software components that facilitate contact center operations. Historically, the industry has relied, in part, on niche or best-of-breed applications but this is shifting in favor of broadly integrated suites or ecosystems. When we look at CX trends beyond the contact center, the shift is even more pronounced, with the bundling/collection of applications from martech to...

The Voice of the Customer Is Really a Chorus of Voices

Posted by Keith Dawson on 04 May 2021

Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a catch-all term that refers to the collection of customer feedback in various formats. Sometimes this feedback is in the form of quick surveys or reactions to questions like, "Did I resolve your issue today?" or "Would you recommend our service to a friend?" Alternatively, it can be derived from less specific but more numerous data signals that span multiple...

Avaya: Adapting and Focused on CX, CCaaS Success

Posted by Keith Dawson on 22 April 2021

Business phone systems and contact center platforms received renewed attention in 2020 as organizations acquired tools for agents working from home. That put the spotlight on vendors, like Avaya, that have feet in both worlds. Since both forms of communications technology are well-suited to the cloud, Avaya has developed its Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a...

8x8 Shows Why CCaaS and UCaaS Should be Unified

Posted by Keith Dawson on 30 March 2021

The pandemic accelerated several trends in the contact-center industry that were already underway, chiefly: moving infrastructure and software applications to the cloud, and rethinking the process of managing agents. One byproduct of these trends is a renewed look at the similarities between business-phone systems (also known as unified communications, or UC) and contact center systems (CC).

Salesforce Service Cloud: Contact Center with Workforce Engagement

Posted by Keith Dawson on 24 March 2021

The modern contact center relies heavily on software that enables agents to perform multiple complex tasks while simultaneously managing the customer-facing side of interactions. This has allowed CRM vendors to build tools, such as agent desktop interfaces, that control virtually all aspects of the service environment.

The Mandate for Contact Center and Agent Management

Posted by Keith Dawson on 22 March 2021

The ways in which consumers engage with organizations have changed. Long-established communication channels such as the telephone, email and company websites are still used, but many consumers now prefer to use text messages, online chat, social media, virtual agents and applications on their mobile devices to contact the company and address issues. As a result, organizations have had to add...

Content Guru Brings CCaaS with Confidence to US

Posted by Keith Dawson on 19 March 2021

Shifts in the market due to the pandemic have upended the contact center marketplace, accelerating the inevitable migration of infrastructure to the cloud and changing the way agents are managed. The pandemic also increased the dependence customers have on contact centers in the absence of in-store buying.

The New Verint: Experiences and Engagement with Customers

Posted by Keith Dawson on 12 March 2021

Verint has recently separated into two companies, one of which is a dedicated provider of software focused on customer engagement and will keep the Verint name. (The other is called Cognyte and focused on security analytics.)

SAP Service Cloud Bridges the Contact Center and the Back Office

Posted by Keith Dawson on 04 March 2021

The contact center is still, for most businesses, where customer experience is designed, delivered and measured. And as we might expect, customer experience (CX) tools are migrating from where they started point solutions based on narrow functions into broader suites that encompass multi-departmental functions and reach across customer journeys. The goal is to provide more consistency across...

The 2021 Market Agenda for Customer Experience: Achieving Excellence in Engagement

Posted by Keith Dawson on 24 February 2021

Ventana Research recently announced its 2021 market agenda in the expertise area of Customer Experience. Most organizations have some degree of focus on managing how they interact with their customers, but it is often a disjointed and constrained process. Developing an effective customer experience has become an investment priority in recent years as organizations increasingly recognize the...

Intelligent Virtual Agents Are an Imperative for Digital Self-Service

Posted by Keith Dawson on 22 December 2020

The pandemic has raised the stakes for self-service in every part of the customer journey. In 2020, the customer service industry underwent a shock to its collective system by pulling up stakes and moving agents to remote work. At the same time, consumers moved away from in-person interactions in stores and branches. This systemic disruption has led to longer call wait times and tougher...

Trends in Contact Center Market for 2020 and Beyond

Posted by Keith Dawson on 22 October 2020

This has been a dramatic year for contact centers. The underlying technology has been changing for some time, but that change is now accelerating because of the urgent operational shifts forced by the pandemic. When you can’t gather dozens or hundreds of people into a single, open-plan site, you must look at alternative models for staffing and interaction handling. You must also work harder to...

Talkdesk: CX Cloud earns our 13th Digital Innovation Award for Customer Experience

Posted by Mark Smith on 13 October 2020

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcases advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to improved efficiency and productivity in the processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy innovations in technology that advance...

8x8: Open Communications Platform earns our 13th Digital Innovation Award for Digital Technology

Posted by Mark Smith on 09 October 2020

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcases advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to improved efficiency and productivity in the processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations that advance...

ServiceNow: Now Platform earns our Overall Digital Innovation Award

Posted by Mark Smith on 06 October 2020

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcases advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to improved efficiency and productivity in the processes and the performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations that advance...

Why I Joined Ventana Research

Posted by Keith Dawson on 01 October 2020

It’s very exciting to embark on a new chapter of one’s career, so I am thrilled to be joining Ventana Research to lead the practice of expertise in customer experience (CX). Some who know me might remember that I’ve been in this industry since a much younger version of me edited Call Center Magazine in the 1990s and 2000s. Others might have crossed paths in my role at several industry analyst...

Zuora and Subscription Management: Suite and Platform to Address Digital Business

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 28 September 2020

The last decade has seen exponential growth amongst subscription-based business models. Pioneered in the B2C market with cloud-based SaaS offerings, the last decade has seen exponential growth in the share of the economy that is now subscription based. Increasingly, this modern business model is permeating throughout more traditional style industries and companies. But regardless of whether a...

Subscription and Usage Management Technology Needs for the Modern Economy

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 11 September 2020

Subscription-based business models have seen exponential growth over the last decade. The growth of this recurring revenue business model, where a subscriber commits to repeatedly pay for a good or device for a fixed or indefinite timeline, has been caused by the shift from the one-time selling of physical products to selling digital services on a subscription basis. The first phase of this...

The Business Continuity Imperative: The Workforce Experience and Human Capital Management in 2020 and Beyond

Posted by Mark Smith on 12 July 2020

The workforce is an essential part of an organization’s overall business potential because it ensures continuous operations, even in black-swan events. The workforce is the core of the organization and should get the attention it deserves. In challenging times, a “customer-first” mentality tends to take hold — this is not unreasonable but in focusing on satisfying customers and opportunities,...

Incentive Solutions Shows Potential in Sales Performance Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 20 December 2019

Here are some insights on Incentive Solutions drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Sales Performance Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated Incentive Solutions and eight other...

NICE is a Leader in Reliability for Sales Performance Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 18 December 2019

Here are some insights on NICE drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Sales Performance Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated NICE and eight other vendors in seven categories, five...

beqom is a Value Index Leader for Manageability in Sales Performance Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 16 December 2019

Here are some insights on beqom drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Sales Performance Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated beqom and eight other vendors in seven categories,...

SAP Provides Mature and Balanced Sales Performance Management Offering

Posted by Mark Smith on 13 December 2019

Here are some insights on SAP drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Sales Performance Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated SAP and eight other vendors in seven categories, five...

Optymyze Provides Robust Platform and Sales Performance Management Suite

Posted by Mark Smith on 11 December 2019

Here are some insights on Optymyze drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Sales Performance Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated Optymyze and eight other vendors in seven...

Anaplan is a Value Index Leader for Validation in Sales Performance Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 09 December 2019

Here are some insights on Anaplan drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Sales Performance Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated Anaplan and eight other vendors in seven...

Varicent is a Value Index Leader in Sales Performance Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 06 December 2019

With the backing of Great Hill Partners and Spectrum Equity, the company Varicent Software launched on Jan. 1st, purchasing IBM’s Sales Performance Management (SPM) assets and hiring employees from IBM’s SPM group. They will join a new team that includes Varicent’s original founders and key leadership.

This set of insights is drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic...

Xactly Demonstrates Strong Performance in SPM Value Index

Posted by Mark Smith on 04 December 2019

Here are some insights on Xactly drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Sales Performance Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated Xactly and eight other vendors in seven categories,...

Oracle Leads Sales Performance Management Value Index

Posted by Mark Smith on 02 December 2019

Here are some insights on Oracle drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Sales Performance Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated Oracle and eight other vendors in seven categories,...

A 360-Degree View of the Customer Journey Can Provide Customer Experience Insights

Posted by Mark Smith on 07 November 2019

For interactions with customers to go well, organizations must manage an ever-increasing array of engagement channels. Our research finds that organizations expect to see interaction volumes increase on all channels, especially digital ones such as text-based messaging, chat, mobile and social apps. Unfortunately, the systems that manage these channels are typically disparate and uncoordinated...

Technology Really Does Matter for Customer Analytics

Posted by Mark Smith on 05 November 2019

Using customer analytics effectively involves several challenges. Organizations must make it a business priority, cultivate leadership and set a course for ensuring data and analytics are being processed and governed effectively. But effectiveness also requires technology that will assist in the effective operations and management of customers and help an organization achieve its goals.

Identifying the Leaders in Sales Performance Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 31 October 2019

I am happy to share some insights from our latest Value Index research, which rates how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). The Ventana Research Value Index: Sales Performance Management 2019 is the...

Effective Customer Analytics Requires Comprehensive Data and Metrics

Posted by Mark Smith on 29 October 2019

Customer analytics have never been more important, but effectively creating and managing them is not easy. The data that’s required to achieve visibility into all customer activity involves many applications and systems and it’s a challenge to ensure the data used is accurate and consistent. Even once data is assembled, organizations often struggle to apply analytics to create the metrics that...

The Science of Sales Performance Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 24 October 2019

Ensuring that the sales organization contributes as fully as possible to the success of the organization — to revenue, growth, prof itability and the overall customer experience — requires not only dedication but effective strategy and planning. A well-developed strategy and plan to utilize current and future sales talent is essential for the best possible sales performance. To carry out this...

The Challenges in Customer Analytics

Posted by Mark Smith on 22 October 2019

Today’s intense competition requires that companies know as much as they can about their customers in order to anticipate their needs and deliver a superior customer experience. However, many organizations struggle to do this well. Implementing initiatives to improve customer value across any department or process involving customers requires both in-depth visibility into current operations and...

Dynamic Insights Research on Sales Analytics Guides Innovation, not Evolution

Posted by Mark Smith on 04 October 2019

Having effective analytics enables businesses to understand far better than ever before the data they’re collecting, and to do so in greater volumes and more forms. These new capabilities are especially relevant to sales organizations. When applied to sales data, analytics can help sales teams achieve quotas and forecast more consistently, as well as understand the impacts of incentives and...

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