ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

New Contact Center, New Roles to Fill

Posted by Keith Dawson on 01 April 2026

You can’t upend the entire technological infrastructure for an industry without seeing some ramifications in the form of personnel shifting and dislocation. Contact centers are smack in the middle of a transformation that is remaking the toolset and forcing businesses to rethink both the fundamental purpose of their centers and the mix of managerial and operational employees. Let’s consider how... Read More

Topics: WFM, Contact Center, Workforce Management, agent management, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Conversational Intelligence, QM, Quality, CSR

CX Buyers Are Understandably Confused by Pricing

Posted by Keith Dawson on 19 March 2026

There is a growing sense of confusion and uncertainty among buyers when it comes to pricing for customer experience (CX) and contact center technology. Pricing does become more complex when technology innovates, creating broader options for mixing and matching features or more choices of the types of platforms people can use. In this industry, conditions have changed so quickly that the array of... Read More

Topics: Contact Center, agent management, Customer Experience Management, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Conversational Intelligence, Pricing, Resolution-Based, Outcome-Based

Five9 Bets on Integrations and Partners as the Path From CCaaS to CX

Posted by Keith Dawson on 11 March 2026

It’s clear that the buyer requirements for Contact-Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) products have moved well beyond traditional notions of “cloud” or “omnichannel” and now focus on how well software providers can make artificial intelligence (AI) workflows real. The differentiation among CCaaS platforms is not so much about how well interactions are handled, but how the platforms embed within complex... Read More

Topics: Operations, Five9, automation, Contact Center, agent management, Customer Experience Management, CCaaS, Generative AI, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Workflow, ServiceNow, Salesforce

How Genesys Navigates a Post-CCaaS Era

Posted by Keith Dawson on 25 February 2026

It’s increasingly clear that, for software providers, focusing exclusively on contact center operations is a pathway to oblivion. Voice is no longer the organizing principle around which businesses structure their customer support—instead, we are fully in a world where automated self-service is the default and digital interactions are the norm. Enterprise buyers looking to modernize their contact... Read More

Topics: Contact Center, agent management, Intelligent Self-Service, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies

Rethinking Fundamental Contact Center Software

Posted by Keith Dawson on 19 November 2025

There is a shift underway in how enterprises structure their software stacks in relation to contact centers. Multiple factors have coalesced to reduce the importance of the traditional call handling infrastructure (i.e., the ACD) as the foundational element of the tech stack. It no longer has to be the focus of buying or deployment decisions. It’s been superseded by a more extensible (but... Read More

Topics: Analytics, Contact Center, agent management, CCaaS, ACD, Generative AI, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies

NiCE Clarifies AI Strategy in Cognigy’s Wake

Posted by Keith Dawson on 12 November 2025

Analyst summits are not where software providers go to make news, it’s where they seek to clarify and validate what they’ve already done and lay out strategies for the future. October’s NiCE summit in Vienna was an opportunity to take stock of the enormous changes artificial intelligence (AI) has wrought in the service industry and put NiCE’s recent moves into context. It’s no exaggeration to say... Read More

Topics: automation, Contact Center, agent management, Customer Experience Management, CCaaS, Intelligent Self-Service, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Conversational Intelligence, NiCE, Cognigy

Verint Uniquely Advances AI for CX with New Ownership

Posted by Keith Dawson on 15 October 2025

Verint held its annual Engage conference in September, shortly after it announced the news that it had agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $2 billion. The new ownership plans on merging Verint with its competitor, Calabrio, after the deal closes in 2026. That sequence of events raises many important questions about the direction of both companies and the sector... Read More

Topics: automation, Contact Center, Verint, agent management, Customer Experience Management, CCaaS, Intelligent Self-Service, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Conversational Intelligence

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. Now that most people... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, Business, agent management, Intelligent Self-Service, Conversational Intelligence

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. Agent management tools that were... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, agent management

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. Sprinklr has described its market as “unified CXM,” or customer experience management. This is nominally aligned with how ISG Research defines the... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, AI, natural language processing, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Self-service, Analytics, Contact Center, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, agent management

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. ... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, Knowledge Management, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, agent management

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. Open CCaaS is Verint’s way of stating to the industry that a... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, bots, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, agent management, CCaaS, ACD

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, agent management