ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Subscription Management, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Subscription Management, agent management

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. These functions... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Analytics, Contact Center, agent management, AI and Machine Learning

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Subscription Management, agent management, marketing sales

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Analytics, Contact Center, agent management, AI and Machine Learning

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Subscription Management, agent management

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).... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Analytics, Collaboration, Contact Center, agent management, AI and Machine Learning

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. Salesforce has been steadily growing its influence over the service... Read More

Topics: Sales, Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Sales Performance Management, Workforce Management, agent management, sales enablement

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, agent management

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. This has made it an interesting time to be a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) vendor.... Read More

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

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.) There are many reasons for the split but key among them is a long-term change in how organizations procure software designed to engage customers and handle interactions... Read More

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

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Marketing, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Digital Commerce, Enterprise Resource Planning, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Sales, Customer Experience, Marketing, Voice of the Customer, Analytics, Customer Service, Contact Center, Workforce Management, Digital Marketing, Digital Commerce, agent management, AI and Machine Learning

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Contact Center, Digital Technology, natural language processing, Conversational Computing, agent management, AI and Machine Learning

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Analytics, Contact Center, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Subscription Management, agent management, AI and Machine Learning

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Digital Technology, Digital Commerce, Conversational Computing, collaborative computing, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Marketing, Analytics, Internet of Things, Contact Center, Data, Digital Technology, Digital Commerce, Operations & Supply Chain, blockchain, employee experience, candidate engagement, Conversational Computing, collaborative computing, mobile computing, agent management, extended reality, business digital commerce, work experience management, AI and Machine Learning

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Contact Center, Workforce Management, Digital Technology, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, robotic finance, employee experience, continuous supply chain, agent management, work experience management

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... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Subscription Management, agent management

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... Read More

Topics: Sales, Customer Experience, Office of Finance, Voice of the Customer, embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Internet of Things, Contact Center, Product Information Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Commerce, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, natural language processing, robotic finance, revenue and lease accounting, Subscription Management, agent management, intelligent sales, sales enablement, AI and Machine Learning