ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Contact Center AI Gain Traction: Profitable Use Cases

Posted by Keith Dawson on 29 October 2024

With a flood of artificial intelligence-related tools now available for contact center buyers, it can be helpful to take a step back and review where buyers can expect a quick return on investment and maximum improvement in efficiency and productivity. For now, it appears that there are three broad buckets into which contact center-focused AI applications are clustered. They all relate to agent... Read More

Topics: Voice of the Customer, Contact Center

Voice of the Customer Measurement Is Well Beyond Surveys

Posted by Keith Dawson on 14 March 2024

Contact centers have collected customer feedback almost as long as there have been telephones. The simple binary question "Did I provide you with good service today," or some variation is a common feature of agent scripts that contact center leadership uses to produce snap assessments of agent performance. Today’s analytic approaches are becoming more common, producing more insightful and nuanced... Read More

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

Zoho’s Roadmap Addresses Evolving Enterprise Needs

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 March 2024

Zoho recently held its annual analyst day to communicate its strategy, objectives and product roadmap. The privately held company, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, has an unconventional approach to the software market. Its self-described corporate philosophy emphasizes making bold moves that challenge assumptions. Its design engineering approach stresses simplicity and cost while... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Voice of the Customer, Digital Commerce, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Order-to-Cash

Sentiment Analysis Unlocks Deeper, Better CX

Posted by Keith Dawson on 08 February 2024

We are going through an analytics revolution in and around contact centers. There is more data to analyze and better tools to conduct the analysis. One important advancement is assessing customer sentiment and using it to predict (and influence) behavior. Enterprises are using customer experience programs to identify and act upon hidden "moments of leverage" where customers may be inclined or... Read More

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

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

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

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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

Customer Feedback Management Goes Way Beyond Surveys for the VoC

Posted by Keith Dawson on 13 April 2023

Contact centers have long collected feedback from customers, usually through short surveys. It is very common for an agent or an automated system to ask for an assessment of the interaction that just occurred, hoping to get the customer's candid, instant view of whether they were satisfied. For the most part, what's learned in those short engagements is very narrow. It can be used for a customer... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Contact Center, AI

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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

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. At Verint’s December analyst conference,... Read More

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

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,... Read More

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

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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