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ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Contact Centers: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.
Contact centers have remained largely unchanged for decades, but are now undergoing a drastic overhaul in 
operations, interaction mechanics and underlying technology architectures. This is proving disruptive to both technology buyers and sellers. The most immediate cause is the explosion of new tools derived from artificial intelligence (AI) innovations. Contact centers have always operated as reactive, cost-sensitive entities purpose-built for a narrowly defined function. Now centers are being asked to expand core functions, re-task the human labor force, respond to customers and enterprises in real time and use data for more sophisticated decision-making. In a short period, the foundational assumptions related to outfitting contact centers have been upended.
ISG Research defines Contact Center systems as the technologies responsible for routing customer interactions to an automated or live representative. The fundamental tool for routing voice interactions is the automated call distributor (ACD), software that connects to a telephony switching fabric and uses intelligence to ensure the call goes to the right representative. The collection of essential contact center technology also includes an elaborate suite of applications used to manage the operations of the human workforce, including routine functions such as scheduling shifts, forecasting interaction volume and measuring the efficiency of people and teams. Both routing and agent management tools are generally found in unified software systems, and though it is rare, it is still possible to deploy many or all of the tools on-premises. Today’s configurations are generally built for cloud deployment and fall under the industry rubric of CCaaS, or contact center as a service. Current tools have also expanded well beyond the core routing and agent productivity systems and now include very sophisticated analytics capabilities, workflow automations, advanced self-service systems and data integrations with adjacent tools, especially in the back office. AI innovations have also led to the creation of wholly new tools for managing quality, delivering knowledge and speeding interactions.
Contact centers were first developed as business entities almost 50 years ago, and for much of that time, core technology and operations remained fairly stable. Well into the digital era, the fundamentals of interaction routing and workforce optimization were standard practices, augmented but not displaced by incremental innovations in expanding the channel landscape, more powerful analysis and better ways to measure performance.
The past three years have seen more disruptive innovation than centers have experienced to date. Much is made of the importance of AI in creating entirely new tools, and indeed, we assert that by 2027, three-quarters of contact centers will have introduced multiple GenAI applications into their service processes for routing, chatbots and agent 
assistance. But less discussion surrounds the impact of outside providers entering the contact center software space from adjacent markets, especially the hyperscaler giants. When firms with R&D resources in the tens of billions of dollars enter a market, the incumbent players have little choice but to make peace with a changed environment and adapt. The result has been an expansion of choice. In the past, a buyer had to select the core call-routing engine and build a center’s tech stack around that software provider’s solution. In the new world, hyperscalers have commoditized the routing engine, allowing virtually anyone—buyer or another provider—to build a contact center infrastructure based on whichever software component is most important to them. So, a buyer committed to a particular CRM or case-tracking tool can start with those elements and build the center using the extensive integrations and partnership networks available. Or, they can work with software from the back office or marketing department and conform the center’s systems to accommodate those applications.
This means that providers from many origin points can plausibly go to market with a software suite that serves the core needs of contact centers—routing and workforce management. Buyers then distinguish between options based on more broad-based needs, such as data management, back-office integration, conformity with existing legacy tools or something specific to the unique business or vertical market. In 2025, contact center buyers face more—and more complicated—choices than ever.
What enterprises need is assurance of interoperability and clean, easy integrations. Most buyers appear to source technology from as few providers as possible, leaning toward suites for simplicity of administration. Most large and midsized platform providers encourage this by forging extensive partnership networks and app marketplaces that let buyers fill peripheral software needs with best-of-breed niche tools, with the assurance that the platform provider will coordinate the connections.
Enterprises that have not purchased contact center systems since before the pandemic (which is most of them) are experiencing a different world: new providers, providers that have evolved focus and a set of functional capabilities that didn’t exist five years ago. Business requirements have not advanced as quickly as technological innovation, so buyers are understandably reticent—even confused—about how to prioritize deployment of a new system. It doesn’t help that many contact center buyers are now also sitting side-by-side with CX professionals who have different, parallel goals for software purchases, and are simultaneously under great pressure from executives to stay current on developing AI technologies (if that is even possible).
All of that said, what enterprises really need to do is focus on two things: the foundational elements of yore, meaning routing and workforce tools, and the expanded universe of tools that support and extend its mission. Those would include advanced analytics, conversational AI for self-service, AI tools for automating quality and knowledge resources that feed the customer-facing AI.
Buyers also need assurance that when they take the leap into the realm of the new, they have concrete ROI metrics to back them up. Providers report a consistently high portion of AI-related sales riding atop detailed proof-of-concept trials. Some also indicate that the uptake for certain AI tools is correspondingly slow, as buyers wait for the proof points.
To meet these enterprise needs, today’s contact center systems must incorporate key AI applications that make up the current “core” capabilities: information synthesis and delivery to customers and human agents, automating processes within the center and between departments and analyzing customer sentiment more deeply than just at the level of the interaction. Contemporary tools need to be strong in areas that were once peripheral, especially self-service and analytics.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Contact Centers evaluates software providers and products in key areas, including interaction routing (voice and digital), agent management, interaction handling analytics, automation and self-service, workflow automation and integration and AI/GenAI support.
This research evaluates the following software providers offering products to address key elements of Contact Center systems as we define them: 8x8, Aircall, Alvaria, Avaya, AWS, Cisco, Content Guru, Dialpad, Emplifi, Enghouse Interactive, Exotel, Five9, Genesys, GoTo, Microsoft, Mitel, net2phone, Nextiva, NiCE, Odigo, RingCentral, Salesforce, Sinch, Sprinklr, Talkdesk, Twilio, UJET, Verint, Vonage, XTIUM, Zendesk, Zoho and Zoom.
This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of contact centers software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.
We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating contact centers offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.
The Buyers Guide for Contact Centers in 2025 finds NiCE first on the list, followed by Verint and Genesys.
Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.
The Leaders in Product Experience are:
- NiCE.
- Verint.
- Genesys.
The Leaders in Customer Experience are:
- Verint.
- NiCE.
- Content Guru.
The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:
- NiCE, which has achieved this rating in seven of the seven categories.
- Verint in six categories.
- Genesys in three categories.
- Content Guru in two categories.
- Dialpad, Five9 and Talkdesk in one category.
The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.
Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle contact centers, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.
ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our contact centers blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.
You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.
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