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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 Intelligent Self-Service: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.
Contact centers are pivoting from offering primarily human-assisted service to relying heavily on customer self-service for routine inquiries. 
Customers have long had options to help themselves with simple tasks like account lookup or order status checks. As information resources became more widespread, customers became accustomed to proactively looking for answers to ever-more complicated questions on the web, in customer communities and on social media. Enterprises need to control and vet as many sources as possible, and steer customers to information that’s appropriate for their problem. They are also aware that self-service can deflect as much as 70% to 80% of interaction volume away from expensive live agents.
Technological developments in artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge management and personalization make self-service easier and more accurate. AI tools deliver highly complex information around the clock through automated systems and multiple interaction channels.
ISG Research defines Intelligent Self-Service as the constellation of applications enabling customers to interact with businesses in complex ways, including information gathering and transaction processing using multithreaded inquiries and the communications channel of their choice. Its intelligence stems from the use of conversational AI to make interactions fluid and dynamic and to extend the range of tasks that can be performed without human assistance. This type of self-service is more likely to be multimodal, with longer-lasting interactions. It may also seem less like “service” to the customer and more like the process of searching or shopping. That ultimately leads to greater customer engagement, including more human agent involvement at different points in the buying and service process. It also requires a different skill set than typical first-tier support. Many of the same applications can be used on the other side of the interaction, providing human agents with the same kind of automated information retrieval customers use, and automating many of the same routine processes.
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.
Of all the software areas related to contact center operations, agent management, customer analytics and self-service are the most dynamic and most affected by AI innovation. Self-service is the key that will unlock many downstream benefits. There are indications that interaction containment rates are well over 50% using more intelligent self-service systems, especially those with conversational AI. Easing the load on human agents releases resources that can be deployed in many other ways, including upskilling agents.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Intelligent Self-Service evaluates software providers and products in key areas, including omnichannel support, personalization, proactive assistance, escalation to live agents, intent recognition, dialogue management, knowledge base integration, AI-powered recommendations, security and compliance and conversational AI features.
This research evaluates the following software providers offering products to address key elements of Intelligent Self-Service as we define it: 8x8, Aircall, Alvaria, Avaya, AWS, Cisco, Content Guru, Dialpad, Emplifi, Enghouse Interactive, Five9, Genesys, GoTo, LivePerson, Microsoft, Mitel, net2phone, Nextiva, NiCE, Odigo, RingCentral, Salesforce, Sinch, Sprinklr, Talkdesk, Twilio, UJET, Verint, Vonage, Zendesk, Zoho and Zoom.
This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of intelligent self-service 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 intelligent self-service 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 Intelligent Self-Service 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.
- Five9.
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 intelligent self-service, 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 intelligent self-service 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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