The CF List: 2022's 20 Top CCaaS Providers You Should Know
AI is a game-changer in CCaaS.
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J Arnold & Associates’ Jon Arnold, S&P Global’s Sheryl Kingstone and Forrester’s Max Ball all agree Avaya will be one to watch this year as it faces an uncertain future and potentially heading into a second bankruptcy.
“I don’t think you get a second chance at bankruptcy,” Arnold said. “The crown jewels for Avaya have always been contact center. They have dominated that space longer than anybody. They know how to do these things really well, but financially the company is just completely cratered now. And this isn’t a surprise to people following the company. It was just like a matter of when is this going to hit the fan. So now their job is to reassure customers and partners that they’ll be viable. Hopefully they will be. They’re going to have less and less control over their destiny because their investors are not happy. And obviously the CEO had to resign and Alan Masarek will hopefully work his magic here and we’ll just have to see. But nothing could shift the market today in a bigger way in one shot than if Avaya were to be acquired.”
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball said Microsoft is one to watch in the CCaaS market. Microsoft released its cloud contact center platform in July. Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform includes telephony in the form of Teams Phone. It also includes Teams and Dynamics 365 integrations, as well as natural language processing (NLP) features and AI from both Microsoft and Nuance Communications.
“Microsoft is very basic with what they’re doing,” Ball said. “They have a very thorough roadmap and they’re planning to build it all out.”
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball said AWS is making quite a splash in CCaaS. Ball said AWS is going to be a “behemoth” in the CCaaS market.
“They have been very serious about delivering it successfully,” Ball said. “They have been very serious about improving it and not doing easy improvements, but doing things like workforce management, which is scheduling. That is a very heavy programming lift. It’s not a trivial thing to build. So they’re really dead serious and building their product up, and they’re going to be a real force to be reckoned with.”
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball cited 8×8 as a top CCaaS provider. Arnold said 8×8, RingCentral and Vonage are the big three for the cloud.
This month, the company deployed 8×8 eXperience Communications as a Service (XCaaS) to provide a better employee and client experience through improved call quality, collaboration and security capabilities.
“I think they’re really trying to enter with their UCaaS technologies into being a CCaaS world,” Kingstone said.
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball agreed Google is a noteworthy CCaaS contender with UJET.
“Google just had AI for contact center and now they’re actually selling a CCaaS platform and they’re doing that through an OEM relationship with UJET,” Ball said. “They’re one of the interesting up-and-comers. What the newer companies bring is more of an AI focus, and it’s a new platform so it can be microservices architecture. So there are some interesting things there.”
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball said Cisco is among CCaaS leaders.
“They’ve been in this space forever,” Ball said. “As of November, they actually have a credible modern offering here. Up until then, they’ve been kind of the dustbin of mostly premises stuff and really old. And now they have some stuff that’s actually pretty interesting.”
Kingstone said Cisco is a “definite player in the marketplace.
“It’s probably a little bit more advanced from the UCaaS perspective and one to watch on the CCaaS side from digital channels and where it’s trying to go,” she said. “Strong collaboration player, strong enterprise player, strong contact center infrastructure, but still missing some elements of a true CCaaS environment.”
Arnold said RingCentral is a top CCaaS provider. The company hit an important milestone during the second quarter of 2022. It has reached 5 million seats sold for its MVP product. For the quarter, RingCentral grew revenue by 28%.
Ball describes an effective CCaaS solution.
“You need to have good self service, and that probably means it’s AI-driven,” he said. “You need to have really smart routing. You need to have a good and efficient agent environment where they can get the information they need quickly and easily. You need to be able to do it across all the channels, and you need to have integrated workforce management and quality management as part of the solution.”
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball agreed Genesys is a noteworthy provider. For its fiscal year 2022, Genesys reported total revenue of greater than $1.9 billion with year-over-year growth more than double the 9% rate in the prior year, as the company completed its transition to a cloud company.
“They’re one of the biggest, strongest players for sure,” Arnold said.
Kingstone said Genesys is “paying attention to the shift and trying to move their customer base to the cloud.”
Kingstone cited LiveVox as one to watch. Last month, LiveVox unveiled its new Human Text Initiator (HTI). Outbound contact centers can now utilize HTI to deliver customized, single-click, single texts to customers while remaining in compliance with consumer protection regulations.
“LiveVox is interesting, too, as a next-generation CCaaS with a blended omnichannel type of approach,” she said.
Ball said Thrio is a young CCaaS provider that’s worth watching. Thrio’s CCaaS platform features RPA, inbound and outbound voice engines, a complete suite of digital channels (email, chat, text, social), and a range of built in AI tools.
“I think they have a good approach to the market and a good product offering set,” he said.
Arnold and Ball said Vonage will be one to watch. Ericsson completed its $6.2 billion acquisition of the company last month.
“Ericsson is very big on wireless infrastructure,” Arnold said. “And that’s kind of where another wave of evolution is coming, where the 5G networks, once they become more established and set the path for 6G, they can deliver the speeds and feeds that are good enough for enterprises to use. They’re betting that if enterprises start to gravitate to 5G networks to support their data infrastructure, now you can run these applications over those 5G networks. Again, that makes the 5G story even better.
So that’s what the Ericssons of the world are betting on when they go after a Vonage. And of course, the real prize for them is Vonage’s carrier relationships and they claim to have 1 million developers in their stable who can support the CPaaS, all these APIs, which gives you unlimited capability to customize applications. And that’s how you differentiate from everybody else. So that really adds a lot of intrigue to where this is all going to go.”
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball said Twilio is a noteworthy provider.
“I bring up Twilio as one of those really strong providers in the industry, really shifting the discussion with Twilio’s focus on developers and digital channels,” Kingstone said. “And their acquisition of Segment was stellar as they try to bring together that vision of service is the new marketing. Bringing together Segment [and] Twilio is a great step in that direction.”
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball agreed Five9 is a top CCaaS provider.
“Five9 is definite player in this marketplace and one to watch from the cloud standpoint,” Kingstone said. “And I think where they can really beef up some of their technology is also taking a look at the fact that they need a data foundation, and where are they with orchestration and technology. They’ve really made an emphasis of changing the priorities of the cloud infrastructure and cloud technologies. But where are we from the broader digital channels and data orchestration standpoint that’s going to drive those interactions?”
Arnold and Kingstone cited IntelePeer as a noteworthy provider.
“It really comes down to their ability to orchestrate and workflow, and AI for IntelePeer,” Kingstone said. “I look at their technology as coming at it very different from a process and AI standpoint.”
Ball said Mitel is a top provider with a “huge” install base. And Arnold said it belongs among prominent providers. This past spring, Mitel launched subscription-based offers across all flagship platforms in its global portfolio, including MiVoice Business, MiVoice Office 400, MiVoice 5000 and MiVoice MX-ONE.
Kingstone said Intercom belongs among noteworthy CCaaS providers.
“They’re the ones that were also really trying to do more triggered responses and really collecting first-party data, which I thought was pretty unique from a CCaaS provider,” she said. “They were pretty early on with that and really bringing in the whole messaging element in a smarter way.”
Arnold, Kingstone and Ball said Talkdesk is a top provider. In April, Jenne, the cloud services brokerage, teamed up with Talkdesk. The agreement means Jenne partners can now sell Talkdesk’s cloud contact center solutions. This includes the company’s flagship solution Talkdesk CX Cloud, a global end-to-end CX platform. Talkdesk CX Cloud allows companies to adapt contact center operations to meet the evolving needs of customers, customer service and sales teams.
Arnold said Intermedia is a noteworthy contender. That’s mostly because it has an exclusive partnership with NEC, a major Japanese multinational corporation. It produces telecommunications equipment and related software and services. An expanded agreement was announced last November. It makes NEC the exclusive reseller of Intermedia UCaaS and CCaaS solutions in Japan, NEC’s largest market, for the extended duration of the initial term.
Arnold and Ball said Content Guru is an interesting UK-based CCaaS provider.
“They’re based in the United Kingdom and they’re European focused,” Ball said. “But they do have a presence here and a very mature product, and the guys know what they’re doing.”
Arnold said Nice inContact is a “big, pure-play” provider in CCaaS. And Ball said it’s a noteworthy market player. Nice inContact’s first-quarter 2022 total revenues increased 15.9% to $527.4 million, compared to $455 million for the year-ago quarter.
“All of the UCaaS players have tried to move into the contact center,” Arnold said. “It’s more lucrative for them.”
Arnold said Nice inContact is a “big, pure-play” provider in CCaaS. And Ball said it’s a noteworthy market player. Nice inContact’s first-quarter 2022 total revenues increased 15.9% to $527.4 million, compared to $455 million for the year-ago quarter.
“All of the UCaaS players have tried to move into the contact center,” Arnold said. “It’s more lucrative for them.”
After a big spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, contact-center-as-a service (CCaaS) providers have seen a normalizing in sales that could slide further due to a possible upcoming recession.
Buying patterns are changing, and in the months ahead buyers likely will be more focused on cost savings than providing a better customer experience. CCaaS has helped call centers keep up with the hybrid workforce and changing customer demands.
This is our third annual list focusing on CCaaS providers. Analysts share their views on what it takes to succeed with the technology. It includes an updated list and fresh views on changes in the competitive landscape.
Explosive Growth Anticipated
According to Juniper Research, global CCaaS market revenue will reach $15.6 billion by 2027, increasing an explosive 216% from $4.9 billion in 2022.
Jon Arnold is principal of J Arnold & Associates. He said customers have been dealing with both rising volumes and fewer agents due to the great resignation.
J Arnold & Associates’ Jon Arnold
“That’s a disaster,” he said. “So it’s even more impetus for them to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. “It’s stuff you really can’t do very well with legacy hardware-based contact center systems.”
AI a Game Changer in Contact Center
AI is a game-changer in CCaaS, Arnold said.
“The vendors are all pushing a strong AI story, not just because it’s that shiny ball everyone’s drawn to, but AI has very high perceived value,” he said. “What it actually delivers probably falls a little short; it’s getting better, but it’s not perfect. Because it holds so much promise, it’s a premium value. So the vendors can charge extra for anything they call AI and the contact centers will pay for it because they don’t really know any differently. So there’s a bit of an opportunity there for the vendors to kind of capitalize on that. But then again, once the contact centers start to use it, if it doesn’t deliver, they’re going to stop using it for sure. But for how the vendors have evolved, a lot of these challenges do point to AI as being part of the solution. I don’t know one contact center vendor who isn’t doing AI in some capacity.”
Service is the New Marketing
Sheryl Kingstone is head of customer experience and commerce, and voice of connected user landscape with 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.
451 Research’s Sheryl Kingstone
“The momentum that we had during the pandemic to focus on customer service support hasn’t changed,” she said. “What has been escalating even more is the need for cloud. The ability to swarm a lot of different experts has really become more in the forefront as we become very more resilient to some of these last-minute urgent changes. So it’s not just the pandemic in general. It’s the fact that look what’s happening after the pandemic and the fact that even the travel industry, they can’t respond. They tried to scale up and they realized they can’t. Now, not everyone has the travel industry, but a lot of industries are really trying to double down on customer service and support because of the fact that we have the macroeconomic environment that we’re in right now that is to do more with less.”
Service is the new marketing, Kingstone said.
“We do have to put in place a data governance and data strategy so that we’re using the right data at the right time,” she said. “That’s really informing our processes to lower cost to serve and improve the customer experience friction points.”
Supporting All Customer Channels
Max Ball is principal industry analyst at Forrester. He said a must in CCaaS now is the ability to support customers on whatever channel they want to communicate on. In addition, AI is going to “flip the contact center on its head.”
Forrester’s Max Ball
“The most visible place we see it is chat bots,” he said. “So self-service can be on the digital channels — it can be on voice, but it also is doing agent assistant applications. It’s doing robotic process automation (RPA) to get data from the back end and to the agent. It’s improving quality management where you’re grading your agents and scoring them, and all that stuff. Historically, you record every call, you listen to 1%, and at random the agent gets judged on which 1%. Nowadays with analytics, I can a pick calls I care about. Either it’s a topic I want or I’m going to look for calls with a whole lot of pauses because that’s awkward and that’s bad, and I want to see what’s going on with those. So it’s going to be much more targeted about which calls I review. And I can also have kind of an overall [agent] score for all the calls.”
We’ve compiled a list, in no particular order, of 20 top CCaaS providers. It’s based on analysts’ feedback and recent news reports. The list includes a mix of well-known providers as well as lesser-known ones making strides in CCaaS. This is by no means a complete list and includes a broad spectrum of providers in the contact center space.
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