This year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) has one notable change from the 2020 edition: Vocalcom is the only company to be dropped from the research.
This year’s touchstone report from the analyst house noted that demand for CCaaS has been spurred on by the pandemic and that demand is moving “upmarket” as the offerings are increasingly being used to meet complex and multi-regional requirements.
“This research will help application leaders responsible for customer service find the right provider for their geographic and functional needs,” Gartner noted in the report.
The analyst firm doesn’t touch upon why Vocalcom has been dropped from this year’s Magic Quadrant (it was a Niche Player in the 2020 edition) but elaborates on the “four pillars” of exceptional customer service which the remaining 12 vendors are judged on.
The Four Pillars of Customer Service
When it comes to evaluating CCaaS solutions, Gartner’s report is focused on transformational technologies and approaches to meet the future needs of end users, rather than focusing on the market as it stands today.
CCaaS solutions enable an “Adaptive, flexible delivery model” with native capabilities across the four pillars of great customer success. These four pillars can be summarised into capabilities:
Core capability:
- Getting connected – focused on delivering a channel-agnostic, architected design to create customer service journeys. Services are consumed on a per-seat, per-concurrent-user or transaction basis
Optional capabilities:
- Process orchestration
- Resource management
- Knowledge and insight
Gartner organises its Magic Quadrant into four segments: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players.
CCaaS Leaders in 2021
Vendors considered Leaders in this year’s Quadrant are described by Gartner as being suppliers with strong support for the four pillars of great customer service, as well as an ability to serve multinational companies with local sales and support organisations. Vendors in this segment are more likely to work with customers through channel partners and have strong brand recognition. They are also able to support different levels of deployment complexity.
This year’s Leaders are unchanged from last year:
- NICE CXone
- Genesys
- Talkdesk
David Dungay, Editor-in-Chief at UC Today, recently spoke to Zeus Kerravala, Founder of ZK Research, about the latest CCaaS quadrant from Gartner and what he thought about the identified leaders.
Nice CXone (Formerly NICE inContact)
Founded in 2002, CXone was acquired by NICE in 2016 and bolstered the latter’s investment, acquisitions, and international growth. CXone is a specialised CCaaS platform that is offered directly and through the vendor’s channel programme. It is now sold in over 60 countries.
NICE CXone (formerly NICE inContact) is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. CXone, its specialized CCaaS platform, is offered both directly and through a channel program that involves international partners, including RingCentral.
Gartner praised CXone for its Enlighten AI capability, a “comprehensive” service strategy that spans all four pillars of customer service and its geographic reach, which makes it an “attractive choice for organisations planning to consolidate contact centre platforms”.
Genesys
Genesys holds onto its place in the Leader segment, with its Cloud CX platform praised for demonstrating a “strong” commitment to the four pillars of great customer service with a vision for more agile, on-demand service.
Gartner praised its extensive operational and channel presence across the globe and its analytics capability which enables a highly customised customer experience, as well as its pricing, including its “notable improvements” to its policies for compensating customers in the event of a missed SLA commitment.
Talkdesk
Formed only a decade ago, Talkdesk retains its position as a leader in the CCaaS Magic Quadrant. Gartner described it as a company with a “good vision for analytics-driven engagements for both customers and employee”.
The vendor was hailed for its sales execution, continuing to make strong customer growth, which is fuelled by “attractive” prices and a strong commitment to the sales engagement process.
Its programme targeting key vertical markets with industry-specific products was also highlighted as a strength by Gartner, as well as the advancements it has made in its AI capabilities.
CCaaS Challengers 2021
Vendors who are considered challengers in this year’s quadrant are those who have large installed bases of customers, but who do not necessarily have the brand awareness or adoption of Leaders. They are often less mature than Leaders in their market approach, preferring to focus on strengths in a subset of markets.
Five9
The contact centre specialist has recently entered an agreement to be bought by Zoom for $14.7bn, as a means for the latter to enter the cloud contact centre space.
Five9’s specialised CCaaS platform offers enterprise organisations a dedicated sales team and key system integrator partnerships, according to Gartner.
The analyst’s report also highlighted its progress in integrating key acquisitions it has made – particularly in relation to workforce engagement management, process orchestration and AI – to bolster its commitment to the four pillars, as well as its “competitive” prices. Its success in growing sales to the international arms of US-based customers was a particular standout in the report.
Content Guru
UK-headquartered Content Guru retains its position as CCaaS Challenger with its storm CONTACT offering.
The scalability of storm Contact and its integration and automation capabilities received praise from Gartner. As did its sales execution and service strategy.
8×8
Another Challenger retaining its spot in this year’s quadrant is 8×8. Its leadership in the UCaaS market has given it a strong global footprint. Its CCaaS “sweet spot” is its ability to address the needs of SMBs while also catering to the needs of enterprises.
One of its major strengths is that it can provide UCaaS and CCaaS on one platform, allowing them to support and track activity in “informal” centres. Another strength is t’s global reach as a UCaaS provider also allows it to meet the needs of organisations’ contact centre users in multiple countries, particularly where there is a requirement to support both UCaaS and CCaaS.
Vonage
Rounding out the Challenger segment is Vonage, whose Contact Centre is part of a broad “programmable communications platform” strategy incorporating UCaaS and CPaaS capabilities. The Contact Centre solution is mainly sold direct, with referrals from Salesforce and its channel partners.
Its integrated user and administration interface has resulted in high ratings on the Salesforce App Exchange, said Gartner. The analyst also highlighted the expansion of its support for digital channels and analytics capabilities to make its offering “more interesting” to increasingly sophisticated contact centres.
Vonage’s repositioning of its solutions as an integrated, programmable communications platform to meet an organisation’s full communications requirements was also hailed by Gartner.
CCaaS Visionaries 2021
Only two vendors are categorised as Visionaries this year – Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Odigo, the only two to slot into the segment last year too.
AWS
Amazon Connect was launched in 2017 and is a specialised CCaaS solution that draws on the vendor’s massive infrastructure and software capabilities. Connect is sold direct and through an ever-growing ecosystem of channel partners.
Gartner highlighted Amazon Connect’s pricing as one of its major strengths, declaring it “the most agile in the CCaaS market”, allowing companies to experiment with voice, chat, and self-service at a low price and with no licence commitments. Its solutions configurability was also praised in the report, stating that this allows users to “exploit” AWS’ portfolio of capabilities, including machine learning and AI. Its global ubiquity also means that it has high levels of availability, regardless of geography.
Odigo
Established 20 years ago, Odigo was previously known as Prosodie until a 2019 rebranding exercise separated it from association with Capgemini, who sold it last year. Odigo’s CCaaS platform is offered to select markets, primarily through direct selling, but also through its former owner. This continuing relationship with Capgemini was considered one of Odigo’s strengths in its report.
Gartner describes the vendor as having a “strong vision” for the development of natural language capabilities and automation as part of its contact centre platform.
CCaaS Niche Players 2021
The Niche Player segment is the only one to see any substantial change from last year’s Magic Quadrant, with the departure of Vocalcom from the category.
Those in this segment are considered by Gartner to be experiencing strong growth but are focusing on a particular market opportunity, a particular set of solutions or certain vertical markets. Their products and services may still be undergoing some development, or they may rely heavily on partners to complete their service proposition.
Evolve IP
Evolve IP’s Contact Suite offers integration with a native UCaaS offering, as well as integration with Cisco for UC, and Microsoft for collaboration.
Its pricing was hailed for being very competitive, whether it be sold as an integrated solution or a stand-alone product. Gartner also sang the praised of its service proposition, which has a broad set of collaboration capabilities. Its integration with Cisco’s UC environments also offers an “interesting” alternative to Cisco’s UC customers.
Lifesize
Lifesize appeared on the contact centre scene last year, with the acquisition of Serenova. Its CxEngage CCaaS offering shows “strong commitment” to the four pillars through acquisition and integration of partners’ offerings.
Lifesize’s vision for deeper video and collaboration channels with CxEngage is likely to address some new niche market opportunities, according to the analyst report.
Gartner highlighted Lifesize’s investment in CxEngage’s WEM capabilities is transforming the solution into an integrated service offering. its channel ecosystem was also considered one of its strengths.
Worldline
Worldline’s WL Contact is sold directly, with Europe being its strongest market “by far”.
Its heritage as a business process outsourcing provider gives it scope to target new and existing customers with WL Contact, while its proposition as a complementary service to Worldine’s portfolio further strengthens Worldline’s position as a Niche Player.
The Results
Considering all the movement in the contact centre space over the past year, it is somewhat surprising that no names were added to this year’s Magic Quadrant, with powerhouses Avaya, Cisco and RingCentral notable again by their absence.
However, perhaps it is too soon to expect any significant changes in the Magic Quadrant as the market is still in a state of massive flux due to events of the past 18 months. Take a look at the 2020 CCaaS Magic Quadrant on CX Today. As Gartner stated themselves, this report is focused on “transformational technologies and approaches to meet the future needs of end users. It is not focused on the market as it is today”. Perhaps next year’s report will see some new names – or even the loss of some names – added to it as the market settles a bit.
