The Forrester Wave™: Contact Center As A Service, Q1 2023

Contact Center As A Service Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

Key features and pros and cons of top Contact Center As A Service products:

Amazon Web Services - Leaders

Pros:

Massive market clout with sales relationships with IT teams around the world backed by contact center experts
Fastest pace of innovation among vendors in this evaluation
Approaches functional parity with leading companies in the space on modern architecture with access to many AWS tools and resources
Reference customers lauded AI capabilities and called AWS a good partner to work with

Cons:

Usage-based pricing provides variability that causes heartburn for many organizations
Still rough around the edges compared to many others in this evaluation
More development work required to stand the product up compared to other vendors

Genesys - Leaders

Pros:

Wide-ranging set of product capabilities and go-to-market engine that successfully sells around the world
Superior vision that can take it beyond the contact center and into all customer interactions
Impressive breadth of functionality with powerful customer journey analytics from Pointillist acquisition
Comprehensive WFO capabilities
Reference customers happy with 100% uptime and frequent updates and enhancements

Cons:

Recently dropped multicloud product line, diminishing differentiation at highest end of market and forcing some largest customers off platform that uniquely meets their needs
Still evolving omnichannel support, evidenced by multiple agent desktops
Reference customers spoke of challenges with deployments and difficulties finding the right resource in support

NICE - Leaders

Pros:

Superior vision that extends beyond improving agent efficiency to play a role in entire CX journey
Strong roadmap featuring AI and accelerating focus on digital interactions
Significant R&D budget investing in infusing AI into analytics, agent assistance, WFO, conversational AI and other areas
Comprehensive solution breadth for whatever WFO or CCaaS system a contact center leader may need
Unique breadth to serve contact centers globally

Cons:

Products are not microservices-native, though significant investments made in moving product stack in that direction
Shift in focus to larger CX positioning requires fundamental shift in sales and marketing strategies
Needs to ensure it stays focused on core contact center customers while expanding to deliver on larger CX positioning
Forrester did not speak with any reference customers

Content Guru - Strong Performers

Pros:

High reliability and inbound and outbound interactions across high number of channels
Product flexibility allows it to fit into many environments and serve many scenarios
Vendor-agnostic approach to AI, focusing on making it easy to use any third-party AI engine
Customers praised product maturity and broad functionality
Customers praised company as good partner to work with

Cons:

Less aggressive in embracing microservices and public cloud hosting than other vendors
R&D spend is low among vendors in this evaluation
Customers said licensing and provisioning changes were challenging

Five9 - Strong Performers

Pros:

Flexible approach to AI with own intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) and productized integrations to several AI engines
Strong customer data lake combined with AI provides agents with information to help personalize customer experiences
Strong reliability and global presence
Reference customers praised ease of deployment and quality of support team

Cons:

Incorporation of Inference IVA is still work in progress and requires separate data centers and development tools
Workforce management offering isn't best fit for contact centers with over 500 seats, will resell Verint when needed
International revenue lags investments outside North America
Some reference customers identified issues with support in Asia and for Verint solutions

Talkdesk - Strong Performers

Pros:

Modern platform built on microservices core that enables adding functionality quickly
Good set of AI solutions and pleasing and powerful agent desktop
Configuration tool for CRM integrations greatly simplifies integration process
Early success with vertical solutions started in June 2021
Reference customers gave kudos for speed of innovation, AI capabilities, and agent desktop

Cons:

Needs to make investments in ensuring new capabilities are ready for release
Customer references reported challenges with newly released capabilities including email and ticket handling
Native workforce management, performance management, and gamification capabilities fall short of Leaders
US-based customers struggled on support issues when working with experts in Europe

8x8 - Contenders

Pros:

Reliable network delivers industry-leading uptime
Dedication to making product simple reduces agent training time and simplifies system management
AI infused into quality management capabilities to good effect and uses AI to enhance business insights
Global success thanks to international telephony presence
Reference customers found product easy to learn and use

Cons:

Advantage of simplicity-first approach fades in deployments with over 500 seats
AI-driven functions like chatbots or agent assist heavily dependent on partner capabilities
Beyond quality management and speech analytics, relies on partners for WFO capabilities
Reference customers cited system migration and initial deployment as challenges

Cisco - Contenders

Pros:

Solid microservices platform will help take advantage of company's many strengths, particularly AI and unified communications
Global market presence, massive partner ecosystem, and strong IT relationships
Reference customers happy to have UC and contact center offerings on single platform and found system easy to manage

Cons:

Product is new (released November 2021) and will take time to reach feature parity with Leaders
Notable holes in young offering including need to consolidate separate voice and digital development environments
Needs to enhance outbound capabilities and WFO options
Big part of current roadmap is about playing catchup
Integrations with Cisco's CPaaS system and Google's CCAI platform were difficult to set up per reference customers

LiveVox - Contenders

Pros:

Internal CRM system makes customer data easily accessible for integrations, routing decisions, and agent desktop
Reporting, dashboards, and analytics are strengths
Reference customers enjoyed speed of deployment

Cons:

Solution not as extensible as other options
Depends on partners for workforce management
Performance management and gamification capabilities relatively limited
Product scalability more limited than similar vendors
Relatively narrow focus selling only in North America with minimal investment in partner or vertical strategies
Reference customers concerned about lack of visibility into full customer journey across different channels

Twilio - Contenders

Pros:

Runs on modern microservices architecture with APIs that allow it to fit any environment
Product flexibility and extensibility are strengths for brands with resources to take advantage
Flexibility works for traditional contact centers, sales, and other customer-facing organizations
Reference customers loved product flexibility and spoke highly of Twilio support services

Cons:

Product less mature out of the box, limiting appeal to brands looking for more complete offering
Has lot of work to do on innovation roadmap to fill in product gaps relative to others in evaluation
Reference customers identified limited capabilities out of box and complexity of supporting bespoke solution as concerns

Vonage - Contenders

Pros:

Providing full communications suite differentiates Vonage
Stands out for development tools and AI efforts with own natural language processing and machine learning capabilities
Reference customers appreciated how Vonage made it easy to support agents from anywhere
Reference customers applauded agent desktop within Salesforce
Salesforce integration accomplished quickly without need for Vonage support

Cons:

Falls short on CCaaS vision for non-Salesforce customers as many advantages come directly from Salesforce integration
Scale of CCaaS offering limited compared to Leaders; sweet spot is 500 seats and under
Doesn't provide own workforce management tools but supports many partner integrations
Initial deployments were challenging per reference customers

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

A: Amazon Web Services, Genesys, NICE

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

A: Leaders in the Forrester Wave have superior vision that extends beyond the contact center and demonstrate strong execution on that vision. They provide comprehensive approaches to integrating AI across core CCaaS functions, offer broad and tightly integrated suites of capabilities, and enable highly personalized customer experiences using critical customer information. Leaders combine mature, reliable platforms with significant market presence and the ability to serve contact centers globally at scale.

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

A: https://www.forrester.com/policies/forrester-wave-methodology/

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Contact Center As A Service in 2023

Contact Center As A Service Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

Reference