Your C-suite has aggressive plans to grow sales, service standards, customer satisfaction, and your company's bottom line. Keeping ahead of their expectations requires keeping your eye on today's trends in technology and operational strategy.
Here are four modern contact center pain points that may be limiting your success, along with proactive recommendations that will help take your operation to the next level:
Pain Point #1: Technology is changing faster than ever
The speed of modern platform development has increased rapidly. Today, contact center operators expect multiple software upgrades annually, not once every year or two. This has increased demands and costs for IT departments that manage on-premise solutions, as they face more staff overtime to work around peak call times while troubleshooting the upgrade's effect on app integrations.
Recommendation: Stay modern. Consider cloud solutions for your CRM, Contact Center and WFM operations. With cloud solutions, your agents always have the most current software with minimal impact to IT. The best cloud solution providers offer pre-integrated CRM and WFM apps, open APIs, and top-notch professional services for rapid customizations.
Pain Point #2: Agent capacity is not aligned with elastic demand
Swings in customer contact volume can be due to a variety of factors that cause demand to surge or plunge. Nothing limits customer service like long queue times--but paying for excess seats damages your bottom line.
Recommendation: Move beyond the fixed license pricing of on-premise solutions and consider a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution with on-demand scalability to gain ultimate flexibility with pay-as-you-go agent capacity.
Pain Point #3: Customer contact channels are limited or unavailable
Centers that handle only inbound calls are far less cost-efficient than those that support outbound dialing. Beyond voice, to excel in today's marketplace, agents must move fluidly from one communications channel to another and be available to consumers on their time schedule.
Recommendation: Cross-train agents to handle so they can move comfortably from a slow channel to one of higher activity. Realize, however, that social media is a public forum; let your proven veterans take the lead here, and your brand will shine. Make sure you're monitoring your workload forecasting on all channels, not just voice, so you'll never miss an opportunity to delight a customer.
Pain Point #4: Metrics are not real-time or consolidated
Business moves at the speed of information, and delayed stats can delay your responsiveness. Creating unified reports across hybrid and multi-site centers is complicated by even slight differences in technology stacks, making custom queries a nightmare.
Recommendation: Keep reports flowing with a consolidated cloud database that unifies all contact center sites and remote agents in real time. If working with hybrid or multi-site centers you'll want to standardize terms, acronyms and report structures as much as possible. Review the KPIs you're currently tracking and consider adding new metrics if you see gaps in your business intelligence.
There are a wealth of benefits to be gained by moving to the cloud—download 9 Reasons to Make the Move to a Cloud Contact Center to accelerate and modernize your business.
Video: Siemens Shared Services.Siemens did it. You can too. Save costs by eliminating upgrades while gaining business agility with a scalable solution.
Case Study: Bernard(formerly American Support). This BPO used an on-premise system for outbound and a cloud solution for inbound calls. A single, blended cloud solution improved agent productivity, post-call processes, and capacity for innovation.
We help large organizations design and implement major change programs that improve performance, build capabilities, and strengthen behavior over time.
We help large organizations design and deliver major change programs that create step-change performance improvement, build capabilities, and strengthen organizational behaviour to renew and sustain exceptional performance over time.
The ability to drive transformational change—such as moving from good to great performance, cutting costs, or turning around a crisis—is a key source of competitive advantage. Yet despite the 25,000 books published on the topic, one in three change programs fail. We work with major corporations and public services to overcome these odds.
Our deep experience and rigorous approach help clients shape successful transformation programs and build cultures of continuous improvement. Specifically, we work closely with clients to:
Strengthen organizational health: We help clients attain excellence by managing both performance and organizational health with equal rigor. “Health” can be defined as an organization’s ability to align, execute, and renew itself faster than the competition. Our proprietary Organizational Health Index survey provides a fact-based means of measuring and strengthening health. Years of McKinsey research on the topic are encapsulated in the book Beyond Performance: How organizational health delivers ultimate competitive advantage, by Scott Keller and Colin Price.
Shape and deliver transformational change: We help clients design and deliver far-reaching change efforts through our Five Frames methodology. This approach helps leaders shape a change vision and set targets that are tightly linked to business outcomes; diagnose the organization’s ability to meet those targets; and deliver improvement initiatives that strengthen performance, build capabilities, and change organizational mind-sets and behaviors.
Shift behavior to shape organizational culture: Achieving sustained improvement in performance and health requires that organizations move beyond structures, processes, and systems to address individual and collective behavior—including culture, mind-sets and capabilities, and team and group dynamics. As a key aspect of creating transformational change, we work with clients to design and implement interventions to build skills, shift mind-sets, develop leaders, and manage talent to ensure a successful and sustainable change in behaviors.
Help leaders become models for change: Senior leaders have a unique role in transformational change: They must provide cues about what really matters for everyone in the organization to follow. We help leaders make the transformation personal, role-model the change, openly engage others, and spotlight successes. We also help build commitment and alignment within the senior team.
Convene leaders and share insights: We share our insights at a range of external and McKinsey forums. For example, more than 1700 senior executives leading major transformation efforts have participated in our Change Leaders Forum. Articles published in the Change Management section of the McKinsey Quarterly bring leading-edge thinking and practical advice from our transformational-change experience and our proprietary research.
CEOs and senior executives can employ proven techniques to create top-team performance.
The value of a high-performing team has long been recognized. It’s why savvy investors in start-ups often value the quality of the team and the interaction of the founding members more than the idea itself. It’s why 90 percent of investors think the quality of the management team is the single most important nonfinancial factor when evaluating an IPO. And it’s why there is a 1.9 times increased likelihood of having above-median financial performance when the top team is working together toward a common vision.1“No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team,” is the way Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder, sums it up. Basketball legend Michael Jordan slam dunks the same point: “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
The topic’s importance is not about to diminish as digital technology reshapes the notion of the workplace and how work gets done. On the contrary, the leadership role becomes increasingly demanding as more work is conducted remotely, traditional company boundaries become more porous, freelancers more commonplace, and partnerships more necessary. And while technology will solve a number of the resulting operational issues, technological capabilities soon become commoditized.
Sidebar
Cutting through the clutter of management advice
Building a team remains as tough as ever. Energetic, ambitious, and capable people are always a plus, but they often represent different functions, products, lines of business, or geographies and can vie for influence, resources, and promotion. Not surprisingly then, top-team performance is a timeless business preoccupation. (See sidebar “Cutting through the clutter of management advice,” which lists top-team performance as one of the top ten business topics of the past 40 years, as discussed in our book, Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths.)
Amid the myriad sources of advice on how to build a top team, here are some ideas around team composition and team dynamics that, in our experience, have long proved their worth.
Team composition
Team composition is the starting point. The team needs to be kept small—but not too small—and it’s important that the structure of the organization doesn’t dictate the team’s membership. A small top team—fewer than six, say—is likely to result in poorer decisions because of a lack of diversity, and slower decision making because of a lack of bandwidth. A small team also hampers succession planning, as there are fewer people to choose from and arguably more internal competition. Research also suggests that the team’s effectiveness starts to diminish if there are more than ten people on it. Sub-teams start to form, encouraging divisive behavior. Although a congenial, “here for the team” face is presented in team meetings, outside of them there will likely be much maneuvering. Bigger teams also undermine ownership of group decisions, as there isn’t time for everyone to be heard.
Beyond team size, CEOs should consider what complementary skills and attitudes each team member brings to the table. Do they recognize the improvement opportunities? Do they feel accountable for the entire company’s success, not just their own business area? Do they have the energy to persevere if the going gets tough? Are they good role models? When CEOs ask these questions, they often realize how they’ve allowed themselves to be held hostage by individual stars who aren’t team players, how they’ve become overly inclusive to avoid conflict, or how they’ve been saddled with team members who once were good enough but now don’t make the grade. Slighting some senior executives who aren’t selected may be unavoidable if the goal is better, faster decisions, executed with commitment.
Of course, large organizations often can’t limit the top team to just ten or fewer members. There is too much complexity to manage and too much work to be done. The CEO of a global insurance company found himself with 18 direct reports spread around the globe who, on their videoconference meetings, could rarely discuss any single subject for more than 30 minutes because of the size of the agenda. He therefore formed three top teams, one that focused on strategy and the long-term health of the company, another that handled shorter-term performance and operational issues, and a third that tended to a number of governance, policy, and people-related issues. Some executives, including the CEO, sat on each. Others were only on one. And some team members chosen weren’t even direct reports but from the next level of management down, as the CEO recognized the importance of having the right expertise in the room, introducing new people with new ideas, and coaching the next generation of leaders.
Team dynamics
It’s one thing to get the right team composition. But only when people start working together does the character of the team itself begin to be revealed, shaped by team dynamics that enable it to achieve either great things or, more commonly, mediocrity.
Consider the 1992 roster of the US men’s Olympic basketball team, which had some of the greatest players in the history of the sport, among them Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, and Scottie Pippen. Merely bringing together these players didn’t guarantee success. During their first month of practice, indeed, the “Dream Team” lost to a group of college players by eight points in a scrimmage. “We didn’t know how to play with each other,” Scottie Pippen said after the defeat. They adjusted, and the rest is history. The team not only won the 1992 Olympic gold but also dominated the competition, scoring over 100 points in every game.
What is it that makes the difference between a team of all stars and an all-star team? Over the past decade, we’ve asked more than 5,000 executives to think about their “peak experience” as a team member and to write down the word or words that describe that environment. The results are remarkably consistent and reveal three key dimensions of great teamwork. The first is alignment on direction, where there is a shared belief about what the company is striving toward and the role of the team in getting there. The second is high-quality interaction, characterized by trust, open communication, and a willingness to embrace conflict. The third is a strong sense of renewal, meaning an environment in which team members are energized because they feel they can take risks, innovate, learn from outside ideas, and achieve something that matters—often against the odds.
So the next question is, how can you re-create these same conditions in every top team?
Getting started
The starting point is to gauge where the team stands on these three dimensions, typically through a combination of surveys and interviews with the team, those who report to it, and other relevant stakeholders. Such objectivity is critical because team members often fail to recognize the role they themselves might be playing in a dysfunctional team.
The choice of which problems to tackle is important. One of the most common complaints voiced by members of low-performing teams is that too much time is spent in meetings. In our experience, however, the real issue is not the time but the content of meetings. Top-team meetings should address only those topics that need the team’s collective, cross-boundary expertise, such as corporate strategy, enterprise-resource allocation, or how to capture synergies across business units. They need to steer clear of anything that can be handled by individual businesses or functions, not only to use the top team’s time well but to foster a sense of purpose too.While some teams have more work to do than others, most will benefit from a program that purposefully mixes offsite workshops with on-the-job practice. Offsite workshops typically take place over two or more days. They build the team first by doing real work together and making important business decisions, then taking the time to reflect on team dynamics.
The reflective sessions concentrate not on the business problem per se, but on how the team worked together to address it. For example, did team members feel aligned on what they were trying to achieve? Did they feel excited about the conclusions reached? If not, why? Did they feel as if they brought out the best in one another? Trust deepens regardless of the answers. It is the openness that matters. Team members often become aware of the unintended consequences of their behavior. And appreciation builds of each team member’s value to the team, and of how diversity of opinion need not end in conflict. Rather, it can lead to better decisions.
Sidebar
The ‘bike-shed effect,’ a common pitfall for team effectiveness
Many teams benefit from having an impartial observer in their initial sessions to help identify and improve team dynamics. An observer can, for example, point out when discussion in the working session strays into low-value territory. We’ve seen top teams spend more time deciding what should be served for breakfast at an upcoming conference than the real substance of the agenda (see sidebar “The ‘bike-shed effect,’ a common pitfall for team effectiveness”). One CEO, speaking for five times longer than other team members, was shocked to be told he was blocking discussion. And one team of nine that professed to being aligned with the company’s top 3 priorities listed no fewer than 15 between them when challenged to write them down.
Back in the office
Periodic offsite sessions will not permanently reset a team’s dynamics. Rather, they help build the mind-sets and habits that team members need to first observe then to regulate their behavior when back in the office. Committing to a handful of practices can help. For example, one Latin American mining company we know agreed to the following:
A “yellow card,” which everyone carried and which could be produced to safely call out one another on unproductive behavior and provide constructive feedback, for example, if someone was putting the needs of his or her business unit over those of the company, or if dialogue was being shut down. Some team members feared the system would become annoying, but soon recognized its power to check unhelpful behavior.
An electronic polling system during discussions to gauge the pulse of the room efficiently (or, as one team member put it, “to let us all speak at once”), and to avoid group thinking. It also proved useful in halting overly detailed conversations and refocusing the group on the decision at hand.
A rule that no more than three PowerPoint slides could be shared in the room so as to maximize discussion time. (Brief pre-reads were permitted.)
After a few months of consciously practicing the new behavior in the workplace, a team typically reconvenes offsite to hold another round of work and reflection sessions. The format and content will differ depending on progress made. For example, one North American industrial company that felt it was lacking a sense of renewal convened its second offsite in Silicon Valley, where the team immersed itself in learning about innovation from start-ups and other cutting-edge companies. How frequently these offsites are needed will differ from team to team. But over time, the new behavior will take root, and team members will become aware of team dynamics in their everyday work and address them as required.
In our experience, those who make a concerted effort to build a high-performing team can do so well within a year, even when starting from a low base. The initial assessment of team dynamics at an Australian bank revealed that team members had resorted to avoiding one another as much as possible to avoid confrontation, though unsurprisingly the consequences of the unspoken friction were highly visible. Other employees perceived team members as insecure, sometimes even encouraging a view that their division was under siege. Nine months later, team dynamics were unrecognizable. “We’ve come light years in a matter of months. I can’t imaging going back to the way things were,” was the CEO’s verdict. The biggest difference? “We now speak with one voice.”
Hard as you might try at the outset to compose the best team with the right mix of skills and attitudes, creating an environment in which the team can excel will likely mean changes in composition as the dynamics of the team develop. CEOs and other senior executives may find that some of those they felt were sure bets at the beginning are those who have to go. Other less certain candidates might blossom during the journey.
There is no avoiding the time and energy required to build a high-performing team. Yet our research suggests that executives are five times more productive when working in one than they are in an average one. CEOs and other senior executives should feel reassured, therefore, that the investment will be worth the effort. The business case for building a dream team is strong, and the techniques for building one proven.
FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave
The Eight Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
Why Read This Report
Connecting customers to the right agents over the right channel is key to an excellent, differentiated customer experience. In our 40-criteria evaluation of midsize contact center interaction management (CCIM) providers, we identified the eight most significant ones — Aspect Software, Avaya, Cisco Systems, Enghouse Interactive, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, Mitel Networks, and Unify — and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals make the right choice.
Key Takeaways
Genesys And Mitel Networks Lead The Pack
Forrester's research uncovered a market in which Genesys and Mitel Networks lead the pack. Enghouse Interactive, Cisco Systems, Aspect Software, and Avaya offer competitive options. Unify and Interactive Intelligence lag closely behind.
AD&D Pros Are Looking For SaaS Delivery And Comprehensive, Integrated CCIM Suites
The CCIM market is transforming because more AD&D professionals see CCIM as a way to address the need for differentiated customer experiences with more agile contact centers.
SaaS And Depth Of Suite Integration Are Key Differentiators
Providing seamless access to customer service agents across all channels is harder to accomplish on legacy, voice-based on-premises systems. Midsize contact centers need an easy-to-manage CCIM system to accomplish this goal.
Today's demanding customers have little patience to wait in a queue for customer service agents to answer their questions. They will try to find answers on their own and then use a multiplicity of channels (e.g., phone, email, web chat, or social) to contact companies if self-service tools fail to satisfy their requests. (see endnote 1) Midsize contact centers cannot afford to split customers across technology silos that each serve a specific channel because it's simply beyond their capacity to manage best-of-breed components. (see endnote 2) CCIM suites simplify the task of delivering superior customer service for midsize contact centers (as defined in our inclusion criteria).
AD&D professionals supporting midsize contact centers increasingly expect the following characteristics from their vendors:
A common software suite for interactions across all channels.The CCIM market is slowly evolving away from best-of-breed solutions devoted to one or two channels and toward integrated software suites that span all channels and manage the real-time status of agents, guide customer contact flow, and facilitate interaction analytics. This is especially important for midsize contact centers that wish to offer seamless customer journeys across all channels. Key components include a solidly designed, modern user interface across the system for all roles; out-of-the-box CRM integration; integrated interactive voice response (IVR); and outbound dialing.
The simplicity of software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment and pricing.Procuring, installing, and maintaining multiple components, even with the assistance of a channel partner, impede the ability of midsize contact centers to operate as agile businesses. (see endnote 3) Companies with seasonal traffic must purchase and maintain a system designed for peak periods. SaaS delivery allows for more agility to design and manage differentiated customer journeys and be responsive to market changes. Midmarket CCIM suites delivered via SaaS support these requirements, and vendors are continuing to simplify their bundles — including options that deliver integrated workforce optimization (WFO) as well.
Standardized reporting and analytics along with more WFO bundling.Midsize contact center managers largely lack the resources to design and construct custom reports. The CCIM market has always supported a common library of standardized reports coupled with business intelligence tools for customization. These standard report packages now include activity across all channels. We also see a trend of vendors bundling WFO reporting along with speech and text analytics, allowing midsize contact centers to alleviate the integration and customization required in the past.
Sales, service, and support from an extensive channel of partners.The technology management model for small and midsize businesses leans more heavily to local and specialized service providers than direct support from CCIM vendors themselves. SaaS disrupts this partner network, so CCIM vendors have to transform their channel partners' business models to subscription-based revenues while still serving customers who choose an on-premises deployment. Adding in customer success consulting aligns with the growing trend of tying midsize contact center performance to technology investments.
The Market Is Buffeted By Acquisitions And Varying Product And Channel Maturity
Moving to a full omnichannel software suite and, in parallel, transitioning to cloud have challenged the established CCIM vendors we've evaluated in this report. (see endnote 4) Due to their longevity in the market, the vendors bring relatively large installed bases to the table that provide ripe opportunities for maintenance and upgrade revenues. Contact center managers tend to resist change, so shifting to a new platform takes a lot of effort by competitors looking to capture market share. Yet, over the past five years, the small and midsize contact center market has proved to be receptive to newer, cloud-only vendors. In this evaluation, we see that:
The path to SaaS is varied, wide, and tortured.SaaS is not just retooling or creating a new, multi-tenant CCIM software suite. The subscription model cuts across all elements of sales, marketing, and service within a technology company. (see endnote 5) Cisco Systems has engaged mostly carrier partners to host its existing system as a service. Interactive Intelligence chose to create a new product that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Avaya's IP Office is not multi-tenant, but some partners will host it. Cloud-only vendors like Five9 and inContact inherently have solved these challenges but cannot serve the customer who wants an on-premises solution.
CCIM suites are maturing and starting to include "fries with that" WFO.Every vendor in this evaluation has the ability to support the common channels: voice, email, and web chat. But their depth of support varies (e.g., support for multiple simultaneous web chat sessions and the ability to transfer them). This will improve as vendors acquire more nonvoice channel experience in the market. Midsize contact center purchases are now increasingly including WFO, as CCIM vendors supply either native or OEM versions in their packaging. In fact, many vendors now include call recording in their base, voice-only packages.
The lines between CCIM, WFO, and CRM are blurring.CRM vendors have added nonvoice channels like social and web chat, and this is creating a "digital divide" in contact centers between voice and digital interactions. Creating more overlap, some CRM vendors, like Zendesk, are adding voice capabilities as well. Inquiries with Forrester clients indicate an increasing level of confusion as to which vendors to choose for which capabilities. (see endnote 6) CCIM vendors in this evaluation are anchored in voice, but they need to ensure that they are proactively positioning themselves for nonvoice channels.
Mergers and acquisitions are on the rise.The move to suite and cloud models stresses the financial health and market position of the CCIM vendors, which creates a ripe opportunity for consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions. NICE purchased the cloud-only vendor inContact; Genesys announced the acquisition of Interactive Intelligence (which is still covered separately in this analysis); and the industry continues to speculate about the sale of the Avaya contact center business to help restructure its debt.
CCIM FOR MIDSIZE CONTACT CENTERS EVALUATION OVERVIEW
To assess the state of the CCIM market and see how the vendors stack up against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top midsize CCIM vendors. After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 40 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level categories:
Current offering.All of the CCIM vendors we've included in this evaluation come from a strong legacy of handling voice communications. We looked closely at how they have applied the same queueing, routing, and reporting strengths to nonvoice channels in a fully integrated manner. We interviewed customer references and reviewed specific screen shot sequences to see how they have modernized the user interface for agents, supervisors, business analysts, system administrators, and individuals defining contact flows. In addition, we evaluated out-of-the-box CRM integrations, outbound notifications and dialing, IVR, rich APIs, and software development kits (SDKs). Finally, we heavily weighted the vendors' capabilities and experience with SaaS deployments.
Strategy.The midsize CCIM market will see further consolidation and maturation of suites. To score well, the firms we evaluated needed a clear vision and road map focused on deepening the capabilities of their suites and more deeply embedding WFO. We also checked to see if vendors have a broad, geographically widespread channel that is able to readily support SaaS delivery. Finally, as more bundling and consolidation into suites occurs, our evaluation includes vendors' pricing models to assess their level of simplicity and competitiveness.
Market presence.The vendors we've evaluated primarily have large installed bases of both systems and agent positions. This is the classic way to measure the market, but the new twist is to add SaaS customers and the number of existing subscriptions. In this evaluation, we used all deployment models to compute installed base, so there is more weight and presence for the legacy on-premises vendors that have had years to establish larger bases. Forrester will continue to monitor the market growth of cloud-only vendors for potential inclusion in future midsize CCIM Wave evaluations.
Evaluated Vendors And Inclusion Criteria
Forrester included eight vendors in the assessment: Aspect Software, Avaya, Cisco Systems, Enghouse Interactive, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, Mitel Networks, and Unify. Each of these vendors has ( see Figure 1):
An installed base of greater than 500 customers. The midsize CCIM market is comprised of well-established vendors that have a track record and base upon which to draw maintenance and upgrade revenues. A robust sales and support channel is necessary to support higher volumes of sales around the globe. Cloud-only vendors are gaining share in this segment, but not at the level to meet this criteria.
A top eight installed base rank.There is a sharp drop in installed base after the top eight in this analysis of midsize CCIM vendors. A larger base also attracts more support from channel partners, which are critical to sustain global coverage for sales and support.
Agent seat count over 65,000 and support for 100 to 500 active agent positions.The midsize CCIM market is defined as companies supporting systems with 100 to 500 seats. Avaya and Cisco Systems reported seat counts greater than 1 million due to the large volume of midsize systems they ship.
Substantial interest from Forrester clients in the form of questions or mentions. Forrester clients are an important, but not exclusive, source for assessing a vendor's importance in a market. All of the vendors we included in this midsize CCIM Wave have been topics of multiple inquiries during the past two years.
Figure 1: Evaluated Vendors: Product Information And Selection Criteria
VENDOR PROFILES
This evaluation of the midsize CCIM suites market is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage clients to view detailed product evaluations and adapt criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool ( see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Forrester Wave™: Contact Center Interaction Management For Midsize Contact Centers, Q3 '16
Leaders
Genesys provides extensive capabilities and deployment options.Genesys Business Edition support for nonvoice channels like email, chat, and SMS approaches that of best-of-breed vendors. Genesys does not provide its own private branch exchange (PBX) or unified communications (UC) solution, but it utilizes its SIP Server for out-of-the-box integrations with a wide array of systems, including Microsoft Skype for Business. Proactive notifications, predictive dialing, and native WFO round out the system. Genesys' extensive library of G+ adapters provides out-of-the-box integrations with CRM and other WFO packages.
Along with capability comes complexity, so Business Edition requires more training and resources to operate. As a market leader, Genesys also commands a price premium. While Genesys offers Business Edition in the cloud, it is not yet fully multi-tenant, so Genesys offers Premier Edition for smaller configurations. Clients looking for longer-term planning find that Genesys' road map varies. While that is an indication of market responsiveness, it places some pressure on customers' planning. Customers who want a system that approaches "best of suite," a broad global support partner network, and integration with other UC and telephony systems should consider Business Edition.
Mitel Networks integrates key acquisitions for omnichannel and WFO.Mitel Networks acquired long-term contact center software partner prairieFyre and WFO provider Oaisys to round out its contact center portfolio. Over the past two years, the company has integrated these two acquisitions into a solid CCIM solution for midsize contact centers. Mitel Networks was one of the first vendors to virtualize its software, and this gave the firm a head start on the path to cloud-based offerings. Mitel Networks has a strong channel and position in some vertical markets such as the public sector and hotels.
The depth of integration across Mitel Networks' MiContact Center Business is still a work in progress. Clients' feedback indicates managing across the system on top of the MiVoice PBX is harder than they anticipated. The company has a strong focus on mergers and acquisitions in order to gain scale in the market. This is helping grow the company from a scale and reach perspective, and integration of the companies it has acquired is going well. But any changes can be disruptive, so clients considering this product should monitor the impact on staffing, product road maps, and channel relationships. Customers using Mitel Networks for UC and telephony should consider MiContact Center Business — either hosted or on-premises.
Strong Performers
Enghouse Interactive provides extensive integrations and omnichannel capabilities.Geared to the lower end of the midsize market (up to 250 agents), Enghouse Interactive's Communications Center has very strong integration capabilities with a wide array of CRM and PBX systems, including Microsoft Skype for Business. The company added a new interface two years ago that spans all user roles in the system. The system supports proactive notifications across channels along with voice, email, and chat.
Enghouse Interactive is not as much of a known name in the market, so it struggles with brand recognition. At the same time, it has a solid reseller network for Communications Center and is competitive with its pricing. Communications Center is not multi-tenant, so Enghouse Interactive sells a competing SaaS-based product through carriers for the small and midsize market. The company supplies its own broad library of integrations, but it does not offer a broad API or SDK publicly. Communications Center can provide a smaller contact center on-premises that requires integration with existing PBX systems and a number of CRM applications on the agent desktop.
Cisco Systems benefits from customers that are "Cisco shops."Cisco Systems' dominance of unified communications and data networking gives customers volume purchasing advantages when they add Contact Center Express (CCX) for midsize contact centers. CCX supports voice, email, and chat as well as the ability to capture contextual data in the bundled Context Service in the cloud. The company's extensive partner ecosystem uses the Finesse agent desktop to integrate multiple functions and systems into an agent portal. Cisco Systems provides a workforce optimization suite as a part of its CCX offering, while integration and technology partners flesh out the CRM capabilities.
CCX is not multi-tenant and is largely sold on-premises. Cisco Systems' broad partner ecosystem adds capabilities — but those add complexity. For integrations, CCX provides a number of different APIs and SDKs (e.g., Finesse for desktop, but a separate one for MediaSense-based recording). Customer feedback from our reference calls indicated that the CCX reporting has limitations, such as the inability to see agent activity across channels in one report. CCX is a natural choice to add to a Cisco Systems-supported data network along with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CallManager) for telephony.
Aspect Software leverages strong outbound and WFO integration in the cloud.Long-term acquisitions of WFO and dialer companies coupled with a cloud-only omnichannel system provide Aspect Software's Zipwire with a full breadth of capabilities for midsize contact centers. The product supports inbound voice, email, chat, and social, and outbound dialing is set up and managed in the same system. Aspect Software used design firm frog design to redesign its WFO user interface and carried that across to all roles in Zipwire. Out-of-the-box integrations with leading CRM vendors are part of the system.
As a newer product (introduced in 2014), Zipwire has a more limited base and level of maturity. Incremental nonvoice capabilities typical of best-of-breed point solutions are lacking — along with breadth and depth of reporting and analytics. Customer Experience Platform provides strong proactive notification, self-service, and contextual data-capture capabilities, but it is a separate system from Zipwire. Aspect Software is still ramping up broader channel and developer support for Zipwire as it gains more market traction. Zipwire is best suited for companies that want a standalone, cloud-based, integrated, omnichannel system that also includes WFO from the same vendor.
Avaya IP Office has less integration capabilities because its API is limited to agent desktop functions. The company's road map includes an update to a modern web-based interface across all roles. More advanced IVR, self-service, and proactive outbound notifications require Avaya's Aura Experience Portal. The system is limited to preview, progressive, and power dialing. Salesforce is the only CRM integration that Avaya provides out of the box, while partners do others. Partners can host IP Office, but it is not a multi-tenant system. A large majority of IP Office Contact Center is sold on-premises. Choose Avaya IP Office if you're looking for local partner support for an on-premises telephony, UC, contact center, and WFO solution — all from one vendor.
Contenders
Unify's OpenScape Contact Center adopts Circuit.Unify led the market two years ago by bringing mobile team messaging capabilities to Unified Communications. Design firm frog design defined the Circuit user interface, and now, that approach is being migrated across OpenScape Contact Center. Unify has provided OpenScape Voice and OpenScape Contact Center as hosted solutions for a number of years, and some deployments support global enterprises with over 50,000 stations. Atos' purchase of Unify provides the company with additional global reach into large, multinational accounts. OpenScape Contact Center has a good library of off-the-shelf CRM integrations and provides omnichannel agent capabilities.
During the past few years, OpenScape Contact Center fell behind in the race to add channel support, analytics, and notifications. The acquisition by Atos throws another overlapping cloud-based contact center solution (Atos Worldline) into the mix. Clients considering OpenScape Contact Center need to investigate the Unify road map not only for omnichannel enhancements and deeper WFO integration but also for the positioning versus Worldline. Customers who are using OpenScape for Unified Communications or Circuit should consider OpenScape Contact Center. Unify is price-competitive and has won a number of public sector contracts, leveraging its global systems integration capabilities.
Interactive Intelligence makes the leap to AWS.Over the past year, Interactive Intelligence has led the dialogue in the CCIM market about moving to a microservices architecture based on AWS — not simply using AWS as a hosting service, but leveraging it as a global distributed operating system. Interactive Intelligence PureCloud has a clean, modern, and well-organized interface across all roles, and, along with native WFO capabilities, provides a full omnichannel system for clients from midsize to large. PureCloud pricing is straightforward, published openly, and aggressive. PureCloud also has its own seamlessly integrated UC capabilities that help connect agents to experts outside the contact center.
PureCloud is in its early stages of market growth, so it comes with some limitations. The product is still new to sales and support partners, so many of them lack the years of experience they have with the older Customer Interaction Center. Reporting is limited, but it will grow over time with the addition of new reports such as supervisor dashboards. Cobrowsing is on the product road map for a future release. As a SaaS-based product, it supports a modern architecture, but the API and SDK are in their early stages. PureCloud is SaaS-only, so on-premises deployment is not an option. PureCloud is suited to clients who want the agility of SaaS from an established and experienced contact center vendor as well as optional native unified communications capabilities.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Online Resource
The online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed product evaluations and customizable rankings.
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each solution. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave, in part, using materials that they provided to us by August 2016.
Vendor surveys.Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.
Product demo screen shots.We asked vendors to conduct screen shot demonstrations of their products' functionality. We used findings from these product screen shot demos to validate details of each vendor's product capabilities.
Customer reference calls and surveys.To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted reference calls with three of each vendor's current customers.
The Forrester Wave Methodology
We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have limited customer references and products that don't fit the scope of our evaluation.
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires, demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.
We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave evaluation — and then score the vendors based on a clearly defined scale. We intend these default weightings to serve only as a starting point and encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based tool. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and vendor strategies evolve. For more information on the methodology that every Forrester Wave follows, go to http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/forrester-wave-methodology.html.
Integrity Policy
We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with our Integrity Policy. For more information, go to http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/integrity-policy.html.
ENDNOTES
Customers are increasingly using web and mobile self-service as the first point of contact with customer service, and then they escalate harder questions to agents. See the " Your Customers Don't Want To Call You" Forrester report.
CCIM software continues to evolve into integrated suites that vendors offer as a service. The need to connect consumers with contact center agents on their channel of choice is rapidly becoming a requirement to compete in the age of the customer. For AD&D pros, cloud delivery can provide an Agile platform so that they can focus their energy on customer journeys, not technology. See the "Increase Customer Service Agility With Cloud Contact Centers" Forrester report.
Customer service executives face the constant challenge of simultaneously meeting customer expectations and business cost goals. This report outlines the four steps for AD&D professionals to optimize and innovate customer service operations: 1) discover: establish the value of customer service; 2) plan: set the right strategy; 3) act: execute the strategy with precision; and 4) optimize: measure and improve operations. See the " Transform The Contact Center For Customer Service Excellence" Forrester report.
The heart of the contact center is comprised of a set of complex, unintegrated technologies, which firms must leverage to deliver quality service. But AD&D pros supporting customer service operations need cloud-ready, deeply integrated technology suites. For more information on the market dynamics and buyer requirements for contact center technologies, see the " Vendors Battle For The Heart Of The Contact Center" Forrester report.
