As of 2018, the market for contact center technology has fully shifted to cloud. The remaining outliers of demand are large, highly customized implementations that preserve legacy on-premises software or organizations that wish to maintain the technology inside their firewall. Agility, flexibility, and the ability to rapidly shift capacity are all key elements that AD&D pros gain when migrating to cloud contact centers.

Our recently published report, “The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Contact Centers, Q3 2018,” identified the 11 most significant players in the cloud contact center market: 8×8, Aspect, Avaya, Cisco, Enghouse Interactive, Five9, Genesys, NewVoiceMedia, NICE inContact, Serenova, and Talkdesk.

Based on our comprehensive criteria, we identified NICE inContact, Genesys, and Five9 as Leaders in the space today. Forrester clients can read the entire report here. This Forrester Wave is a follow-up to the “Now Tech: Cloud Contact Center Providers, Q3 2018” report.

Some interesting takeaways from the evaluation:

  • Omnichannel support and native WFO are now market standards. The Wave revealed two key differentiators of cloud contact center vendors today: the ability to support assisted service across all touchpoints offered and a native workforce optimization solution. Leading vendors like NICE inContact and Genesys offer solutions that include both omnichannel support and WFO. Delivery of native WFO reduces vendor management costs and integration complexity and provides a streamlined user experience across contact center management roles.
  • Once-mighty UC vendors have fallen behind. Solutions from vendors like Avaya and Cisco, long considered leaders in the contact center market, have had to overcome legacy obstacles, such as premises-based software architectures, to compete. Recent acquisitions are in the right direction but will take time to integrate into their larger partner ecosystems.
  • Solutions that started in the cloud have a competitive advantage. While all vendors in this evaluation provide a cloud-based contact center solution, those whose products began in the cloud, like Enghouse Interactive’s CCSP, have the differentiating features and seamless integration that make them standout players in the space.
  • Cloud contact center paves the way for the cognitive contact center. AI applications beyond customer-facing chatbots will boost the efficiency and effectiveness of contact centers. Agent-facing assistants and workforce and interaction analytics all require better-organized sources of data to enable machine learning. Cloud-delivered solutions provide a more integrated and organized source of contact center operational data that lays the foundation for these applications.

Use The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Contact Centers, Q3 2018 to help you evaluate vendors based on your strategy and business needs. If you’re a Forrester client, you can read the Wave report here and the preceding Now Tech report here. If you’re interested in learning more about our findings, set up an inquiry with me through inquiry@forrester.com.

(Sarah Dawson contributed to this blog.)