Contact Center and Agent Management Buyers Guides

2024 Software Provider and Product Assessment

The contact center market is now divided into four camps: legacy, on-premises providers that have migrated some or all platforms to the cloud; legacy cloud providers that focus on voice routing; newer cloud providers that are more agnostic about the channels delivered; and providers from outside the contact center space that entered the market with either platforms for developing contact center applications or broad interdepartmental suites that integrate contact center tools into those used by sales, marketing and back offices.

The diversity of providers makes it difficult to continue to use “CCaaS” to describe the market. Usually, it is shorthand for cloud-based centers, but the breadth of providers offering tools in this space renders that term incomplete at best. While the industry discusses what comes after CCaaS, or beyond CCaaS, or even what CCaaS really means, the underlying transition marches on: contact centers are becoming hybrid entities that handle voice as one of many digital channels. 

Going forward, we expect that contact center technology will differentiate on factors like the availability of application programming interfaces to connect more dispersed tools, ease of integration and administration, and the ability to automate more processes across the customer life cycle.

For its 2024 Contact Center and Agent Management Buyers Guides, ISG Software Research evaluated software providers across three platform categories – Contact Center Basic, Contact Center Advanced, and Agent Management – and produced a separate Buyers Guide for each.  

• The Contact Center Basic Buyers Guide evaluates products that address key elements of Contact Centers as we define it. The guide assesses the following providers: 8x8, Aircall, Alvaria, AWS, Avaya, Cisco, Content Guru, Dialpad, Emplifi, Enghouse Interactive, Evolve IP, Five9, Genesys, GoTo, IntelePeer, Microsoft, Mitel, net2phone, Nextiva, NICE, Odigo, Ozonetel, RingCentral, Talkdesk, TCN, Twilio, UJET, USAN, Vonage and Zoom.

• The Contact Center Advanced Buyers Guide evaluates products that address key elements of advanced contact center technology as we define it. The guide assesses the following providers: 8x8, Aircall, Alvaria, AWS, Avaya, Cisco, Content Guru, Dialpad, Emplifi, Enghouse Interactive, Evolve IP, Five9, Genesys, GoTo, IntelePeer, Microsoft, Mitel, Nextiva, NICE, Odigo, Ozonetel, RingCentral, Salesforce, Sprinklr, Talkdesk, TCN, Twilio, UJET, USAN, Verint, Vonage, Zendesk, Zoho and Zoom.

• The Agent Management Buyers Guide evaluates products that address key elements of agent management as we define it. The guide assesses the following providers: 8x8, Alvaria, AWS, Calabrio, Content Guru, Five9, Genesys, IntelePeer, Nextiva, NICE, Odigo, Playvox, Salesforce, Talkdesk, UJET and Verint.

To view the executive summaries of the research, please make a selection from the reports below.

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To learn more about our Buyers Guide services for software providers, including purchasing the complete research and charts or performing an assessment, click here.

View the 2024 Buyers Guides for Contact Center and Agent Management