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We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.
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We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.
Providing a satisfactory customer experience continues to be a top priority for leading organizations, but increasingly they are realizing that they cannot do so while continuing to rely on their CRM investment and existing processes and technology. Current tools used to manage marketing, sales and customer service activities are focused on internal efficiency and do not deliver the experience expected by customers along their entire journey of engagement with an organization. New digital technologies are changing how customer agents are managed and how they execute their tasks, enabling simpler yet more effective interactions with contact centers and placing more intelligence in customer experience processes. These new technology tools are making it possible to more effectively understand the complete voice of the customer, renovate digital commerce systems and enable a more effective digital subscription model.
ISG Software Research offers research-based guidance on helping organizations adapt to the new generation of customer experience processes and systems to achieve the highest possible levels of satisfaction. Evaluating and ensuring your organizational customer experience readiness is essential to your success and profitability. We can help.
Director of Research
Customer Experience
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ISG Research offers market observations and overall results from the Agent Management Buyers Guides for customer experience software products.
ISG Research offers market observations and overall results from the Contact Center Basic Buyers Guides for customer experience software products.
An open platform fosters flexibility and dynamism within an enterprise that serves to connect the contact center to the rest of the business.
ISG Research offers market observations and overall results from the Contact Center Advanced Buyers Guides for customer experience software products.
Verint targets specific, immediately helpful contact center use cases for its expansion of AI-based bots, increasing human agent productivity.
Contact centers expect a quick return on investment and maximum improvement in efficiency and productivity from AI-related tools.
Sprinklr offers software for customer experience management, melding contact center and adjacent customer-related operations.
Verint Earns ISG Research Customer Experience Digital Innovation Award for 2024.
ISG Research offers market observations and overall results from the Knowledge Management Buyers Guide for customer experience software products.
ISG Research offers market observations and overall results from the Customer Journey Management Buyers Guide for customer experience software products.
ISG Research offers market observations and overall results from the CXM Buyers Guide for customer experience software products.
Digital communications platforms are moving beyond telecom origins to include AI and offer CX capabilities like engagement, knowledge management.
Through 2028, the establishment of CX application suites on a common platform will become the focal point of the drive to optimize customer and organization engagement.
Intelligent self-service now encompasses customer data, knowledge processing, automation and AI to provide superior CX, high-value customer insights.
Verint brings the contact center into broader enterprise CX with CX Automation, driven by AI and innovative center tools focused on successful outcomes.
Advanced technologies that provide real-time automated assistance to technicians can make field service a driver of successful customer experience.
Zendesk’s AI-powered platform serves needs across CX departments that improve customer engagement while achieving workforce, quality management objectives.
Today’s voice-of-the-customer tools collect feedback from voice, chat, email and social media, using GenAI to analyze voice recordings and texts.
Uniphore’s X Platform offers contact center automation and analytics while targeting a broad range of use cases by employing multiple AI modes.
AI makes it possible to create consistent, reliably excellent customer experiences.
Sentiment analysis provides insight into how the customer perceives the experience so agents can determine the most effective actions in real time.
Content Guru ups the ante on routing platforms, using AI and its own CDP to better support contact center agents in their goal to optimize customer service.
The 2024 Customer Experience Market Agenda provides the insights and best practices needed to maximize CX technology investments.
MoneyGram earned the 2023 CX Digital Leadership Award for its use of NICE to deliver exceptional interaction experiences throughout the customer journey.
Calabrio combines proven performance and AI-driven, next-generation applications in its latest agent management technology for the contact center.
Adopting AI and knowledge management technology directly impacts contact center agent productivity, engagement, skills and performance.
ServiceNow uses AI to enhance and utilize knowledge management, key to forward-looking customer service ops and a proactive, enterprise-wide CX approach.
Verint combines an Open CCaaS mentality with quantifiable costs and outcomes to demonstrate how AI can generate results within an organization.
Decoupling voice technologies from contact center software opens the door to applications that drive contact center and customer experience activity.
NICE uses artificial intelligence and knowledge management to advance self-service tools like conversational chatbots and intent-driven agent guidance.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Microsoft.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Zoom.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates AWS.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Twilio.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Mitel.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Alvaria.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates 8x8.
A shared view of contact center and customer experience approaches encourages outcomes that lead to customer longevity and revenue growth.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Enghouse Interactive.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Vonage.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Dialpad.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Cisco.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Avaya.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates RingCentral.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Emplifi.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Salesforce.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Five9.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Talkdesk.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates LiveVox.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Content Guru.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Verint.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates Genesys.
Ventana Research’s 2023 Buyers Guide on Contact Center Suites evaluates NICE.
The Contact Centers Buyers Guide 2023 gauges how well offerings from 21 vendors match buyers’ requirements for customer experience software products.
Ventana Research offers market observations from the Contact Centers Buyers Guide 2023 for Customer Experience software products.
The Agent Management Buyers Guide 2023 gauges how well offerings from 12 vendors match buyers’ requirements for customer experience software products.
Ventana Research offers market observations from the Agent Management Buyers Guide 2023 for customer experience software products.
The Contact Center Suites Buyers Guide 2023 gauges how well offerings from 22 vendors match buyers’ requirements for Customer Experience software products.
Ventana Research offers market observations from the Contact Center Suites Buyers Guide 2023 for Customer Experience software products.
Determining the right mix of automation and human labor requires a thoughtful approach to self-service and agent support for more complex interactions.
Thought Industries’ highly customizable e-learning platform delivers reporting and analytics capabilities that provide insights into learner engagement.
Contact centers can increase their value within organizations by using CDPs to better engage customers, resulting in more successful customer relationships.
UJET offers cloud contact center software that enables remote agents to deliver personalized customer interactions through multiple communication channels.
Verint challenges the industry’s perception of CCaaS, enabling vendors without voice routing to become primary providers of customer support tools.
NICE’s CXone suite harnesses AI to modernize contact center operations while retaining the familiarity needed to ensure consistent operations.
Medallia enables organizations to capture, analyze and act upon customer feedback and deliver exceptional experiences to attract and retain customers.
Increase the value of customer interactions by deploying AI in the contact center to orchestrate customer experiences.
OnviSource’s intelligent automation software for contact centers drives satisfaction and engagement both within the organization and for customers.
Uniphore X Platform’s use of AI and automation to optimize customer experiences earned Uniphore the 2023 Customer Experience Digital Innovation Award.
At its annual industry conference, Zendesk announced enhancements to its customer service and support technology, including new AI capabilities.
Customers change, technology changes, but do business processes change in response?
Uniphore’s automation engine uses advanced artificial intelligence technologies to make customer interactions more conversational and versatile.
AI-enhanced tools offer optimization to drive contact center productivity, engagement, quality, without the need to disrupt operations, existing platforms.
Oracle has developed a roadmap for customer experience technology to address complex issues related to how clients deploy integrated CX platforms.
Modern analytics tools provide a way to gain insight into the customer’s mind and guide organizations to outcomes that satisfy the needs of both parties.
Microsoft brings familiar, reliable applications to contact centers with its Dynamics 365 suite via partnerships and advanced digital tools.
Twilio's developer-friendly cloud platform enables organizations to communicate across various channels, including voice, text, email and video.
The shift to digital channels is being driven by consumers, and businesses are responding—not the other way around.
Voice of the customer feedback programs are able to gather deeper analysis of more data points for broader insights into customer behavior and intentions.
Contentsquare is a digital experience analytics platform provider that helps organizations understand and optimize a customer’s digital journey.
Intelligent self-service can improve customer engagement, making it a central element of customer experience initiatives.
With AI, Qualtrics dramatically increases the use of customer data to incorporate its contact center-focused platform into the broader organizational CX.
Ventana Research analyst Keith Dawson explains a pivot in 8x8’s voice communications platform emphasizing the CCaaS side of its portfolio.
Contact centers that want to optimize worker time and cut costs should work with trusted technology vendors to evaluate how best to implement automation.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Precisely.
Contact centers generate an enormous amount of data in the course of handling customer interactions.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from HubSpot.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Alvaria.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Qualtrics.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Cisco.
Amelia’s artificial intelligence platform features a chatbot to deliver improved self-service customer experiences and enhanced worker productivity.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Freshworks.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Amdocs.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from ServiceNow.
CallMiner’s software uses artificial intelligence to extract and analyze voice and text interactions, identifying enhancements for agents and customers.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Avaya.
Contact center platform vendors are transitioning to cloud offerings, but what if an enterprise is not ready to move all of its operations off-premises?
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Genesys.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Zendesk.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from SAP.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from SugarCRM.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Sprinklr.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Content Guru.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Emplifi.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Adobe.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Oracle.
The Internet of Things enables automation that can improve the efficiency and speed to resolution of field service, enhancing the customer experience.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from NICE.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Verint.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Zoho.
Ventana Research assesses customer experience management software from Salesforce.
Many organizations look to automation to control costs by making people more efficient. However, it is very common for teams to overlook automation’s other significant benefit: better agent engagement.
The 2023 Customer Experience Management Value Index gauges offerings from vendors to match buyers’ requirements for analytics and data software products.
Customer experience software vendors are creating suites out of niche solutions, encouraging integration and highlighting tools such as AI and automation.
The 2023 Customer Experience Market Agenda provides insights and best practices you need to maximize CX technology investments.
CSG’s integrated CX software gives organizations greater control over the customer journey while also managing customer communication and data.
Verint announces customer experience software automation designed to help organizations overcome the challenges posed by changes in customer behavior.
Boost.ai provides a cloud-based, easy-to-use, no-code platform of virtual agents, voice and chatbots powered by conversational artificial intelligence.
LiveVox offers a purpose-built cloud platform with advanced call center features like virtual agents, analytics, dynamic workflows and scripts.
Make contact center agents more efficient during voice calls and digital interactions with intelligent self-service.
Clarios earned the 2022 Digital Leadership Award in Customer Experience for using PhaseZero to advance digital commerce and customer engagement.
CDPs help address CX challenges of fragmented data, data governance issues by centralizing, tracking and linking data to a unique customer profile.
Contact centers must balance cost control with advancing technology and evolving customer expectations to optimize communication channels.
The nature of contact center agent work is rapidly shifting. How should leadership respond, and what are the new skills they should prioritize in their hiring?
Today’s contact center supervisors can’t manage the way they’re used to—by walking the floor and talking to agents individually or in small groups. How can they get the insights they need to help their agents perform?
NICE provides customer experience applications that use AI to guide decisions based upon transactional data as well as the intent of an individual.
Contact centers need to look past traditional key performance indicators to metrics that demonstrate the impact on the overall customer relationship.
[24]7.ai advances personalization, automation in the contact center to help organizations deliver superior customer service.
Dialpad is bringing CX into focus with an AI-driven platform that prioritizes building and supporting strong customer relationships.
Content Guru combines AI with established CCaaS technology in its storm CX platform, giving organizations an opportunity to elevate their CX game.
Intradiem supports contact center optimization by automating agent management, freeing supervisors to focus on the customer experience.
Through 2025, establishing customer experience application suites on a common platform will be the focal point of the drive to optimize customer and organizational engagement.
Contact center technology is moving to the cloud at a slow but consistent pace. That has allowed the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) segment to grow steadily, opening the door to many different approaches for managing the infrastructure needed to
Today’s contact centers need to revisit core assumptions around measuring agent performance. Changes in business conditions influencing agent engagement raise new questions about whether traditional performance models are sufficient to address the mo
Outbound communication is used in a number of different contexts. For potential customers, traditional telemarketing still exists, though it is limited these days due to its minimal effectiveness. Instead, many customer-experience planners have subst
Zoho presented analysts with a deep look at its strategy and roadmap at its July analyst conference, describing how it intends to meld its many business applications together through integration at the level of the platform. The company, which is pri
Small businesses have had to make do with tools that are less advanced than those used by their larger peers primarily due to issues of cost and complexity. But just making do isn’t a recipe for providing great customer experiences and fostering cust
The number and variety of customer interactions are exploding and extend far beyond the contact center – into your branches, stores, digital and self-service channels and back office. However, this data is unstructured and may be stored in disparate
How can organizations balance the growing ability to automate interactions with the power of the human element and the need to maintain authentic customer relationships?
The problem with managing Customer Experience these days is that it covers a lot of ground, and touches a lot of people with different roles within an organization.
Early telephony-based call centers were built using proprietary on-premises systems. As companies added additional channels of engagement, call centers evolved into contact centers. Today vendors are providing cloud-based contact centers that manage
Organizations enable buyers to engage across multiple channels, but product information housed in silos can lead to inconsistent cross-channel digital buying experiences. Product Information Management (PIM) technology enables engaging merchandising
Getting everyone who impacts the customer experience within an organization onto the same page can be difficult under normal circumstances—let alone during times of change or upheaval that scramble all our assumptions about customer expectations. Wat
A portfolio of industry changes are happening to meet the customer demand and needs from applications to adopting customer engagement hubs — to support any range of customer engagement.
How have new modes of work and communication changed the nature of these various experiences? Are the changes going to be a permanent part of the business landscape? Read the Q&A.
What kind of CCaaS should a contact center consider? What buying criteria should rise to the top when considering a CCaaS? Where will a small organization see the real value from a CCaaS platform? Read the Q&A.
What is the relationship between the agent experience and the customer experience? How does the change in available tools and infrastructure impact how organizations manage agents and through them, customer relationships? What should contact center
Organizations are embracing digital communication to improve their productivity and optimize collaboration across the entire enterprise. With the wide variety of tools now available, organizations can easily create more complexity than they realize a
Readiness and agility of the workforce is the foundation of business resiliency. Black swan events will test an organization’s ability to respond and operate effectively under challenging conditions, including pandemics and other disruptions that for
Truly transformational value gains from optimizing customer experiences have yet to be realized. Even after decades of focusing on CRM as the main tool for improving customer relationships, organizations still struggle to fully understand their custo
There is a big, practical difference between managing the experience of one customer with a problem versus one thousand customers having the same problem.
The quality of the customer experience is a competitive differentiator for most organizations. Our research confirms this, finding that improving the customer experience is a top priority for 82% of organizations looking to improve the way they handl
Two years after the pandemic upended contact center operations, many managers are finding that they still face challenges finding enough staff to meet customer demand. What was an unusual situation has now become a continuing structural problem that
Customer behavior has changed. Customers today use significantly more channels of communication to engage with companies. When they shop, the convenience of online access has led them to be more demanding because they can go elsewhere with a few clic
The drive to move communications tools into the cloud was not supposed to create more silos, but unfortunately the division between internally focused business communications tools like phone and chat (Unified Communications as a Service, or “UCaaS”)
Customers have conversations across the organization. They interact with people in Sales, Service, Support and in some cases even with an organization’s products or services via smart speakers. While our research confirms that the telephone is still
Subscription was once the Next Big Thing in business. But now, e-commerce and subscription/usage business models are simply the way that customers—and organizations—want to conduct business.
For contact centers, the pandemic upended everything—from agents to costs to service levels. Much of the agent population will continue to work remotely indefinitely. As a result, many organizations find themselves confronting a gap in their ability
The contact center industry is reexamining how organizations engage with contact center agents. One thing that we learned from the forced movement to work-from-home was that organizations have to provide agents with appropriate tools to collaborate a
In today’s highly competitive and increasingly digital markets, customers can switch suppliers at the click of a button; therefore, a determined focus on customer retention is essential, and a key to retention is the quality of the customer experienc
Organizations had to move quickly to cope with the shock caused by the pandemic in 2020. They had to recreate their operations in remote form, using technology to extend into workers’ homes to stay open.
Today’s contact centers have the opportunity to refine old processes and adopt innovative new technologies.
It can be hard to spot deterioration in software. Performance degradation happens subtly over time in all software, including finance department software such as performance management and ERP systems. However, our research finds a correlation betwee
Modern product information management (PIM) has the potential to deliver value far beyond the efficiency gains of the current operational approach.
In the near future, contact center agents will still work from home. People will still buy online and expect curbside pickup from retail stores. For simple or routine issues, many customers move past a phone call to chat, messaging, email or choose t
With new workforce dynamics, ever expanding customer engagement channels and exponentially more customer interactions, organizations are facing an engagement capacity gap.
The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our
In order to elevate the customer experience, organizations must develop programs and best practices that elevate the agent experience.
Field service is a segment of customer experience that is dominated by two elements: the complexity of the issues handled, and the high cost of providing on-site services. It is recognized as a critical component of the service experience, especially
The tried-and-true quality assurance processes that many contact center practitioners relied on for years are probably well out of date. It is time to reevaluate how quality is tracked and measured, and to implement some sensible new practices that t
At Enterprise Connect in March, Amazon announced new functionality in its cloud contact center platform, Amazon Connect. The company is now including a full Workforce Optimization component, which includes built-in forecasting, capacity planning and
Contact centers are undergoing a radical reshuffling of the workforce, partly because the pandemic shifted agents to remote work. But the trends were in place to reorganize the world of work long before the pandemic. Digital contact channels, which a
In the present-day market where the gap between consumers and the vendors they engage is shrinking, an organization’s ability to deliver a personalized customer experience is more important than ever. Consumers expect interactions that are intuitive,
Customer Service and Support (CSS) software is about more than case tracking and trouble tickets. Many organizations view the service call as an opportunity to solidify a positive customer relationship and perhaps enhance the loyalty and value of the
Although the bulk of contact center seats are still served by on-premises equipment, there appears to be a consensus that the cloud is better suited to delivering a successful, omnichannel customer experience, and that most new contact center deploym
Today’s contact center agents find themselves handling increasingly more complex interactions due to changes in consumer demand, advances in self-service and the proliferation of digital contact channels. This added complexity requires continuous age
The technology underpinning customer experience (CX) is a hodgepodge of tools that have been developed for niche use cases and then expanded to fill broader roles. Examples include the old (CRM, help desk software and speech analytics) and the new (c
In a previous Analyst Perspective, we discussed some of the big-picture trends that are bringing cost control back as a core driver of contact center operations. In this report we will tackle some of the practical ramifications: how those trends affe
We are happy to share some insights about Enghouse Interactive, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research is sharing insights about Blue Yonder, drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research is happy to share some insights about Lifesize, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research is happy to share some insights about Mitel, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Contact centers have always been very cost-centric and attuned to the kinds of constraints that they have to operate in, but many organizations were diverted from that kind of focus when the pandemic first hit.
We are happy to share some insights about Elevēo, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research is happy to share some insights about Playvox, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research is happy to share some insights about RingCentral, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
A formal Voice of the Customer (VoC) program is a necessity for any organization that wants to grow its customer base and differentiate from its competitors. Unfortunately, many organizations have not updated their notion of “formal” in quite a few y
We are happy to share some insights about 8x8, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Five9, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Salesforce drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Cisco, drawn from our Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Content Guru, drawn from our Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Alvaria, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research is happy to share some insights about Talkdesk, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Genesys, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Calabrio, drawn from our Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research is happy to share some insights about Avaya, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Verint, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research recently announced its Market Agenda in the expertise area of Customer Experience. For the past several years, many organizations have found it challenging to provide excellent customer experiences in the face of drastic technology c
Ventana Research is happy to share some insights about NICE, drawn from our latest Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Ventana Research is sharing insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index: Agent Management 2022 is the distillation of a year of market
The 2022 Ventana Research Value Index for agent management software is published, offering interesting observations about how the market is advancing to provide more sophistication to agents and the management of them. The market is now characterized
The annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Digital Leadership Awards showcase the professional leadership and their use of business application
The contact center is where much of customer experience management happens, but it is by no means the beginning or end of the CX story. Other departments, notably marketing and revenue, have a stake in what happens during the customer’s lifecycle. Wh
This Value Index report evaluates the following vendors that offer products that address key elements of agent management as we define it: 8x8 Inc., Alvaria, Inc., Avaya Inc., Calabrio, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Redwood Technologies Group Ltd. (Cont
Any organization that relies heavily on a large labor force looks to automation to reduce costs, and contact centers are no exception. They handle interactions at such large scale that almost any effort to automate some part of the process can delive
When migrating their communications stacks to the cloud, many organizations come face to face with a quandary: do they emphasize the business phone system and gravitate toward a unified communications vendor? Or should they focus on the specific appl
When NICE acquired inContact in 2016, it began a transformation that saw it broaden its product offering and positioned itself to play a larger role in the contact center and customer experience industries.
The age of digital communication platforms is upon us. The need has never been greater for an open and secure platform that satisfies the demand for enterprise-grade business and technology requirements.
When artificial intelligence emerged from the labs and vendors started offering it as a component of their software, many contact-center buyers shied away from it.
In part one of this Analyst Perspective on the use of artificial intelligence within contact center applications, we focused on the evolution — and resulting benefits — of tools embedded with AI, including ease-of-use for non-data-scientists.
Tools for contact center agent management have changed considerably in the past few years. The suite of software applications has grown from those that perform core functions in scheduling and quality control to include more advanced solutions for ag
The primary effect of the pandemic on agent/workforce management beginning in 2020 was a rush to re-site and re-equip contact centers and agents.
Customer support operations increasingly rely on automation and complex workflow processes to reduce costs and improve experiences.
We increasingly define the success of modern business processes through the prism of “experiences”—what customers, users and employees encounter when they deal with technology and each other. Why has it been so difficult for organizations to design e
Dialpad provides contact center and business phone services, a market that is in transition due to a convergence of technologies and business conditions.
The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization.
Field service is one element of the service-delivery process that an organization must get right or risk alienating important customers and causing friction in the relationship.
The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization.
Customer experience (CX) tools are going through a transition, from piecemeal applications designed to solve narrowly defined problems, to broader suites with integrated functionality. This is occurring along multiple fronts in CX.
Customer Service & Support (CSS) is a software segment that provides tools for tracking and resolving customer problems, primarily through contact centers. The segment has been mature for decades but today is reinvigorated by a new emphasis on workfl
When we speak of the “customer experience,” we are really referring to the results of a broad spectrum of activities that collectively we describe as a journey or a lifecycle.
We are happy to share some insights about Altitude, now part of Enghouse, drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about 8x8 drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Twilio drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Amazon drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Vonage drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about RingCentral drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Five9 drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Aspect drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Avaya drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Cisco drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Content Guru drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
The outlines of a post-pandemic customer experience (CX) landscape are emerging, and it appears that the market dynamic is bringing companies from different segments into heightened competition with one another.
We are happy to share some insights about Genesys drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about Talkdesk drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We are happy to share some insights about NICE drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Value Index research, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
Having just completed the 2021 Ventana Research Value Index for Contact Center in the Cloud, I want to share some of my observations about how the market has advanced since our assessment three years ago.
Customer service and support (CSS) is a term with two meanings. Most generally, it refers to the functions of a contact center in handling post-sales customer inquiries that require some effort or action on the part of the business. More specifically
There are many software components that facilitate contact center operations. Historically, the industry has relied, in part, on niche or best-of-breed applications but this is shifting in favor of broadly integrated suites or ecosystems.
Voice of the Customer (VoC) is a catch-all term that refers to the collection of customer feedback in various formats. Sometimes this feedback is in the form of quick surveys or reactions to questions like, "Did I resolve your issue today?" or "Would
Today’s contact centers have the opportunity to refine old processes and adopt innovative new technologies. Organizations should make these changes now to serve a new generation of highly demanding, highly connected consumers who expect advanced auto
Business phone systems and contact center platforms received renewed attention in 2020 as organizations acquired tools for agents working from home. That put the spotlight on vendors, like Avaya, that have feet in both worlds.
The pandemic accelerated several trends in the contact-center industry that were already underway, chiefly: moving infrastructure and software applications to the cloud, and rethinking the process of managing agents.
The modern contact center relies heavily on software that enables agents to perform multiple complex tasks while simultaneously managing the customer-facing side of interactions.
The ways in which consumers engage with organizations have changed. Long-established communication channels such as the telephone, email and company websites are still used, but many consumers now prefer to use text messages, online chat, social medi
Shifts in the market due to the pandemic have upended the contact center marketplace, accelerating the inevitable migration of infrastructure to the cloud and changing the way agents are managed.
Since customer data platforms (CDP) emerged in the marketplace about five years ago, there has been debate about what roles they fill, especially within customer service organizations.
Verint has recently separated into two companies, one of which is a dedicated provider of software focused on customer engagement and will keep the Verint name. (The other is called Cognyte and focused on security analytics.)
The contact center is still, for most businesses, where customer experience is designed, delivered and measured. And as we might expect, customer experience (CX) tools are migrating from where they started point solutions based on narrow functions in
Ventana Research recently announced its 2021 market agenda in the expertise area of Customer Experience. Most organizations have some degree of focus on managing how they interact with their customers, but it is often a disjointed and constrained pro
The problem with managing Customer Experience these days is that it covers a lot of ground, and touches a lot of people with different roles within an organization. There are so many technology components that contribute to a clear and successful CX
Customers don’t care how big a firm is; they care about the quality of their customer experience. And today’s smaller and growing businesses can level the playing field by offering customer interactions that are every bit as sophisticated, responsive
It is a long-accepted truism that it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. For any small business that is looking to grow, it makes sense to devote considerable resources to the challenge of keeping customers happ
No matter how large or small an organization may be, customers will judge it by the quality of service it delivers. But for small and mid-sized businesses (those with between 30 and 300 contact center seats), the stakes are often higher: they must co
Every organization strives to make their customer experiences work better, but this can be challenging when the tools for the job are siloed applications that are scattered across different departments. If you want to create experiences that bring cu
Ventana Research has announced its market agenda for 2021, continuing the tradition of transparency in our efforts to educate and guide the technology market but also our independence as we do not share our market agenda or analyst perspectives with
Interaction volume is increasing, and customer journeys are more complex. A stark gap has emerged between the kinds of experiences customers expect, and the resources that businesses have available to fulfill them. But this is not bad news. Awarenes
The contact center has long represented the starting point for customer experience initiatives. Now, however, most organizations are finding that they need to invest beyond this singular point of engagement.
In the near future, contact center agents will still work from home. People will still buy online and expect curbside pickup from retail stores. For simple or routine issues, many customers move past a phone call to chat, messaging, email or choose t
How can organizations balance the growing ability to automate interactions with the power of the human element and the need to maintain authentic customer relationships? What are the key technologies organizations must adopt now to succeed as the fut
Organizations are facing a mounting gap between the services and connections customers want, and their capacity to actually deliver them. This capacity gap challenges budgets and planning and stifles innovation.
The pandemic has raised the stakes for self-service in every part of the customer journey.
Teradata is not a name that is commonly associated with the customer experience marketplace, but that is likely to change as customer experience (CX) practitioners wrestle with the problems created by the multiple streams of data thrown off by the ma
Early telephony-based call centers were built using proprietary on-premises systems. As companies added additional channels of engagement, call centers evolved into contact centers.
This has been a dramatic year for contact centers. The underlying technology has been changing for some time, but that change is now accelerating because of the urgent operational shifts forced by the pandemic.
The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcases advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to improved efficiency and productivity in the processes and per
Truly transformational value gains from optimizing customer experiences have yet to be realized. Even after decades of focusing on CRM as the main tool for improving customer relationships, organizations still struggle to fully understand their custo
It’s very exciting to embark on a new chapter of one’s career, so I am thrilled to be joining Ventana Research to lead the practice of expertise in customer experience (CX).
Maintaining business continuity when the workforce is functioning virtually requires the organization to be as responsive as possible. During times when work-from-home (WFH) is a necessity, it’s even more important that the communication tools in use
Subscription-based business models have seen exponential growth over the last decade. The growth of this recurring revenue business model, where a subscriber commits to repeatedly pay for a good or device for a fixed or indefinite timeline, has been
The workforce is an essential part of an organization’s overall business potential because it ensures continuous operations, even in black-swan events.
Today’s businesses must manage a continually expanding array of data, content and digital assets as well as satisfy the demands of consumers for comprehensive product information.
Marketing is inextricably linked to business success, and digital technology is essential to an organization’s overall marketing potential because it generates interest and brand awareness.
A focus on workforce agility will enable organizations to adapt and continue to meet customer service expectations during challenging periods.
Subscriptions are the future of business. Subscribers are essential to an organization’s overall business potential because they generate recurring revenue.
Contact centers play a substantial role in an organization’s success. The customer journey is engaged here, at each moment of interaction.
Partners play a key role in the revenue and growth of every organization. Whether channel selling is in assistance to internal sales or independent, what happens in partnering has ramifications that are simply too important to underestimate.
Today’s intense competition requires that companies know as much as they can about their customers in order to anticipate their needs and deliver a superior customer experience.
PIM can provide a ROI and deliver value across the entire organization thanks to the streamlined integration of products into the roles of almost every business employee.
Customer analytics have never been more important, but effectively creating and managing them is not easy.
Using customer analytics effectively involves several challenges. Organizations must make it a business priority, cultivate leadership and set a course for ensuring data and analytics are being processed and governed effectively.
I am happy to share some insights from our latest Value Index research, which rates how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usab
For interactions with customers to go well, organizations must manage an ever-increasing array of engagement channels.
Supercharging the customer experience (CX) is more than just an opportunity.
Products and services are the foundation of every organization, regardless of its industry or size.
Ventana Research recently announced its 2020 research agenda in the area of the customer experience.
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