We are happy to share some insights about Cisco drawn from our latest market research, Ventana Research Buyers Guide: Contact Center Suites, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.
We recently published three Ventana Research 2023 Contact Center Suites Buyers Guides, an assessment of technology vendors and products that provide individual and combined 
contact center and agent management platform support. We developed three technology assessment and buyers guides to focus on overall Contact Center Suites requirements as well as specific Agent Management and Contact Center use-cases.
In all of our Buyers Guides we utilize a structured research methodology called the Value Index that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for contact center suites. We evaluated Cisco and 21 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our benchmark research on contact center suites and agent management.
In the overall Contact Center Suites Buyers Guide, our analysis classified Cisco as Innovative, ranking 12th in the overall research with a 63.3% performance. Cisco’s best performance came in Product Experience at 63.9%, ranking 
10th, due in part to its seventh-place ranking in Reliability. In Customer Experience, Cisco placed 19th at 60.9% due to low performance in Validation. Cisco did not participate in the RFI process.
Cisco’s Product Experience was impacted by its 58.6% performance in Adaptability, where it could better streamline the ease of use in its configuration and customization abilities, as well as indicate that it continues to invest in overall product improvement for contact centers. Customer Experience was impacted by its 62.1% performance in Validation, where it could clarify and deepen its product roadmap with attention to how it plans to incorporate AI and workflow automation into its portfolio.
Cisco performed best in Product Experience, notably in Reliability, where its 76.0% performance was due to its high scalability and strong business continuity options. In addition, Cisco’s excellent communication and collaboration tools for agents led to its 62.0% performance in Capability.
In the Contact Centers Buyers Guide, our analysis classified Cisco as a vendor of Merit, ranking 11th in the overall research with a 63.4% performance. Cisco’s best performance came in Product Experience at 64.0%, 
ranking 9th, due in part to its seventh-place ranking in Reliability. In Customer Experience, Cisco placed 18th at 60.9% due to low performance in Validation. Cisco did not participate in the RFI process.
Cisco’s Product Experience was impacted by its 58.6% performance in Adaptability, where it could showcase more of the investments being made in the adaptability of their products.
Customer Experience was impacted by its 62.1% performance in Validation, where it can include more customer stories detailing the use of Cisco’s contact center products and how customers are deriving value from them.
Cisco performed best in Product Experience, notably in Reliability, where its 76.0% performance was due to its strong technology architecture and resources. In addition, Cisco’s above-average workforce management platform led to its 61.8% performance in Capability.
Cisco did not meet the inclusion criteria for the Agent Management Buyers Guide and thus was not included.
This assessment was based on Cisco Webex Contact Center & Contact Center Enterprise and was available in July of 2023.
This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of contact center suites software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Buyers Guide by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Click below to read the individual reports:
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