Market Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about Microsoft 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 Microsoft 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 Microsoft as a vendor of Merit, ranking 22nd in the overall research with a 42.3% performance. Microsoft’s best performance came in Customer Experience at 63.2%, ranking 12th, due in part to its 13th-place ranking in Validation. In Product Experience, Microsoft placed 22nd at 37.7% due to low performance in Adaptability and Usability. Microsoft did not participate in the RFI process.

Microsoft’s Product Experience was impacted by its 24.2% performance in Usability, where it’s UI/UX is far below the industry average and needs to be improved for a better overall user experience. Customer Experience was impacted by its 61.5% performance in TCO/ROI, where it needs to articulate the reasons why customers can derive value from its products.

Microsoft performed best in Customer Experience, notably in Validation, where its 64.9% performance was due to its position in the market and the resources it has available to it and customer commitment.

In the Contact Centers Buyers Guide, our analysis classified Microsoft as a vendor of Assurance, ranking 20th in the overall research with a 43.4% performance. Microsoft’s best performance came in Customer Experience at 63.2%, ranking 11th, due in part to its 12th-place ranking in Validation. In Product Experience, Microsoft placed 21st at 38.5% due to low performance in Usability. Microsoft did not participate in the RFI process.

Microsoft’s Product Experience was impacted by its 24.2% performance in Usability, where its lack of an efficient user experience led to its low performance. Customer Experience was impacted by its 61.5% performance in TCO/ROI, where it could show more examples of strategic value from using its products.

Microsoft performed best in Customer Experience, notably in Validation, where its 64.9% performance was due to its vast customer success and support resources and Microsoft’s large history of customer commitment. The product scored well on its ability to integrate across the enterprise, as well as on information security and business continuity measures.

Microsoft did not meet the inclusion criteria for the Agent Management Buyers Guide and thus was not included.

This assessment was based on Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform 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:

Contact Center Suites Buyers Guide

Agent Management Buyers Guide

Contact Centers Buyers Guide