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Ventana Research today released its 2023 Customer Experience Management Value Index, a quantified, research-based index evaluating technology providers and products. This Value Index assesses 22 vendors’ products using our Ventana Research methodology and blueprint, evaluating software in seven key categories that are weighted to reflect buyers’ needs based on our expertise and research. The Value Index evaluated the maturity of software vendors and products and their value for enterprise use in customer experience management suites. This report evaluates the following vendors that offer products that deliver customer experience management suites as we define it: Adobe, Alvaria, Amdocs, Avaya, Cisco, Content Guru, Emplifi, Freshworks, Genesys, HubSpot, NICE, Oracle, Syncsort, Qualtrics, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Sprinklr, SugarCRM, Verint Systems, Zendesk, and Zoho.

Customer experience (CX) is the lifeblood of every organization, and the tools that enable successful experiences are undergoing speedy innovative transformations.

The experience is managed by teams throughout the enterprises, though most focus their efforts on the service and support department, and in particular the contact center. That means that most of the technology used to engage with customers is purchased by and for those centers, with an emphasis on communications tools for managing the flow of interactions.

The true scope of CX efforts, however, touches many other teams who require tools geared to their particular use cases, metrics, and processes. Marketers, for example, need customer data to create segments and present content and offers and to orchestrate journeys. Sales teams need systems for tracking buyer intent and sentiment. All teams need analytics to determine their performance and harmonize efforts across teams. This calls for high level integrations between tools that were largely designed to work in silos by separate teams. Vendors have responded by creating suites out of niche solutions, and by building software platforms that encourage integration and bring forth new tools (like AI and automation) that are new to everyone.

The Customer Experience Management Value Index is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. It is an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings address buyers’ requirements for customer experience software. The index is structured to replicate an RFI/RFP process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize, and maintain technology, and maintain relationships with vendors.

"Buyers are understandably confused by the many overlapping features and use cases available for building customer experience programs,” said Keith Dawson, Ventana Research VP & Research Director. “Ventana Research’s Customer Experience Management Value Index will help make sense of the complicated market landscape and should point them to the right systems that meet their needs."

The 2023 Customer Experience Management Value Index finds Salesforce first with Zoho in second place and Verint in third. Companies that place in the top three in any category earn the designation Value Index Leader. Salesforce has done so in four of the seven categories; Content Guru and Verint have done so in three of the seven categories; Adobe, NICE and Zoho are Value Index Leaders in two categories, and Amdocs, Avaya, Oracle, SAP and Sprinklr in one category.

The Value Index, through the thorough analysis of product and customer experience, has categorized vendors into four classifications: Exemplary, Innovative, Assurance and Merit. This Value Index representation classifies vendors’ weighted performance in Product Experience and Customer Experience. The vendors awarded Exemplary are Adobe, Emplifi, NICE, Oracle, Salesforce, Sprinklr, SugarCRM, Verint and Zoho. The vendors awarded Innovative are Content Guru and SAP. The vendors awarded Assurance are Avaya and Genesys. The vendors awarded Merit are Alvaria, Amdocs, Cisco, Freshworks, HubSpot, Precisely, Qualtrics, ServiceNow and Zendesk.

Unlike many IT analyst firms that rank vendors from an IT-only perspective or consider futures or vision over what is available in the products today, Ventana Research has designed the Value Index to provide a balanced perspective of vendors and products that is rooted in an understanding of business drivers and needs. This approach not only reduces cost and time but also minimizes the risk of making a decision that is bad for the business. Using the Value Index will enable your organization to use customer experience management software to maximize the effectiveness of resources devoted to engaging with (and developing relationships with) customers.

"The imperative for providing engaging customer experiences is essential for every organization to embrace, but the processes are not always met with the applications and technology that are aligned to easily meet those needs," said Mark Smith, CEO and Chief Research Officer at Ventana Research. “This Value Index delivers guidance to organizations on the assemblance of what vendors and their products provide to meet the need to manage customer experiences across channels and departments and provides a definitive evaluation that is desperately needed in the industry.”

The Customer Experience Management Value Index is neither sponsored nor influenced by technology vendors and is conducted solely in pursuit of Ventana Research's mission to provide value to business and IT through advisory services, benchmark assessments and workshops. Ventana Research's goal is to help guide organizations to optimal efficiency in their use of technology investments for business and IT. To learn more and to read the market report of the 2023 Customer Experience Management Value Index, please click here.

About Ventana Research

Ventana Research is the most authoritative and respected market research and technology advisory services firm. We provide insight and expert guidance on mainstream and disruptive technologies through a unique set of research-based offerings including benchmark research and technology evaluation assessments, education workshops, and our research and advisory services, Ventana On-Demand. Our unparalleled understanding of the role of technology in optimizing business processes and performance and our best practices guidance are rooted in our rigorous research-based benchmarking of people, processes, information, and technology across business and IT functions in every industry. This benchmark research, plus our market coverage and in-depth knowledge of hundreds of technology providers, means we can deliver education and expertise to our clients to increase the value they derive from technology investments while reducing time, cost, and risk.

Ventana Research provides the most comprehensive analyst and market coverage in the industry; business and IT professionals worldwide are members of our community and benefit from Ventana Research's insights, as do highly regarded media and association partners around the globe. Our views and analyses are distributed daily through blogs and social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. To learn how Ventana Research advances the maturity of organizations’ use of information and technology through benchmark research, education, and advisory services, visit www.ventanaresearch.com.

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