About This Constellation ShortList™

Contact center solutions have largely stayed the course in function: enabling organizations to route, address, and resolve inbound customer interactions and engagements. Contact center as a service (CCaaS) shifted this critical front line of customer experience (CX) to the cloud with the promise of scalable infrastructure and a flexible toolset to modernize the contact center that has become more complex. Looking ahead, Experience teams are expecting more convergence across these segmented communications tools as a new breed of CCaaS tools offers these traditional inbound engagement interactions with fully integrated outbound dialing, predictive dialers, proactive cross-channel messaging and engagement, and more robust collaboration and workforce management tools.

CCaaS solutions have also undergone a massive shift thanks to the introduction of generative AI tools bolstering experiences for agents, supervisors and customers with superior, intuitive and easy-to-use interactive and intelligent tools including real-time content generation and data analysis. Agents and supervisors now expect smart co-pilots at the ready to help guide customers to positive outcomes.  AI-powered tools including smart routing, intelligent workforce planning, agent assist, sentiment analysis, chatbots, Interactive Virtual Agents (IVA), data management, and process automation have become core considerations in provider selection.

2025 will bring more AI-driven change with more robust analytics, experience augmentation through real-time personalized content creation and the reality of cross-functional CX operations come into view. But the AI proof of concept experiments initiated in 2023 and 2024 are struggling to become fully blown operationalized projects, adding pressure onto COO and Chief Experience Officers to push their AI intentions and budgets forward in the contact center. This is especially true of buyers still pushing their cloud shift agendas who are now being asked by the Board to showcase how AI will be deployed as a business transformation and differentiation tool. The pressure to perform will be intense and will increase scrutiny on value being delivered thanks to AI.

Threshold Criteria

Constellation considers the following criteria for these offerings:

  • Comprehensive communications capabilities including call management, call provisioning and routing and omnichannel communications across phone, email, live chat, social media, messaging and SMS
  • Workflow management for process and engagement orchestration
  • Flexible delivery models for private, public, and multicloud environments
  • Cross-channel workflow and architected journeys to deliver comprehensive service, including always-on self-service content, chatbots, and interactive voice response (IVR) experiences
  • Rich library of resources and agent engagement and support tools to boost performance
  • Global infrastructure and network footprint for global reach and coverage
  • Deep knowledge base and community resource center for users
  • Application of AI and ML models for data analytics, smart routing, next-best agent action, virtual agents (text and voice), and chatbot engagement
  • Advanced AI application for voice and sentiment scanning via natural-language processing
  • Scalable pricing and service models
  • Collaboration workspaces for agent resources and problem solving across internal experts
  • Security and privacy controls and rule-based/role-based data and account governance
  • Documented uptime and network reliability for large-scale remote agent deployments
  • Robust analytics and reporting on agent and platform performance
  • Multichannel customer engagement channels, including voice, messaging, social, and SMS
  • App marketplace or libraries to extend platform capabilities
  • Integrations and connectors to business tools such as CRM, customer data platforms (CDPs), and core customer service operations and help desk solutions

The Constellation ShortList™

Constellation evaluates 21 solutions categorized in this market. This Constellation ShortLists determined by client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share, and internal research.

  • 8x8
  • Avaya Experience Platform™
  • Amazon Connect
  • Five9
  • Genesys
  • Microsoft Dynamics Contact Center
  • NICE
  • RingCentral
  • TalkDesk
  • Zoom Contact Center

Frequency of Evaluation

Each Constellation ShortList is updated at least once per year. Updates may occur after six months if deemed necessary.

Evaluation Services

Constellation clients can work with the analyst and the research team to conduct a more thorough discussion of this ShortList. Constellation can also provide guidance in vendor selection and contract negotiation.

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