Ovum (News - Alert) in a recently published report assesses the state of the multichannel cloud-based contact center space, talks about the players, and opines on why this is important and what businesses should consider in adopting such solutions.
Like all cloud-based solutions, cloud contact centers have appeal because they enable business users to pay for them as they go rather than incurring large upfront investments in equipment and then having to maintain and update those on-premises solutions over time. Cloud contact centers are also attractive, Ovum points out, because they can be deployed faster than on-premises systems. Plus they are scalable, enabling the organizations that use them to more flexibly change the number of agents or type of channels involved at any time.
“It is vital that contact centers add new services to ensure that agents can respond to customer inquiries from across web and mobile platforms to make interactions smoother and improve resolution rates. Cloud technology is rapidly gaining traction in the contact center because it enables enterprises to gain access to the latest capabilities via fast upgrades rather than through entire platform overhauls,” the research and consulting firm says in the report “Ovum Decision Matrix: Selecting a Multichannel Cloud Contact Center Solution, 2015-2016.”
The players in this arena come at it from various angles, Ovum notes. Some are legacy contact center vendors, some are specialists in multitenant solutions, some provide niche solutions, and then there are the large telcos and outsourcing providers.
Ovum identifies inContact, Genesys, LiveOps (News - Alert), and Interactive Intelligence as the leaders in the multichannel cloud contact center space.
“These vendors have a range of cloud approaches; all have a great deal of experience and proven reliability in delivering secure, advanced services,” says Ovum, which adds that all of the above have a good base of customers and multichannel offerings.
Five9, 8x8 (News - Alert), and NewVoiceMedia are the threesome that Ovum refers to as “worthy competitors.”
Ovum also examined Aspect, Cisco (which customers can deploy only through Cisco partners), and Vodafone (News - Alert) (which hosts and resells Cisco’s solution) in its report.
Lesser-known cloud contact center solution providers that Ovum also deems worthy of consideration include CenturyLink, Corvisa, Content Guru, Enghouse (News - Alert) (CosmoCom), Magnetic North, Noble Systems, Transera, and Twilio.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson