Cisco is no newbie to the world of unified communications. It was always recognised as a technology giant and after the acquisition of Webex back in 2007, there was simply no stopping it. Cisco’s acquisition spree continues, and last year it picked up six new companies in order to further expand its unified communications portfolio. Today, we are reviewing CloudCherry, part of Cisco’s Webex line of products since August 2019.
CloudCherry is a customer experience management platform designed for large-sized contact centres. The company started with investments from Vertex Ventures, Capillary, and Cisco Investments among others. Its key competitors would include the likes of Qualtrics or Satmetrix, just so you know that larger context of CloudCherry’s market position.
So, how does CloudCherry fair as one of Cisco’s contact centre offerings? Let’s delve deeper.
Inside Cisco Webex Experience Management
While CloudCherry continues to operate its own website, it now officially falls under the Cisco Webex brand umbrella. Here, it has been renamed as Cisco Webex Experience Management, included in Cisco’s offerings for contact centres. Let’s a closer look at some of its key features:
- Predictive analytics – Webex Experience Management Predictive Analytics generates accurate forecasts of potential business outcomes. This allows contact centre managers and CX professionals to make confident decisions and invest wisely in the transformation of customer experiences
- Path analytics – Cisco’s Path Analysis could be extremely useful for managers looking to plot relationships and correlations between different drivers of customer satisfaction. Path analysis “untangles” these drivers, allowing you to drill down and study the impacts of specific drivers
- Text analysis – At a time when customers interact with companies across multiple channels and platforms, you need a way to analyse comments/reviews at scale. Webex Experience Management offers three levels of text analysis: Word Cloud, Sentiment Analysis, and Theme Analysis. These are powered by advanced AI and ML to detect the unique theme of unstructured customer data
- Ticketing – This one is a contact centre must-have. Webex Experience Management has a workflow builder that lets users define business rules for ticketing, alerts, and notifications. It delivers alerts in real-time and routes them to frontline contact centre executives as soon as a customer query/complaint arises
- Customer journey mapping – Here’s where Cisco’s rich legacy as a unified communications leader comes into play. The company’s customer success managers will work closely with you to design a differentiated customer journey map (this includes micro journeys as well). This is then baked into the Webex Experience Management platform and generates regular data and reports on the quality of customer experience across the entire journey
- Financial analysis – Interestingly, Webex Experience Management gives you access to a one-pager that contains an analysis of financial drivers, possibilities and outcomes. Cisco claims this is a “boardroom ready” document, ideal for companies undergoing customer experience overhaul and looking to gain buy-in from C-level leaders
- Integrations – Expectedly, Webex Experience Management comes with several out of the box integrations with popular CRM platforms. By extracting data from multiple sources, it provides you with an accurate and holistic picture of customer experience
Why Webex Experience Management Makes a Difference
Cisco has stayed true to CloudCherry’s original three pillars for customer experience management: Journeys, Integrations, and Predictive. With Cisco, the taxonomy changes slightly, as the company calls it its Listen, Analyze, and Predict methodology.
But the core principle remains the same – listen to the voice of the customer across the entire journey, integrate multiple sources to create a 360-degree view, and perform predictive analysis using AI. This, we believe, is an excellent strategy for companies looking to improve their customer experiences regularly and incrementally.
Webex Experience Management isn’t designed to be a one-stop contact centre solution. In fact, it serves a very specific use case: understand and enhance the customer experience. That’s why we believe Webex Experience Management belongs in every contact centre manager’s toolkit, informing key decisions and strategies.
What We Think
Cisco has a great track record when it comes to acquisitions (remember MindMeld in 2017?), and CloudCherry is no different. Its powerful combination of cutting-edge features and underlying strategic intent makes it a great addition for large B2C enterprises. Companies in sectors such as retail, healthcare, insurance, and banking could gain significantly from Webex Experience Management. You can download the software from Cisco’s website if you are already a Cisco customer, or contact a reseller to purchase.
