Cisco has revealed that Webex Contact Center seats surged by 75 percent in FY24.
That growth spans industries but is particularly pronounced within the financial services, healthcare, and retail sectors.
In the former, Cisco almost doubled its cloud seat count.
The enterprise tech giant also signed “one of its largest deals to date” last quarter, this time in the travel sector.
Such large deals come as feedback from Webex Contact Center customers improves.
Indeed, according to the Gartner Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer” 2024 report, 95 percent of customers gave the platform a four- or five-star review. That’s up significantly from 2023.
Yet, according to Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, the recent growth principally stems from the conversion of its on-premise contact center base. He told CX Today:
Cisco has a massive enterprise contact center install base, and while it’s easy to poke at Webex and say they were late to CCaaS (they were), the reality is that much of that install base wasn’t ready to shift to a SaaS model until recently.
“Feedback from customers is that while Webex is a relatively late entrant, they have done a fantastic job getting the product to feature parity and have invested heavily in AI,” continued Kerravala. “This should bode well as we go into the next wave of CX.”
However, as Cisco heads into that next wave of customer experience, it has undergone a large-scale restructure. That will impact the Webex Contact Center in two central ways:
- CCaaS will become part of a broader Webex CX portfolio.
- Webex will unite with Cisco’s security and networking business units under the same leadership.
Recognizing the significance of these moves, CX Today contacted Jay Patel, SVP & GM of Cisco Webex, to learn more about how they will impact Cisco’s customers and its newfound CCaaS momentum.
The All-New Webex CX Portfolio
Cisco Webex now splits into two core portfolios: CX and EX.
Webex CCaaS sits in the CX portfolio alongside Cisco’s on-premise contact center and CPaaS.
By unifying these products, Cisco aims to close the gap between its on-premise and cloud offerings while simplifying innovation for its large legacy customers.
CPaaS is a critical bridge here. It allows these operations to leverage elements of the cloud and AI while keeping essential loads of data on-premise.
As such, Cisco may go further in meeting customers where they are, innovating with them, and slowly migrating them to the Webex Contact Center.
Moreover, CPaaS helps secure tight integrations with solutions beyond the CRM. That includes point-of-sale, fraud detection, and the many other backend systems on which its on-premise install base relies.
By making these capabilities readily available in the cloud, Cisco can help large enterprises better manage the complexity of CCaaS migrations and deliver greater customization.
“We aim to empower them with the latest technologies at their own pace,” said Patel.
We’ve developed different upgrade paths for on-premise software that will allow customers to use some of the tools we’re developing in the cloud.
Alongside inspiring faster innovation and delivering more integrated technologies, Patel believes the new CX portfolio will enable simplified pricing.
In the CCaaS space, pricing is notoriously complex, with agent-, outcome-, and usage-based models. By building on its existing bundle strategy, Cisco senses an opportunity to further differentiate.
Webex’s Position Alongside Security & Networking
Worries over the reliability of cloud solutions and data protection have historically hampered the enterprise adoption rates of CCaaS.
Across its security and networking teams, Cisco has unique expertise and capabilities to help quell these concerns.
By pulling Webex into one unit with these teams, Cisco signals it’s ready to do more to shed light on this differentiator and cross-integrate its products.
“With the “one Cisco” vision and platform, our different application areas all benefit from shared investments,” said Patel.
“This means that our go-to-market approach is unified, and our sales teams and partners are better educated across the entire portfolio.”
Kerravala has long called for this move, sensing an opportunity for Cisco to package its security, networking, and enterprise communications solutions for enterprises. Now, he’s called for the tech giant to go even further, stating:
I’d like to see continued integration with the rest of the Cisco portfolio. For example, using ThousandEyes to troubleshoot quality problems. Then, there’s automatic network configuration, security settings, and all the other possibilities.
While such innovation may already be on the roadmap, Patel noted the advanced security features already within the Webex Contact Center.
In particular, he highlighted how customers can leverage AI through secure channels “with confidence that their data stays within their environment.” That’s a crucial point, given the recent AI-related lawsuits hitting CCaaS customers.
Cisco’s Aspirations In CCaaS
Patel reaffirmed Cisco’s commitment to its on-premise base, promising continued support wherever they are in their contact center transformation.
However, the crucial objective for Cisco is to hold onto these customers as they migrate.
After all, given the depth of its legacy business, this could pull Cisco further to the forefront of the CCaaS market – where it aspires to be.
CPaaS is critical here to ensure tight integrations and enterprise-grade customization. But, so too is a robust security posture and an attractive pricing plan.
By bringing this all together, Cisco may also differentiate from the one-size-fits-all CCaaS platforms, which face the threat of CRM solution providers converging on the space.
Indeed, if Cisco can successfully convey this narrative, this may be the year Webex moves out of the Niche Player square in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and seizes Challenger status.
Yet, more importantly, it can keep those enterprise customers engaged, overcome their migration concerns, and reassure them that this isn’t the Webex of ten years ago.
After all, some may ask: can Webex handle the complexity of my contact center? Cisco can more emphatically answer that question by tensing its CPaaS, security, and networking muscle.