Gartner is abandoning “CXaaS” little more than six months after coining the term.
The research firm first introduced CXaaS to showcase how the CCaaS, CPaaS, and customer service CRM solutions are converging, alongside digital channels.
Gartner also hoped to highlight how vendors could continue to merge the technologies and support businesses in delivering more “intelligent, personalized, and contextualized” interactions.
However, the term never caught on. One reason is its pronunciation. Say it out loud, and it sounds like “CX-ass” (something I hope people don’t call me).
Nevertheless, there is a much deeper issue. As Brian Doherty, Principal Analyst at Gartner, confessed on LinkedIn:
We received feedback both that the term wasn’t quite accurate, since there is more to CX than flows through these platforms.
Indeed, by using the term CXaaS to bundle CPaaS and customer service technologies, Gartner neglects sales, marketing, commerce, customer success, and in-store teams, which also own part of the experience. That sparked confusion.
Moreover, in failing to distinguish between customer service and customer experience, Gartner could be accused of reinforcing silos across the front office.
Increasingly, CIOs are trying to break these down, encouraging CX teams to share customer data and devise cross-departmental workflows that boost customer acquisition and retention.
As such, the CXaaS idea seems backwards, and it’s positive to see Gartner, which does lots of excellent research across the CX space (not just customer service), abandon the term.
A Call to Ditch More Industry Jargon
Rob Kurver, Founder of the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance, is also thankful that the customer experience industry has steered clear of more jargon.
Indeed, he believes that tricky terminology and acronyms like this can create confusion between vendors and the companies they sell to. Kurver said:
Everyone wants more visibility with enterprise customers, but it’s confusing for them. So, vendor messaging is shifting from tech jargon to results.
CXaaS is an extreme example of industry jargon. Yet, Kurver suggests vendors should also reconsider terms like CPaaS, CCaaS, and UCaaS.
“I spoke with one of our alliance members yesterday that essentially offers a CPaaS platform,” he continued. “But his younger account managers in Germany refuse to use the acronym when speaking to customers. Instead, they say “AI for voice and messaging,” which customers actually understand. That story resonated with me.”
Gartner Offers an Alternative Phrase to “CXaaS”
When announcing the death of CXaaS, Doherty asserted that Gartner will instead refer to the convergence of CCaaS, CPaaS, service CRM, and digital as “Omnichannel Conversational Platforms” or “#OCP”.
He added: “We hope this terminology will catch on, as it encompasses the key nature of this convergence — that these platforms span the breadth of both channels and use cases involved in customer conversations.”
However, most cloud contact center solutions are already marketed as “omnichannel” and offer conversational AI. So, the term OCP doesn’t go a long way in underscoring the market convergence. It just sounds like another contact center solution.
Also, as Kurver mentioned, “I keep reading it as OCD.”
Nevertheless, he had a much more emphatic point to close on:
We, as an industry, are so technical. We love acronyms and product names, but we’re trying to talk to customers – and even partners – who don’t understand all this. That’s the bigger issue. We need to stop focusing on acronyms and start focusing on what problems we’re solving.
So, will the term OCP still resonate six months from now? It seems unlikely.
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