The CX industry has long touted the benefits of CCaaS, UCaaS, and CPaaS on one unified platform.
Yet, a converged enterprise communications stack isn’t turning the heads of enterprise buyers.
That’s according to Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research.
"We haven't seen much momentum in the enterprise space when integrating UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS," he told CX Today.
To that point, NICE, Genesys, and AWS secure many enterprise contracts, none of which have combined CCaaS, UCaaS, and CPaaS in one central communications portfolio.
Cisco is the exception to this rule, winning significant business as per Gartner’s latest CCaaS report. Yet, others that offer this combination are typically confined to the midmarket.
There, converged offerings win mindshare because these businesses typically have a single buyer, making it easier to realize the potential efficiency gains.
Nevertheless, Kerravala stated: “I believe enterprises will eventually move in this direction.”
Why Will CCaaS + UCaaS + CPaaS Become More Compelling?
CCaaS handles customer support, UCaaS enables internal collaboration, and CPaaS allows for API-driven communication via chat, messaging, and socials.
When businesses implement these solutions as siloed entities, they divide case data, fragment management, and risk fatigue as reps switch between tools.
A unified solution helps overcome these issues, and its value rises further in the AI era.
Indeed, by consolidating data, a unified solution empowers AI analytics tools to derive new insight. Yet, it also lays the foundation for AI agents, enabling human and digital labor to collaborate more effectively across the enterprise.
As such, CCaaS + UCaaS + CPaaS will only become more compelling.
However, there is significant value already. Here are some of the benefits of an integrated enterprise communications stack, which enterprises can already secure.
The Benefits of CCaaS + UCaaS + CPaaS
Here are some of the benefits businesses can secure by implementing an integrated comms stack.
Connecting the Contact Center with External Expertise
A unified CCaaS-UCaaS system allows service agents, either human or AI, to escalate customer contacts to subject matter experts (SMEs) across the middle and back office.
Crucially, that can reduce customer frustration, as they don’t wait on hold for so long while agents navigate multiple tools or track down internal specialists.
In addition, a unified solution helps create a single data record for customer cases that span departments, so no intelligence gets lost. As a result, when contacts do escalate, the context of what has happened so far travels with them.