Over the past 18 months, many cloud contact center vendors have hit the headlines for embedding their voice and digital channels, call controls, and routing engines into CRM platforms.
AWS, Five9, and Genesys have all done so with Salesforce Service Cloud.
The latter two followed suit with ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM).
Meanwhile, Cisco Webex and Talkdesk embedded their channels into Epic Cheers, a popular CRM in the healthcare space.
In making these moves, the CCaaS providers promised to streamline agent experiences, centralize customer service data, and reduce management burden.
Yet, there’s one notable absentee from these headlines: NICE, the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave CCaaS leader.
According to Barry Cooper, President of the CX Division at NICE, there’s good reason for that.
“We want to do it the right way. We don’t think the right way is to simply embed a commodity, like a voice or chat channel, into a CRM,” he told CX Today.
It’s our belief that – as you have a system of record and a system of workflow – there needs to be a system of interactions.
“I’ve been validating this for months,” continued Cooper. “I’ve been talking to NICE CXone Mpower customers, and what they’re desperate not to do is to introduce a new “Frankenstack” of solutions interfacing with their customers.”
NICE’s Vision for a System of Interactions
As Cooper suggests, NICE’s alternative to embedding CCaaS tools into CRM systems is to build a system of interactions.
Salesforce can plug Agentforce into that system of interaction, ServiceNow can fit Moveworks into it, and so forth.
Meanwhile, their AI agents can leverage all the data on the CXone Mpower platform. That includes not only consumer data. Instead, NICE will share data from its AI models, quality assurance (QA) solutions, and more.
Meanwhile, the third-party agents will memorialize their interactions back into CXone Mpower, maintaining a complete view of interactions.
For Cooper, that solves everyone’s issues and enables a consistent system of interactions.
“I think that is slightly different from the vision of others in our space, who are happy to plug into the system of record,” said Cooper.
“That is a problem as it’s going to – ultimately – break up that system of interaction, and you are not going to have a consistent view. Because the CRM only provides one part of the picture.
If there is a slightly different pace to what we’re doing with big tech, it’s because we want to do it the right way, the way our customers are telling us it needs to be.
In making this point, Cooper stresses how contact centers typically integrate with many more systems than a CRM and highlights how NICE wants to go further.
Thinking Beyond CCaaS-CRM Integrations
For CCaaS providers, close relationships with the likes of Salesforce and ServiceNow are critical, and NICE is in talks with the vendors on how to further both relationships.
Yet, Cooper reiterates how the tech stack that contact centers must access extends beyond CCaaS and CRM. As such, there are many more brands it should be working with.
That’s part of the reason NICE turned to Scott Russell as its new CEO. His expertise in broader customer experience markets positions him well to expand the company’s influence.
“He has a lot of experience in working with big tech companies, like SAP, Snowflake, AWS, and so on,” added Cooper. “A big part of our strategy is to work more closely with those types of organizations.”
Indeed, Russell will help tell the tale of NICE’s vision of a system of interactions and why it matters.
Yet, while Russell may be the new mouthpiece, he is not ripping up the NICE playbook with this vision. As per Cooper, it has been in motion for some time.
The Pieces Are Coming Together
Think back over the past 18 months. NICE’s acquisition of LiveVox and move into UCaaS underline its vision of being that system of interactions.
With LiveVox, NICE pulled “the best of outbound” onto its platform with an intuitive proactive outreach solution that follows the various rules of individual US states, Europe, and beyond.
“It’s another example of the complexity we’re managing via a system of interactions,” noted Cooper.
Then, there’s its 2024 release of a new UCaaS solution: NICE 1CX.
For Cooper, this rounds out NICE’s strategy to manage all interaction points between consumers and the businesses they work with.
After all, NICE 1CX ensures all means of conversation – including an internal interaction related to a customer case – happen in a single place.
So, while NICE accepts that it’s not challenging market leaders, its UCaaS platform fits into a vision that will allow it to align with broader enterprise goals.
In doing so, NICE can connect with CIOs, not only contact center directors.
NICE’s Agentic AI Strategy
Think of NICE as that system of interactions. As AI agents run across that system, they’ll automate service contacts, parts of contacts, and related processes.
Yet, these AI agents will need to follow strict guardrails, according to Cooper.
“When you have an autonomous AI agent – which can reason – it becomes non-deterministic. That may be great in non-mission-critical areas. But, in the space of customer service, it can be a big problem,” he said.
There are examples of what can happen if you don’t have the right guardrails. You can be out of compliance, you can accidentally give away free products, and – if you’re in a space like healthcare – you can do things that can damage people’s lives.
Recognizing this, NICE released its CXone MPower Orchestrator in March.
Effectively, this solution gives businesses a single view of their customer service workflows, and these workflows act as the train tracks for AI agents.
Those agents could come from NICE’s Autopilot solution or a third-party platform, like Agentforce.
“When AI agents are on those train tracks, we’re making sure it’s non-deterministic, but the train tracks are determining what needs to be done,” continued Cooper.
Fascinatingly, the Orchestrator is also continually evaluating those train tracks to isolate new opportunities for AI agents to boost contact center efficiency.
More on the CXone MPower Orchestrator
Rewind to 2021 when NICE introduced its Integration Hub into CXone Mpower.
The goal was clear: eliminate the need for agents to constantly switch between applications and instead offer a unified, embedded experience.
With all functionality accessible in one place, agents could execute updates and trigger workflows. The promise: no more alt-tabbing.
This marked the beginning of a broader transformation, which – ultimately – led to the CXone MPower Orchestrator’s release.
As it worked with organizations across various sectors, NICE started automating more of these workflows, connecting them with Autopilot.
Over time, NICE has put together a portfolio of APIs, knowledge bases, and workflow logic that it has stitched together to automate more and more contact center processes.
Since then, it has pooled these components together. As such, Orchestrator not only defines a process but also the resources to use within that process and what can be offloaded from a human to an Autopilot agent.
As such, NICE is enabling contact centers to cautiously embrace AI agents they can trust.
By doing so, they can save a lot of money. As Cooper states: “Over the next five years, something like $100BN of expense is going to be taken out of customer service through automation. That’s $100BN of non-software-related expenses, mostly headcount-driven costs.
There’s going to be $30BN put back into software and AI that’s able to do a lot of that work. So, organizations will save $70BN+.
With so much at stake, NICE recognizes that it must get this right, and with agentic AI – alongside CX convergence – it’s taking a steady, thoughtful approach.
