CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) is a cloud-based model for delivering contact center infrastructure and applications.
In short, CCaaS platforms help organizations manage multi-channel customer interactions more effectively.
Today’s CCaaS platforms increasingly blend in-house and third-party innovations – especially AI-driven tools – to support both customer and employee experiences across the contact center, from agents to directors.
But what makes a good CCaaS provider and what should potential buyers be considering?
In Forrester’s exploration of the current CCaaS market, it has evaluated 10 of the most significant vendors in the CCaaS space, ranking each as a Leader, Strong Performer, or Contender based on their overall performance and capabilities.
Ranking the Vendors
In whittling down the top companies, Forrester uses 29 criteria across two key evaluation categories: Current Offering and Strategy.
Here are the five highest performing vendors in each category:
Current Offering
- Genesys: 3.98/5
- NICE: 3.88/5
- Five9: 3.74/5
- Talkdesk: 3.52/5
- AWS: 3.50/5
Strategy
- NICE: 4.14/5
- Genesys: 3.88/5
- AWS: 3.84/5
- Cisco: 3.28/5
- 8x8: 3.02/5
Alongside the scores, Forrester provides a breakdown of each vendor’s portfolio and offerings.
Here’s a brief overview of each:
NICE (Leader)
Having topped the charts in Strategy and snagged second place in Current Offering, NICE pipped Genesys to top spot in this year’s Wave report.
The vendor's CXone platform offers the “broadest capability set in the industry,” with its workforce optimization (WFO), analytics, and agent solutions drawing praise from both Forrester and customers.
The report also outlined NICE’s “significant” market presence, leading roadmap, and adoption of generative AI (GenAI) and LLMs.
Genesys (Leader)
As predicted by CX Today last month, the fight to be named the king of CCaaS was a straight shootout between NICE and Genesys.
In second place, Genesys’ Cloud CX platform garnered praise for its advanced AI orchestration capabilities, which allow the vendor to excel at workforce management (WFM) and quality management (QM).
Its AI-powered vision provides customers with impressive levels of usability and flexibility – enabling them to “take control of their customer experiences.”
AWS (Leader)
The third and final Leader in this year’s Wave report was AWS’ Amazon Connect.
The platform’s size and scale positions it as a driver of innovation with the capacity to deal directly with brands and actually “solve real business problems.”
The report also complimented the company for its “market-leading” approach to GenAI, LLMs, as well as its agent assist, self-service, and QM capabilities.
Five9 (Strong Performer)
Just missing out on the Leader category, Five9’s Intelligent CX Platform was described as a “pioneer” in the CCaaS space, which continues to evolve through its vision of combining human and AI agents to enhance users’ CX capabilities.
The vendor’s recent acquisition of Acqueon was also highlighted by Forrester for providing Five9 with “leading capabilities for outbound dialers.”
While Five9 offers a reliable CCaaS platform that covers all bases, the report suggested that its WFM solution did not have the scalability to support enterprise-level customers.
