Demand for cloud technology is growing. These days, companies need more than just a cloud environment for unified communications; they need the same flexibility and versatility for the contact centre too. CCaaS, or contact centre as a service, provides today’s companies with infinite scalability and freedom. It also ensures that teams can continue to offer customer support wherever they are.
Gartner, one of the leaders in market analytics, has finally released the Magic Quadrant report for CCaaS in 2020.
Interestingly, there’s only one report this year, covering the entire globe (rather than Western Europe and North America separately). This decision to consolidate 2 reports into one has caused some upset in the industry already, leaving many to wonder if it was the right choice.
Let’s take a closer look.
The Four Pillars of Customer Service
According to Gartner, by 2024, CCaaS solutions including functionality from all of the four pillars of technology for customer service, will represent around 70% of all deployments. That’s an increase from 20% in 2019.
In 2019, Gartner identified four pillars for exceptional customer service:
- Exploring digital applications to enhance efficiency
- Prioritising and improving digital experience
- Gaining control over service websites
- Meeting increasing pressures and demand for accountability internally
As always, the 2020 Magic Quadrant for CCaaS divides each vendor into one of four segments: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. Here’s who made the cut this year.
The 2020 CCaaS Magic Quadrant Leaders
Leaders in the Magic Quadrant show excellent commitment to the four pillars of customer service and can serve multinational organisations with support and sales solutions. Leaders are also more likely to serve customers with support from channel partners, according to Gartner. This year’s choices are:
- NICE inContact
- Genesys
- Talkdesk
NICE InContact
Nice inContact earned a leadership position in the Magic Quadrant with the CXOne solution for CCaaS. This service is available both directly and through channel partners that span the globe. One of the major channel partners for NICE inContact is a leading UCaaS provider, RingCentral – who bundles the service for SMBs. NICE inContact demonstrates an excellent commitment to the pillars of customer service and provides an integrated approach to service delivery.
Genesys
Another leader for the CCaaS Magic Quadrant is Genesys, with Genesys Cloud. The specialist CCaaS platform is available through both direct sales and channel partners. Unique solutions are available for different geographical regions. With Genesys Cloud, Gartner notes that Genesys highlights a commitment to the four crucial pillars of customer service, delivering more agile solutions on demand. Genesys also has an extensive operational presence in various places around the world, allowing for better contact centre platform consolidation.
Talkdesk
Talkdesk also earned its spot as a leader in the 2020 CCaaS Magic Quadrant with CX Cloud. The specialised CCaaS platform is available through channel partners and direct. Talkdesk started life focusing on the US market, but it has proliferated over the years. Today, the company offers a fantastic service proposition for various multiregional organisations. Talkdesk also demonstrates a deep commitment to the pillars of customer service, with an excellent vision for analytics-driven engagements for both the employee and customer.
The 2020 CCaaS Magic Quadrant Challengers
Challengers in the CCaaS Magic Quadrant have large install bases, but they won’t always have the same level of brand awareness as the market leaders. These companies might be less mature than Leaders when it comes to tackling the market and focus more heavily on certain subsets of the market. This year’s challengers are:
- Five9
- Content Guru
- 8×8
- Vonage
Five9
Five9 stood out as a challenger for this year’s 2020 Magic Quadrant, although the company’s CEO spoke out, saying that he believed that five9 should have remained in its leadership position. Five9 has nearly 2 decades of experience offering high-performance contact centre solutions, initially starting in North America. However, the brand has recently begun expanding outwards into Europe and Latin America. The Intelligent Cloud Contact Centre has a multi-region footprint, and Five9 delivers excellent results for the four pillars of customer service.
Content Guru
Another challenger in the Magic Quadrant for CCaaS, Content Guru provides the storm CONTACT platform for CCaaS through a mixture of indirect and direct channels. The company has grown its footprint massively over the years, expanding across various markets. Usually, the brand appeals most to companies with more complicated contact centre requirements. Content Guru delivers on the four pillars of customer service through in-house innovation with things like Symphony for resource management, and the AI framework.
8×8
8×8 is another major challenger in the Magic Quadrant for CCaaS. The 8×8 Contact Centre is a valuable part of the 8×8 cloud collaboration platform, either bundled as a component of the X Series or delivered as a standalone solution. The 8×8 brand has a strong footprint within the global market, and it’s a great solution for CCaaS, particularly when it comes to serving small and mid-sized businesses. 8×8 has made excellent progress in strengthening its commitment to Gartner’s 4 pillars of customer service, and it has various partnerships for workforce engagement management as well as virtual customer assistants.
Vonage
The final challenger in the Magic Quadrant for CCaaS this year is Vonage. The Vonage Contact Centre comes as part of a comprehensive programmable communications platform solution, which incorporates CPaaS and UCaaS too. After acquiring NewVoiceMedia, Vonage has expanded its market in Europe, but it’s quickly growing on a more global scale too. Vonage is an excellent choice for European multinational companies, according to Gartner, and its vision of an integrated platform that meets the needs of all communication requirements is sure to make an impact in the future.
The 2020 CCaaS Magic Quadrant Visionaries
Visionaries in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS are described by Gartner as companies with strong multi-channel service and product solutions. Visionaries set themselves apart from other players with innovative and unique functionalities, which helps them to expand brand awareness across their target markets. This year’s visionaries are:
- Odigo
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Odigo
Odigo stands as a visionary in the Magic Quadrant this year for a specialist CCaaS platform offered through Capgemini and direct sales. The company was previously Prosodie until 2019, when it rebranded. The strongest proposition for Odigo, according to Gartner, is European multinational companies. Odigo has a strong development vision for natural language capabilities in the contact centre, and automation. Gartner also notes that the company has a strong commitment to the four pillars of great customer service.
Amazon Web Services
Gartner also picked Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a visionary in the Magic Quadrant with Amazon Connect. The CCaaS offering takes advantage of the broader capabilities and infrastructures that Amazon has to offer. Amazon Connect is available directly, but it’s also beginning to capture the attention of a set of channel partners – including Salesforce, with its recent Service Cloud Voice solution. People already using AWS for DevOps are more likely to adopt Amazon Connect for contact centre solutions. Amazon is continuing to develop Amazon Connect with its graphical user interface, and robust set of APIs.
The 2020 CCaaS Magic Quadrant Niche Players
The Niche Players for the 2020 Magic Quadrant are those who are experiencing a significant amount of growth but focus on a certain market opportunity. The products and services offered by these companies are generally still undergoing some development. Niche players also often rely on partners to expand their solutions. This year’s choices are:
- Evolve IP
- Lifesize
- Vocalcom
- Worldline
Evolve IP
Gartner chose Evolve IP as a niche player in the 2020 CCaaS Magic Quadrant for its Evolve Contact Suite. The CCaaS offering integrates with Cisco for UC, and uses Microsoft collaboration features. The service is available as a capability within the OneCloud services platform. EvolveIP’s footprint is starting to grow, spanning across Europe and North America. The company has a vision for developing deeper integrations with Microsoft Teams, and stronger alignments with the flexible Workspaces offering that it also offers.
Lifesize
Another niche player for the CCaaS Magic Quadrant in 2020, Lifesize provides customers with the CxEngage solution for CCaaS. This cloud platform is available through channel partners and directly. After Lifesize and Serenova merged in 2020, the company began rebranding its image to focus more heavily on contact centre solutions and video. Gartner notes that Lifesize shows excellent commitment to the four pillars responsible for great customer service. The vision of the brand for deeper video and collaboration integrations will address some niche market opportunities going forward.
Vocalcom
Vocalcom is an attractive niche player in the Magic Quadrant with the Hermes 360 specialised platform for CCaaS. This solution is available through a mixture of partner, and direct solutions across all the markets looked at in the Gartner report. The strongest proposition for Vocalcom right now is multinational organisations in Europe. However, Gartner notes that the company is experiencing rapid growth around the world. The commitment that the company shows to the four pillars of customer service is excellent, and Vocalcom leverages its API stack to integrate with various providers for web tracking, WEM, chatbots, and CRM.
Worldline
Finally, Worldline is another niche player in the 2020 Magic Quadrant. The WL Contact CCaaS solution is available through direct sales relationships. WL Contact started life in Europe in 2002, but it has continued to expand around the world ever since. Gartner notes that Europe is still the strongest market for Worldline, even as it continues to grow. WL Contact aligns with a wide set of payment solutions that make it more attractive to niche service processes. Worldline also has a strong history in payment solutions which could be convenient for a lot of companies.
Points to Note About This Year’s MQ
The decision to switch up the Magic Quadrant for CCaaS this year by consolidating two reports into one has led to some confusion for many business leaders. Some companies have remained in high positions despite the consolidation. NICE InContact is still the top right leader for CCaaS, and Genesys is increasing its position in the leadership category too.
Elsewhere, Five9 has been relegated to the top left, in the Challengers section. This is an exciting shift for a CCaaS company that has earned a position as a leader for 5 years in a row before 2020.
Although Gartner notes that no new entrants have been added or removed because this is a new version of the Magic Quadrant, we can see some alterations compared to the previous versions of the report which were divided for North America and Western Europe. The significant changes to the way that Gartner organised this Magic Quadrant is sure to lead to some controversy.
Vonage benefitted from a boost this year, moving from their position in bottom right to the top left challenger’s space. Interestingly, Lifesize also appeared on the Magic Quadrant mainly because of the acquisition and subsequent merger with Serenova. It’s interesting to see a video conferencing company making strides in the Magic Quadrant for CCaaS.
We’re also thrilled to see Content Guru on the CCaaS report this year, as they’re a fantastic UK-based company that seems to be making some tremendous waves in the industry.
What Do You Think Of the Results?
As usual with the Magic Quadrant reports from Gartner, there’s sure to be some conversation around who should have appeared on the list this year – and who shouldn’t. Once again, we’ve got no sign of Cisco, RingCentral, Enghouse Interactive or Avaya. However, that might begin to change as we move forward with this new style of consolidated report. Perhaps in the years ahead, we’ll see the arrival of more popular CCaaS companies – maybe even Salesforce will make an appearance?
While technically, this is a new kind of Magic Quadrant report from Gartner, there’s still a lot of movement if we compare the results to previous CCaaS reviews. AWS is a new entrant, and the changes in leadership and challenges signify a critical new direction for Gartner.
What do you think of this year’s results? Let us know on social media…
