Aragon Research introduced the “intelligent contact center” concept in 2018.
In doing so, the analyst firm asserted that traditional voice response systems can't keep up with digital enterprise requirements and customer expectations for personalized, consistent journeys.
As such, it highlighted how service platforms are morphing into AI-enhanced intelligent contact centers (ICCs) that automate processes, accelerate interactions, and surface deeper insights.
With the advent of generative AI, this evolution has accelerated. Indeed, Aragon Research predicts:
“70 percent of ICC providers will use third-party LLMs that they train on their own product and service information.”
Yet, some vendors are better prepared than others to incorporate these new AI technologies into their platforms and lead the intelligent contact center transition.
With the Aragon Research Globe for the Intelligent Contact Center 2024, the analyst isolated the best-prepared few – crowning them “market leaders”.
Here is how the vendor did so, alongside some of its most striking findings.
Inspecting the “Intelligent Contact Center” Leaders
In its study, Aragon Research assessed 15 intelligent contact center vendors and crowned only seven market leaders.
To qualify these leaders, Aragon Research's team conducted a "rigorous" analysis that "looks beyond size and market share", which often dominates these reports.
While it does factor global reach into its research, that's more from a support and sales services perspective. Mostly, the research hones in on each provider's product-oriented capabilities.
In doing so, Aragon Research splits its analysis into three dimensions:
Strategy
- Product
- Product strategy
- Market understanding and product roadmap
- Marketing
- Management team
Performance
- Market awareness
- Customer experience and feedback
- Financial viability
- Pricing and packaging
- Product feature mix and frequency/quality of releases
- Investment in R&D
Global Reach
- Worldwide sales and support offices
- Locations and time zones of support sentences
- Language support
- References across regions
- Data center locations
After evaluating each vendor across all these criteria, Aragon Research created the following matrix, which features the most prominent tech providers in the space.
“The race to deliver intelligent contact centers is on,” said Jim Lundy, Founder, CEO, & Lead Analyst at Aragon Research, when summarizing these findings.
“It is important to evaluate current and potential ICC providers both on core capabilities for omnichannel capabilities and also for their roadmap for both human and virtual agents.”
Of course, the Aragon Research Globe is only one resource to leverage in making this evaluation – and, as Lundy suggests, further evaluation is critical.
Nevertheless, the report does wade through many of the most familiar names in the contact center tech space – like NICE, Five9, and Cisco.
UJET is another. Despite being a new name in the annual report, the provider has swooped straight into the leader quadrant, swooping past many market rivals.
Much of this is due to its burgeoning market presence, partly thanks to its close partnership with Google. Yet, it does have significant market differentiators in its own right.
As this is the case, it's a fascinating vendor to consider as businesses work to whittle down their long list of contact center partners.