Contact center solutions for consultants

As a trusted consultant who might be helping clients choose new contact center/CX platforms, you have much to consider. In addition to meeting current business requirements, new systems need to adhere to the technology strategy, have an appealing ROI, be user-friendly, and set the business up for success well into the future.

A comprehensive software selection methodology that considers customer service technology trends and AI CX platform reviews from respected evaluators will put you in a better position to provide expert insights on CX solutions. Your clients are counting on you to provide objective advice. This article will position you to do just that.

Common issues our new customers solve with NICE CXone

Our customers are both large and small, represent a wide variety of industries, and are located across the globe. Despite the wide diversity, they all have something in common: their previous technology wasn't doing the job.

Below are some examples of technology issues that caused our customers to switch to CXone. Perhaps your clients are grappling with similar problems.

• Lack of operational insights. Contact centers are such a rich source of customer information that leaders shouldn't have to forgo data-driven decision-making, yet that's why some of customers made the switch. We've seen challenges ranging from inaccessible data to inadequate reporting to the inability to analyze unstructured interaction data, all of which can be resolved by CXone.
• Poor business continuity capabilities. The recent pandemic exposed the limitations of on-premises systems in responding to certain types of disruptions. Cloud-based solutions can be accessed from anywhere with a good internet connection, which allowed many of our new clients to continue serving their customers with at home agents.
• Too many manual processes. A common cause of manual processes is lack of system integration. When applications aren't integrated, it can create data silos and cause contact center employees to perform manual tasks such as cutting and pasting, creating agent schedules by hand, and manually loading historical data for forecasting. Not only are manual processes inefficient but they also introduce inaccuracies and can negatively impact job satisfaction.
• Limited scalability. Whether a sale is doing better than expected or volume is being driven up by a natural disaster, organizations need solutions that are flexible enough to quickly scale to meet unanticipated volume. Otherwise, revenue can be lost and some customers can go unserved. The lack of scalability is why some of our clients traded their previous systems for CXone.
• Disparate and redundant systems. As businesses open multiple call centers or acquire other companies that have their own centers, it's not unusual to find a hodgepodge of different systems that are redundant with each other. For example, one site may use a different IVR than the next one. That can prevent optimization and consolidation as well as cause the business to incur additional, unnecessary costs.
• Lack of digital omnichannel capabilities. Today's consumers are digital and tend to use multiple channels within the same transaction. Not being able to offer digital support (chat, email, social media, etc.) due to system limitations means a business can't fulfill their customers' channel preferences. Taking it a step further, even if a business does offer multiple channels, it's poor CX if the channels aren't integrated and force customers to start from scratch as they move across channels.

Visit the case studies section in our resource center to learn more about why our clients chose NICE CXone.

Do these common issues sound familiar to you? If your clients are dealing with these types of problems, NICE has solutions. We'll cover the highlights of CXone in this article, but first let's look at some AI CX platform reviews.

Including third-party evaluations is a good way to add objectivity to any software selection process. There are reputable firms that regularly conduct a comparative study of AI customer platforms and grade different solutions on criteria such as completeness of vision, performance, product mix, and financials.

These expert opinions on contact center solutions allow you to see at a glance the strengths and weaknesses of each evaluated platform so that you can quickly determine which ones to focus on.

NICE CXone always fares well when compared to other providers in an in-depth customer experience analysis. Here's what some leading software evaluators had to say:

Gartner

The Gartner Magic Quadrant report is designed to "help customer service and support technology leaders find the right provider for their needs." Gartner reviews Contact Center as a Solution (CCaaS) vendors - also known as SaaS providers - each year and reports on the results.

As part of their in-depth comparative study of AI customer platforms, Gartner evaluates solutions according to a multitude of criteria:

• Ability to execute - includes product or service, overall viability, sales execution/pricing, market responsiveness/record, marketing execution, customer experience, and operations.
• Completeness of vision - includes market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy, offering (product) strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation, and geographic strategy.

Once Gartner has evaluated each provider, they place them into the following quadrants:

• Leaders
• Challengers
• Visionaries
• Niche Players

Figure 1 Source: Gartner 2023 Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service

NICE has been mapped to the "Leaders" quadrant nine years in a row. Leaders are characterized by expansive customer service abilities, strong brand recognition, ability to serve multinational businesses, large installed base or above-average market growth, and ability to handle complex implementations.

In the 2023 version of the Magic Quadrant report, Gartner noted some of NICE's strengths, including our "strong vision for customer service analytics, workforce engagement, AI and automation."

Download a free copy of the 2023 "Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service."

Forrester

NICE CXone also performs well on Forrester evaluations. For example, NICE was recognized as a leader in the "Forrester Wave™: Contact Center As A Service, Q1 2023" report.

Forrester analyzed eleven different CCaaS providers on 34 different factors that include:

• Routing/omnichannel
• Platform/core architecture
• Workforce optimization
• Customer self-service
• Strategy
• Market presence

Figure 2 Source: "The Forrester Wave™: Contact Center As A Service, Q1 2023"

NICE received the highest possible scores in areas such as routing/omnichannel, self-service, performance, and product vision. Forrester specifically noted our extensive use of artificial intelligence throughout the customer journey, increasing emphasis on digital interactions, breadth of solutions, and substantial R&D budget.

Download your free copy of "The Forrester Wave™: Contact Center As A Service, Q1 2023" for more detailed expert insights on CX solutions.

CXone's differentiating capabilities

NICE CXone is a cloud native CX platform with innovative capabilities that establish customer service technology trends. Our highly rated solutions streamline operations, improve customer experience, and empower end users. These characteristics plus the opportunity for a fast payback make it the platform of choice for organizations of all sizes around the world.

What follows is a quick summary of just some of the capabilities that make CXone a leader in the CCaaS market.

Omnichannel experiences

CXone excels at providing the omnichannel experiences customers expect. We offer over twenty integrated channels that enable seamless movement across communication methods within the same transaction. Our routing engine is smart enough to route a voice customer to the same agent they were just chatting with. And MAX, our consolidated agent desktop, organizes interactions for omnichannel agents so that nothing falls through the cracks.

Extensive use of artificial intelligence

We recognize that AI has the power to transform the way businesses connect with customers and have been at the forefront of infusing it into our solutions. The result is that people can receive smarter guidance, answers, and resolutions throughout the customer journey.

Our Enlighten AI solutions are particularly noteworthy. Enlighten Autopilot includes a smart virtual agent that is designed to make customers more successful at self-service. Enlighten Copilot is an agent tool that provides guidance and proactively delivers information to agents, creating a more efficient, successful, and satisfying resolution experience for everyone involved.

Visit our product page for a complete list and overview of all our Enlighten AI solutions.

Self-service

In addition to Enlighten Autopilot, we offer a number of other self-service options that add convenience to the customer experience and can reduce labor costs. Our intelligent knowledge management system can greet customers with helpful information on search engine results pages. And CXone IVR gives callers a natural, conversational experience as it resolves their simpler issues and answers common questions.

Analytics and reporting

CXone's reporting solution offers a multitude of out of the box reports and also enables users to easily create their own reports. And our AI-powered analytics tools take analysis to the next level. For example, our interaction analytics software can quickly analyze unstructured interaction data and provide users with insights such as contact drivers, customer sentiment, and trending topics. This allows customer service leaders to manage problems more effectively and make decisions based on data rather than intuition.

Workforce engagement management

A friendly, competent customer service agent is worth their weight in gold, and organizations should do their best to develop and keep them. Our roster of workforce engagement management applications is designed to do that, plus help contact centers better manage their agent resources. With solutions such as Performance Management and Quality Management, agents can receive timely feedback that helps them take ownership of their performance. And our AI-infused workforce management application produces more accurate forecasts and schedules and simplifies intraday management.

As you're conducting your in-depth customer experience analysis to find the right contact center platform for your clients, we invite you to consider NICE CXone. Visit our main product page to see all we have to offer and watch a twenty minute demo to see CXone in action.