In this episode of "Advice from a Call Center Geek," we dive into a topic that's known for stirring up plenty of debates and strong feelings: CcaaS platforms.
I'm eager to offer my perspective on what's happening in the world of these providers right now. We'll explore the various aspects that make this topic so controversial and why opinions vary widely in the industry.
My aim is to provide you with a detailed understanding of the current landscape, drawing from my experiences and observations in the field.
If you are looking for USA outsourced customer service or sales support, we here at Expivia would really like to help you support your customers.
Please check us out at expiviausa.com, or email us at info@expivia.net!
Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
In this episode of "Advice from a Call Center Geek," we dive into a topic that's known for stirring up plenty of debates and strong feelings: CcaaS platforms.
I'm eager to offer my perspective on what's happening in the world of these providers right now. We'll explore the various aspects that make this topic so controversial and why opinions vary widely in the industry.
My aim is to provide you with a detailed understanding of the current landscape, drawing from my experiences and observations in the field.
If you are looking for USA outsourced customer service or sales support, we here at Expivia would really like to help you support your customers.
Please check us out at expiviausa.com, or email us at info@expivia.net!
Follow Tom: @tlaird_expivia
Join our Facebook Call Center Community: www.facebook.com/callcentergeek
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tlairdexpivia/
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@callcenter_geek
Linkedin Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9041993/
Watch us: Advice from a Call Center Geek Youtube Channel
This is advice from a call center geek a weekly podcast with a focus on all things call center. We'll cover it all, from call center operations, hiring, culture, technology and education. We're here to give you actionable items to improve the quality of yours and your customer's experience. This is an evolving industry with creative minds and ambitious people like this guy. Not only is his passion call center operations, but he's our host. He's the CEO of Expedia Interaction Marketing Group and the call center geek himself, tom Laird.
Speaker 2:Welcome back everybody to another episode of advice from a call center geek the call center and contact center podcast. We try to give you some actionable items, take back in your contact center, improve the overall quality, improve the agent experience and improve the customer experience as well. I guess that's really why we're here. My name is Tom Laird. I'm the CEO here at Expedia, interaction Marketing, expedia Digital Auto QA all of our contact center-centric businesses. Expedia for those of you who are new, we're about a 6,700 seat, not huge, but a BPO or contact center outsourcer. We also do a lot of consulting with companies that are trying to move to maybe different contact center CCAST platforms. That's what I wanted to focus on today.
Speaker 2:I wanted to talk to you guys about some of, I guess, my favorite or my rankings, which can get extremely controversial. I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions on this, but who do I view, as I don't want to say the best, but have the most robust platforms? So a couple of things before I get into that Number one. A lot of the analysts come out with their reports over the last couple of years. Right, you have the Gardner Magic Quadrant, you have the Forester Wave, you have. You have compasses and you have wheels and you have spokes and you have all these different reports that come out and some of them, I think, are close to how I view the market, not to say how I view it as the end-all be-all, but some of them are way off right. I mean not even close the providers that they have as the leaders I would not send to any client ever on a consulting side. And when you peel back the onion on this, the analyst thing is, I think it's kind of broken right. All of these, whether you're in all of them, do it. So the nicest, the Genesis, is the UJets, the Five Nines, the variant just had their analyst summit.
Speaker 2:And again, I think that there's the difference between having a conference where you're talking about all your tools, right, and then there's the whole whining and dining of analysts, right, taking analysts to Portugal into, I think nice took theirs to Machu Picchu, you know, over this past year, right. So you whine them and you dine them and there's a little bit in my mind of a skewing of results, because it is a little bit of a pay-to-play, you know, when it comes to some of this analysts. Now I'm not saying that they're paying people off. I'm saying the overall industry. This is how most industries are. How analysts do, the reports is kind of broken, and I just want to be that I don't know the person who's never been whined and dined on any of this stuff, who just sees it all the time, who talks about it in the industry all the time, who I've taken so many different demos with so many different companies that I think I have a really good feel for how the industry is out there, what's going on, and I want to give my unbiased opinion now.
Speaker 2:Having said that too, I know some of you guys are going to say well, I am a nice customer, right, I do use CX-1 in our, in our BPO, so is there some bias there? Maybe, right, I don't think anybody would disagree or say that nice is not one of the top contenders anyway, and I'm not going to rank it like a top 10. I'm going to just kind of talk about, and I think, leaders and maybe a group of CCAST for writers that are below them, some up and comers that I think I don't know enough about that I think people need to check out and I need to check out as well. That's kind of where my thought process, of where I'm coming at this from. Let me also say this no one that I'm going to talk here, talk about here, is a poor or a bad company, like all of these companies. If I'm even talking about you, right, that means you've been doing some really cool things, right?
Speaker 2:Not every CCAST provider is for every single customer, right. It's kind of like if you have kids and you want the like my wife, we've been talking about getting the third row for the SUV, right, so we can take our kids, take our kids' friends, right? I'm not buying a BMW sports car, right. And it's the same thing when you talk about contact center and technology providers. You have to find the right fit, and that might mean not that BMW, right, but it might mean an awesome Ford. I want to just say that too. I'm not putting down any provider. I think they're just different use cases and different specialties for different companies. So let me get into this now.
Speaker 2:And I don't think that if you look at any analyst report and they don't have nice and genesis, and I believe now five, nine as well, in that kind of total leader category, we might disagree on who's one, two or three, but I don't think it's even close, in my opinion, right that those guys aren't. You know one, two or three, so I would say that it is the nice genesis in five, nine, in really no particular order. Those are the BMWs, those are the enterprise guys, those are the have every bell and whistle, most of the tools you know. Nice I love because everything one of the things they have is I think they have leading technology in most now, everything is native to the platform. So they used to be in contact and they used to be nice. Right, they came together when, when in contact says hey, we have this really good cloud, but nice is really all of these WFM and analytics and all these unbelievable tools. Nice, yeah, we have all these tools. We don't really have an ACD, but we're prem based. So they joined together to take the best of both companies and now most of all of the on prem solutions have been migrated onto the platform and CX one and are now in the cloud. So that makes things really easy from an integration standpoint. Everything is there now.
Speaker 2:Are they a little bit more expensive? Yeah, I think they are, you know, compared to a lot of the other, but I think, again, you get a lot with it. You know Genesis and five nine have been, have been kind of going tooth and neck. Genesis made great strides. I mean they're, if you, if you looked at you know whatever say, seven, eight, nine years ago we weren't even talking about them, right. They're they're on cloud or they're they're non on prem, right. So their cloud solution has has really done them really cool things and I think you know even now what they're doing with some of the AI things is really cool. Five nine is kind of always been there and they're kind of been I don't want to say steady Eddie, but they've been up and down and I think they're up now.
Speaker 2:If you look at most of these guys, they have some type of AI integration. They're doing some type of back end AI. They also allow you to integrate with any other AI tool very easily and obviously you know any other integrations into CRM, proprietary systems, banking cores. All that stuff is is pretty much native and all that stuff has been built out in those platforms. So for me, I have an enterprise customer. You know they have maybe a couple hundred seats, down to 50 seats, down to 30 seats, but they need specialty things. They want analytics. They want workforce management. They have, you know, specific integrations into, like I said, cores, proprietary CRMs, those kind of things. Those are who I'm bringing to demo with those customers.
Speaker 2:Now the next level, I think, gets interesting because the next level has some amazing and I think the theme of it is everybody has a really great ACD Meaning just the basic format, how to route calls, skills-based routing All of that from a ease of use everyone has figured out. I don't think that there's a lot of differentiation in the space when it comes to everyone's ACD. How you differentiate is the insulator tools that they have or that they're selling. So when we talk about that next level, I think you really look at things like Amazon Connect. Let me just pull up my notes here. I want to make sure that I don't say anything wrong.
Speaker 2:Amazon Connect I think I have jaded feelings, I think, on Amazon Connect, because if Amazon really wanted to take this thing over, they could have and I know a lot of people disagree on this, but it just seems like they're putting their toe in. They're trying to do what they can, but it's not great. The user experience is what really struggles with them. The reporting dashboards, like all that stuff. You almost have to bring in a third party to get basic dashboards and reporting. Now they're super cheap and they're on a pay-to-play. That might be their model too. If you have a really high-end, robust telephony team and you can create a bunch of this stuff, you can probably save a ton of money. But for most people moving in the CCAST world, they want to have that stuff already.
Speaker 2:Talkdesk is another company that I think was. If you would have talked to me three or four years ago, they would have probably been in that upper echelon. I think that their user experience is probably the best of anyone that I've seen. Their ease of use of being able to have non-IT people do the platform and utilize the platform is amazing. But again they drop off again when it comes to a lot of the tools that they don't have that those top three guys do. I think one that's coming in really hard is Zoom In their contact center. I think that that is going to be something that they're really making a push to be one of the top tier CCAST providers.
Speaker 2:There's somebody I think I'm extremely interested in seeing more of. I think it was Zoomtopia. I watched a lot of different videos from there as well. I've never demoed the project product live. I've just seen a bunch of demos online. I think that, talking to a lot of friends that I trust and respect, they're very high on their platform. That's something that I'd like to see as removing, something that I didn't have.
Speaker 2:I did talk about this in a LinkedIn post the other day and that's kind of what's kind of sparked this episode. But you know, ring central CX, right where they're looking at the fully kind of AI content center, is something to be Looked at. I think that's really super early into this into the Into the discussion. So they say they have a lot of things, right. I want to see if they really do have those things. What does their analytics look like? What does you know they're? They're genitive. I think they have Chatbot system seem look like what do you need to integrate with it? I don't know enough about it yet, but I think that that is something to kind of take a peek at it and think through, as they've kind of they went from a basically a White labeled CX one product to now, you know, kind of moving out onto their own, which I think is something kind of interesting. That that how they kind of built their model. They were, you know, one of the first kind of you cast providers and then kind of how this thing has has really evolved.
Speaker 2:This is kind of interesting, the I keep calling them up and comers but they've been around for a while now and I think there's some really good use cases for them. But you know, you, jet and dial pad have been making some inroads in some waves as well. They're a little bit newer. You know, then, kind of those legacy it's funny how you called you know 10 year old companies now legacy companies in. But I think this space has been moving so, so quickly. But there there's specific Companies that I would bring, you know you jet, especially a dial pad, to. You know there's some really interesting things that I think that those guys are doing been very forward thinking. The technology is there.
Speaker 2:Here's what I get worried about with with a lot of the newer guys, and I don't think that this gets talked enough about. But you know we talked about back in infrastructure. We talked about, you know, being on on AWS. We talked about, you know the uptimes of some of these providers and you know, I know things have really advanced in the in the last even five to six years. But I know how in contact because we've been a very long customer with them, the pain points that they went through when they were growing and scaling and and how they did go down a lot. Now I have not been down and probably I'm not gonna. Would you know the last two to three years like literally Never been down right, so nice, and CX one, I mean they really figured that out. I just that's. Those are things, those growing pains, right, that that I worry about again with with younger companies Again, maybe it maybe you know we've moved past that with everyone. I don't know if we have, but those are some things.
Speaker 2:Again that I really think about when talking with clients that are looking to outsource is is how important are those types through, where is a company in their kind of their, the structure of their build and the scaling of the company and how well funded are they? Right, there's been a lot of companies that have struggled on the funding side. So then you know they don't roll out with, you know updates as quickly as they possibly should, and of those are other things that kind of look through and look, look at it, you look at. You know companies that are almost begging for money at certain points, which you know a couple of these guys have done. I think everybody's kind of gotten through that for the most part. But but let's talk about them, the two companies that again, you know Vonage, like ring central used to basically white label CX one. They have really their own kind of product now.
Speaker 2:I've not seen enough of it. I've heard pretty good things. You know I'm a Tularis guy, so you know I get and talk to a lot of the people at Tularis who have. They have told me to bring Vonage into more deals than I probably have. So that's, that's a company that I need to look deeper at, harder at. I don't I shouldn't. You know I don't have a really good opinion, you know, positive or negative there, just to know that they've done been trying to do some really cool things. And Another company and I think I believe that they are a European company that is coming now over to the states, which is content guru.
Speaker 2:This is one that every analyst report. They were there so, which means that they probably had some money to give to get there, which is saying something right, especially for someone that I've never heard of, which it almost surprises me that there there are some things like in the space that I haven't heard of from from from You're talking about kind of the larger players, but I've never seen a demo that. It's something that I need to reach out to those guys. I want to see more, see what they have to offer. I've not even really heard anybody Utilizing them, but again, I think that they're making a strong push to come here into the states and I'd love to see what what they have. So those are kind of my again my what did I say? Like eight or nine companies that again I would, I would feel pretty comfortable talking through other than again, contaguru, vantage, like where I don't know enough, you know, but those six or seven that we talked about from from kind of the BMWs to you know the really really good companies.
Speaker 2:Maybe you know, if you, if you don't need I don't need analytics, tom, I'm a 20 seat center, I'm a 25 seat center, I'm a 40 seat center. I don't really need workforce management. We have that already taken care of. I don't really need, you know, analytics. All I need is a really good ACD. I need multi channel or omni channel and maybe a QA platform. Then you don't have to go to the most expensive deal, right, you can utilize, because these providers are really, really good and you're you're not paying for all the bells and whistles that. But if you want all the bells and whistles, it's there too, right? I want workforce management, analytics, agent, assist, real time analytics, advanced report, like. I need everything. That's there too, and you're going to pay a little bit more, but the products that you're going to get are going to be there.
Speaker 2:So, again it's, it's not a one size fit all, and I think a lot of companies are trying to differentiate, differentiate themselves that way, making sure that you know they're they're not competing maybe with the nicest and the genesis and the five nines, and they want to kind of go their route with with a smaller enterprise type customer or somebody that you know has a bunch of tools already that they don't want to give up, but they just want to, you know, have them slapped onto the ACD, those kind of things. There's, there's a place for that. Let me throw this at you guys too, and I'm going to pull this up from my LinkedIn, because this shocked the living heck out of me yesterday when I posted this and my friend Eric Kraus sent me the the T tech investor or analyst report for third quarter or their earnings report. I'm sorry, not their analyst. From their earnings call, two things absolutely stuck out to me is number one. They said and this is speaking of AI most companies are not ready for AI. All most implementations primarily have been pilots. Many clients are seeing the benefits. However, they lack the technology, infrastructure, data readiness and the confidence that these initiatives can scale in a cost effective and reliable manner.
Speaker 2:I've been saying that from the door. If take, take the end of 2023, take the beginning of 2024, you have to prepare yourself for AI. You can't just go buy a solution, slap it on. Number one you have to have a robust KMS platform that is set up and ready to go. You have to have access to your data in a, in a format that can be utilized Right. So currently it's some platform will allow you use voice, but for the most part it's called transcripts. You need to have transcripts. And the third is as many integrations into your data as humanly possible. Those are the three kind of first things you need to do before you even think about AI.
Speaker 2:People aren't even talking about that. It's a to a detriment. Vendors aren't saying that more. They're basically just saying, hey, buy our stuff and we'll figure it out with you. But start to think about that. Data readiness, data readiness, data readiness right. Access to data is everything and you have to make sure that that your data, your integrations and also your access to this information is readily available. This is the one that absolutely blew me away.
Speaker 2:T-tech says the findings of our recent AI benchmark study reflect the current limited state of market and client readiness, for example, one for businesses to unlock the full benefit of AI, they must move to the cloud. However, almost half of the respondents to our study expressed concern about their technology platform readiness, and only a small fraction are operating at a scale in the cloud, right? So a lot of you think my technology, we're so technologically non-advanced, we're behind. If you're in the cloud, you're probably way ahead of the game, right? So if you're still on-prem, don't even think about AI. You have to move to such a different level to get to that point, and I think that that's a real hold back, and I did not realize that there's still a vast community of people out there that are still operating on-prem, that have not moved to the cloud, and I guess it makes sense to me Now that I, when you really think about it, it's just like, at least in my world working with AutoQA so many organizations I had no idea there were so many that are still using Excel spreadsheets for quality assurance and there's an opportunity there to help those companies out to get on this technological bandwagon. But, yeah, I think that really stood out to me in that T-Tech call to say, hey, most clients, they're not data ready and, to be honest, they're not even in the cloud, right, which, again, totally blew me away. So, all right, guys, that's what I got.
Speaker 2:I think, again, this is for, I would say, the end of 2023, first and second quarter of 2024, if you're listening, that's probably when this is all viable. Things are going to change so fast that it's going to take until just until spring of next year and we'd have to re-look at all of this stuff again with all the technology that's coming out and where things are moving. I think it's almost at a quarter by quarter how quickly things are moving. So I hope that this helps you. I hope that this kind of lets you think about hey, not everyone, it's not a one size fits all and also, if you need any help with any of this stuff.
Speaker 2:If you need any help with finding a provider, please DM me on LinkedIn. I'm more than happy to help. I don't charge anything for it, in full transparency. We get paid on the back end by the providers. Whoever you choose, everybody's about the same. So whatever consultant you use, everybody's pretty much agnostic. They just want to find. I'm sure there's some a little bit of shady things going on out there, but for the most part, for anyone that I've talked to, they just want to put you in the right platform for your company, make you a long-term customer, and that's kind of what I would love to do for you too, if there's any one that has any need. So again, thank you guys very much. I will talk to you next week. I'm going to try to do one episode before Thanksgiving, so probably next Wednesday, and maybe do some kind of special episode with that as well. So thanks, guys, and I will talk to everybody next week.