Has Gartner’s Critical Capabilities evaluation altered our view?

Before you read on, you should know that my working title for this article was, “The Great CCaaS MQ Reset.” I love a theme, and that title seemed to be in keeping with all of “The Greats” (Resignation, Reprioritization, etc.).

But, it wasn’t entirely accurate. And then very recently, I was fortunate to spend some time at my local northern California Immersive Van Gogh Experience. (Which, by the way, I highly recommend. Here is a list of cities in case you’re interested.)

As a result, my view of both of these classics has forever changed.

As for the Gartner Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) Magic Quadrant (MQ), I’d like to open up our dialogue and my point of view with three key points:

  • Four CCaaS players were eliminated this year, which forces us to reframe how we view this year’s Magic Quadrant
  • Gartner’s CCaaS Critical Capabilities, while less familiar to non-Gartner clients, has undergone what might arguably be the most dramatic set of changes in nearly a decade
  • All combined Unified Communications/Contact Center (UC/CC) vendors, including 8x8, Cisco, and Vonage, were placed in the very distinct “Niche Player” category

Looking at year-over-year (YOY) changes between the 2022 and 2021 MQs is like looking at real Van Gogh paintings versus giclee prints on a spotlighted wall.

And so, I posit that if it weren’t for the folks who helped us reimagine and reframe Van Gogh, we might accept the new view of this year’s CCaaS MQ as Reality with a capital “R.” Please let’s explore another perspective together.

1. Are we looking at the forest or the trees?

Van Gogh’s last painting featured an array of intricately intertwined tree roots. I’m not certain whether these were cypress, but I would be inclined to think so, given his focus on them in “Starry Night” and other significant works. It’s an interesting perspective. Either way, the immersive experience suggests that cypress trees are associated with death, loss and mourning. This year, four previous MQ participants were eliminated, and I’m guessing those vendors are indeed saddened. For the rest of us, the reality is that this year’s MQ has been recalibrated–reframed–with each and every remaining player moving either down or to the left. We must keep this in mind when looking at this year’s report.

2. Capabilities move into new focus

Changes to this year’s CCaaS Critical Capabilities, the companion piece to the Gartner MQ, are perhaps—in my opinion as a long-standing CCaaS product marketing leader–the most comprehensive in nearly a decade. This year’s changes affected all categories, definitions, use cases and weightings.

Five previous capabilities were eliminated. Five capabilities were either renamed, bifurcated or newly introduced–with sweeping impact on each vendor’s relative scoring.

“Multichannel Contact Management,” for instance, was split into two new capability categories including “Telephony-centric Offer” and “Digital-centric Offer,” each with an astounding 30% weighting (the highest) in their most closely related use case category. Meanwhile, inclusion criteria for this year’s MQ placed great emphasis on telephony and not digital. So which view is most important?

In the newly introduced category, we see areas such as “Channel Partner Program” with evaluation criteria that–while meaningful to Gartner’s enterprise client base–is well beyond the scope of objective feature/functionality scoring.

3. Looking at “Niche” in a new light

The most striking observation in this year’s report is that every single combined UC/CC provider has now been placed in the “Niche” player position.

This is in stark contrast to the requirements stated by nearly every organization today: which is the ability to deliver integrated contact center (CC) and business communications (UC to include voice, video, meetings and chat/collaboration) across the enterprise. The new reality is that only leading UC/CC providers can exceed every requirement needed by today’s customer-obsessed organizations.

Here is what you need to know to take control and empower customer-facing employees across your organization–”Niche” player or not.

First, ask whether your short-list CCaaS vendor can support formal contact center agents and representatives as well as informal, customer-facing employees throughout the organization. Then, confirm that the vendor offers an industry-leading, financially-backed 99.999% uptime SLA across business communications and contact center (UCaaS/CCaaS).

And if your organization is customer-obsessed, look outside of four magic squares that are not meant for you. 8x8 Contact Center is here for you with Gartner-recognized strengths, including:

Ready to take a new look at your approach to customer experience? 8x8 can help you step back and see the CX landscape with a new perspective that supports both agent and employee experience across your organization.

Watch a demo, or read more about our strengths. Download a complimentary copy of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service here.