Gartner defines contact center as a service (CCaaS) as solutions offering SaaS-based applications that enable customer service departments to manage multichannel customer interactions holistically from both a customer-experience and employee-experience perspective. CCaaS is a key technology platform used to support the customer service experience, whether it be self-service or assisted by customer service representatives. All organizations need to offer customer assistance. The preference is for remote support via voice and digital channels over physical presence in offices and stores, though it is common for organizations to offer multiple options.
Meeting solutions are real-time communication services with their associated devices that support live interactions between participants for internal and external collaboration, presentations, learning, training sessions and webinars. Meeting solutions power diverse use cases, such as one-on-one meetings, remote sales engagements, board meetings, telehealth sessions, remote banking and consulting services, to name just a few. Meeting solutions enable rich information sharing and interaction by combining audio and video, in-meeting chat, content and screen sharing, and visual collaboration and whiteboarding.
Revenue intelligence platforms are third-party solutions that enhance the activity management, deal insights and pipeline analytics offered by sales force automation (SFA) platforms. Predominantly used by B2B sales organizations, revenue intelligence platforms facilitate the capture of sales interactions and coach sellers to quickly anticipate buyers’ needs. They use AI/ML technology to amplify the value of commercial data, accelerate sales cycles and provide better visibility and insights on pipeline performance.
Gartner defines unified communications as a service (UCaaS) as a multitenant, subscription-based service. It is cloud-delivered, and it provides business telephony features; external, public switched telephone network (PSTN) connectivity that enables inbound or outbound calling; and collaboration features, such as messaging and meetings. UCaaS services can be consumed by end users with traditional handsets, desktop clients, meeting room systems and mobile apps. Gartner’s definition of meetings for the UCaaS market focuses on the capabilities for internal collaboration, work from home and external presentation meeting use cases only. Other specialized use cases — such as webinar, remote support, distance learning and training — are often available from UCaaS offerings, but are not mandatory for this research. These use cases are part of a separate market defined by Gartner (meeting solutions).