Gartner defines the Contact Center Infrastructure market as equipment, software and services that enable organizations to manage multichannel self-service and assisted service customer interactions holistically from a customer experience and an employee engagement perspective. CCI solutions are dedicated to supporting a single customer enterprise or tenant on each instance of the system, even if that customer or tenant supports multiple contact center operations on that dedicated instance. CCI solutions can be deployed on the customer’s premises or can be hosted and managed in a third-party data center or private cloud.
Workforce engagement management (WEM) software is a collection of technologies that help manage the customer service workforce to ensure a high level of operational performance while elevating employee well-being, discretionary effort and satisfaction. The core capabilities of WEM products include: • Evaluation and improvement • Time management • Metrics and recognition (that is, performance management) • Assistance and task management • Voice of the employee (VoE) feedback • Recruitment and onboarding
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. The ambition is for customers to self-serve assistance, through web portals or chatbots. But it is also recognized that complex issues still need the support of employees. CCaaS technology is instrumental in orchestrating both self- and assisted-service engagement with customers. The technology can also manage the quality of engagement between the customer and the customer service representative, recognizing that premium customer experiences are achieved through premium employee experiences.
Gartner defines conversational AI platforms (CAIPs) as SaaS products that primarily enable the development of applications simulating human conversation across multiple channels and media. CAIPs leverage composite AI, including generative AI (GenAI) and natural language technologies. Conversations can use a mix of modalities such as text, voice and visual content. To support the building of conversational applications, platforms provide extensive coding options, from pro-code to no-code. Application areas include chatbots, virtual assistants (VAs) and conversational AI (CAI) agents. CAIPs are used to create, deploy and manage AI-driven conversational interfaces. These platforms enable businesses to develop VAs and conversational AI Agents that facilitate both customer-facing and internal interactions through pro-code/low-code/no-code tools. CAIPs empower businesses to centralize and democratize the development and management of multiple, diverse CAI initiatives, leading to more cohesive and efficient operations. The blend of capabilities provided by CAIPs is distinctive compared to those offered by other CAI solutions, such as targeted extensions for CAI found in other enterprise applications (e.g., CRM systems, contact center platforms) or stand-alone GenAI-native apps. In comparison, CAIPs are a better fit for strategic and scalable enterprise-grade CAI adoption.
Gartner defines customer journey analytics and orchestration (CJA/O) as solutions that track and analyze how customers and prospects interact with an organization across multiple channels over time. Most CJA/O solutions subsequently enable organizations to prioritize and orchestrate real-time improvements to the customer experience in multichannel journeys throughout the end-to-end customer life cycle. The journey lens provided by CJA/O solutions offers insights by combining cross-channel interaction data with transactional, voice of the customer (VoC) and customer profile data on a time axis. Other types of analysis in isolation cannot achieve this. This enables data-driven predictions at scale and experimentation with multichannel interventions that can be robustly verified as driving increased customer satisfaction, retention and lifetime value.
The market for SA platforms in customer service and support is an application that analyzes speech content in customer interactions in real time and postcontact. Vendors providing these services offer the following solutions: -Transcription and metadata for traits of the interaction, including sentiment analysis -Interface for designing workflows and visualizing data -Storage and flexible deployment options -Ability to customize speech models, encrypt and redact sensitive data, and integrate with the enterprise ecosystem. Informed application of SA technology capabilities will help customer service and support leaders monitor and evaluate customer interactions to improve customer and employee experience. SA platforms can either be stand-alone analytics platforms with integration capabilities or can be included natively as part of broader customer engagement suites.