The CCI market covers solutions that include the equipment, software and services that enable customer service organizations to manage multichannel customer interactions holistically (using self-service and assisted service) from a customer experience and an employee engagement perspective. Central to the definition of CCI is that the solutions are dedicated to supporting a single customer 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 are used by customer service and telemarketing centers, employee service and support centers, help desk service centers, and other types of structured communications operations.
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.
Gartner defines event technology platforms as tools that enable B2B marketers to execute virtual and/or in-person events for external audiences. These platforms provide native capabilities to engage and communicate with prospective attendees, registrants and sponsors, manage logistics, deliver content and enable attendees to engage with other participants. Out-of-the-box integrations with sales force automation and marketing automation platforms are provided to track engagement. Features and capabilities are provided in a self-service model, with some offering managed service support to run the technology when preferred.
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.
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).
The workstream collaboration (WSC) market consists of products that deliver a conversational workspace based on a persistent group chat. Products in this market are primarily used to organize, coordinate, and execute outcome-driven teamwork such as that associated with the project- or process-related activities. Secondary uses can include ad hoc collaboration and community discussions.