Ventana Research released its 2018 Value Index for Contact Centre in the Cloud, a quantified, research-based index evaluating technology, both vendors and products. The Contact Centre in the Cloud Value Index assesses product adequacy for a broad range of contact centre needs ranging from handling, capturing, analyzing and optimizing customer interactions to engagement, operations and agent management.

Using this Value Index, business and IT organizations – especially those in customer experience and contact centres – will be able to evaluate contact centre in the cloud software and examine vendors’ offerings in the context of their own contact centre requirements. Ventana Research’s Value Indexes are the result of more than two decades of experience and knowledge of the market for customer experience applications. It provides an in-depth analyses of technology suppliers’ products and evaluates their differences.

The Value Index for Contact Center in the Cloud is based on a comprehensive examination of thirteen vendors’ products in seven evaluation categories, five that evaluate the products’ ability to support the breadth and depth of contact centre processes and two that address vendor validation and total cost of ownership/return on investment. The 2018 Value Index for Contact Center in the Cloud identifies the companies that deliver the highest value based on an overall weighted evaluation. The Overall Value Index Leaders in the 2018 Value Index are NICE, Aspect Software and BroadSoft. Companies that score in the top three in any category earn the designation Value Index Leader; NICE has done so in six of the seven categories, Aspect Software and Genesys in four categories, BroadSoft, NewVoiceMedia and Serenova in two of the categories and RingCentral in one category. All vendors included in the Value Index were required to operate a telephone channel directly as part of their offering to the market, a requirement that excluded the following vendors: Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and Verint.

The Value Index assesses the effectiveness of each vendor’s support for the buying process and customer assurance. The Value Index is not just a selection of “cool” products; rather than evaluating a vendor primarily on its vision or market execution, the Value Index provides specific numerical ratings, both overall and for each of the seven components of the Value Index, for technology buyers to consider. Organizations can use the Value Index as a guide to assess existing technology providers and determine if their provider best meets their needs today and in the future.

“To remain competitive, organizations must deliver the best possible customer experience through all channels of engagement,” said Mark Smith, CEO and chief research officer of Ventana Research. “Supporting multiple customer contact channels creates challenges. To deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience, organizations must integrate channels of communication, share all available information among the employees and systems handling interactions, apply the same rules in all of them and maintain context as customers move from channel to channel. The Value Index provides businesses the ability to assess contact centre in the cloud software and determine the readiness of their existing and potential new vendors with a blueprint and RFP approach not found anywhere else in the industry, enabling them to provide that differentiating customer experience.”

This new Value Index is a fully independent, research-based undertaking. It is neither sponsored nor influenced by technology vendors and is conducted solely in pursuit of Ventana Research’s mission to provide value to business and IT through benchmark assessments, workshops and advisory services. Ventana Research’s goal is to help guide organizations to optimal efficiency in their use of technology investments for business and IT.

To learn more and read a the executive summary of the 2018 Value Index for Contact Center in the Cloud, please visit www.ventanaresearch.com/value_index/customer_experience/contact_center_in_the_cloud