Since the beginning of SaaS, buyers have purchased applications that essentially comprise of lots of settings, "switches" that users can turn on and off. They’re not truly customizable, but they do have a small amount of flexibility.
Tools in the customer experience space are no different. Whether a service team lays down an IVR or marketing opens up an engagement channel, they’ve tended to purchase an application with pre-built settings.
A simple SaaS tool may have a dozen settings; a complex solution could have thousands. Yet, this premise of limited flexibility runs true across both.
And, if the IT team ever needs some help implementing such a solution, the vendor sends them a knowledge article highlighting the place to find another setting.
Composable platforms rip up that script. As Pierce Buckley, CEO & Co-Founder at babelforce, says:
Instead of looking for a process on a page, the business starts by defining the process it would love to have. The platform then provides the ability to compose that process from what is essentially Lego or a set of building blocks’ that can be entirely customizable.
As such, the business doesn’t have to follow the workflows that their vendor has imagined. Rather, it can define its own desired workflows and create them.
That brings several benefits, including greater control over user experiences, heightened flexibility, and greater adaptability.
Recognizing these advantages, Gartner has compiled a list of Cool Composable Customer Engagement Platform Providers.
Here are some of the businesses that broke onto that list.
The Cool Vendors for Composable Customer Engagement Platforms
Gartner analysts engage with vendors across the customer experience space, assessing their tech portfolio, growth rate, strategy, vision, and various other business dimensions.
Then, they nominate a small number of companies to become "cool vendors", including those likely to be category-changing or successful within their industry.
Remarkably, some have suggested that 90 percent of Gartner's historically named "cool vendors" have achieved success via high market valuations and growth rates.
In the 2023 composable customer engagement platforms report, “cool vendors” include: babelforce, Nylas, LeapXpert, Now4real, and Vyntelligence.
Vendors don’t nominate themselves for recognition in the Cool Vendors; Garter reaches out to them, independently deciding who would become a “cool vendor”.
As such, each vendor appears well-placed in a world with new customer expectations fueled by the short, sweet, slick journeys consumers have experienced from brands like Amazon and Uber.
With composable platforms, these three cool vendors have paved the way for organizations to keep up with such business juggernauts. To consider how, let’s deep dive on babelforce.
babelforce: A Verified Cool Vendor
To meet the expectations of modern consumers, many brands have sunk significant funds into developer resources and built customer journeys from the ground up.