Over the past 12 months, Microsoft, Google, and Zoom have entered the CCaaS space.
Each contact center proposition is at a different stage of maturity. Although, they all currently lag industry leaders, which include - according to Garter – Genesys, NICE, and Talkdesk.
How long will it take for them to catch up? Potentially not long at all, as they have the capacity to invest significantly in the market – as Microsoft plans to "aggressively" do. They may also go out and acquire a leading vendor and shortcircuit their route to CCaaS success.
But, for now, it is fascinating to assess their current propositions and how they stack up against one another. With the insights of Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, here is how they compare and contrast.
Microsoft Dynamics for Customer Service 365
Microsoft is generating a lot of buzz in the contact center space. However, not for its dedicated CCaaS platform. Instead, many other CCaaS providers are attempting to integrate with Microsoft Teams so that companies can use their products within the UC platform.
Such offerings are coming to market rapidly as Microsoft adds Teams licenses at a terrific speed and backdoors its way to contact center success.
Discussing this status quo in a recent CX Today article, Kerravala states:
Teams is a really good chat product, it’s an okay meetings product, [but] the telephony is substandard, which is why so many UC partners have the Microsoft “operate and connect” type of offering where you can add telephony features.
However, its native CCaaS solution - Microsoft Dynamics for Customer Service 365 – has not caught fire as many perhaps expected. Why? Likely because the contact center is very important to most companies. It’s the first line of defense in many cases, and many companies consider CX their brand differentiator.
Building on this point, Kerravala says:
I don’t think you can build a half-baked product and throw it at the wall, as they have done with Teams. This is something that they have to be all in or all out.
For that reason, many will wait for Microsoft to come up with more of a full-featured product, which includes fundamental contact center solutions – such as a social channel, WFM tools, and a quality management system.
In the meantime, the likes of Five9, NICE, and RingCentral will continue integrating with Teams to provide a fully-fledged contact center platform to Microsoft users.
Since this article was written, Microsoft released a new CCaaS offering. Discover more here: Microsoft Launches a Digital Contact Center Platform
Google Cloud Contact Center AI Platform
Many analysts predicted that Google would become a dominant player in the UC space. Yet, those projections never came to fruition. With a lack of announcements following the launch of its CCaaS solution in March 2022, Kerravala questions whether history is repeating itself. He says:
For the most part, UCaaS and CCaaS remain somewhat of a hobby almost for the company, and I’m waiting for them to really step up.
Its partnership with UJET is more promising, and if Google acquires the vendor, that will signal a serious intent within the CCaaS market.
Meanwhile, in terms of in-house innovation, Google has enhanced its speech recognition capabilities, which could bolster several tools within its CCaaS platform. Yet, the company did not refer to its contact center solution when making the announcement, perhaps signifying its lack of significant intent within the space.
“Right now, I would put them on the sidelines,” concludes Kerravala.