Over the past 18 months, many cloud contact center vendors have hit the headlines for embedding their voice and digital channels, call controls, and routing engines into CRM platforms.
AWS, Five9, and Genesys have all done so with Salesforce Service Cloud.
The latter two followed suit with ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM).
Meanwhile, Cisco Webex and Talkdesk embedded their channels into Epic Cheers, a popular CRM in the healthcare space.
In making these moves, the CCaaS providers promised to streamline agent experiences, centralize customer service data, and reduce management burden.
Yet, there’s one notable absentee from these headlines: NICE, the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave CCaaS leader.
According to Barry Cooper, President of the CX Division at NICE, there’s good reason for that.
"We want to do it the right way. We don’t think the right way is to simply embed a commodity, like a voice or chat channel, into a CRM,” he told CX Today.
It’s our belief that – as you have a system of record and a system of workflow – there needs to be a system of interactions.
"I’ve been validating this for months," continued Cooper. "I’ve been talking to NICE CXone Mpower customers, and what they’re desperate not to do is to introduce a new "Frankenstack" of solutions interfacing with their customers."
NICE’s Vision for a System of Interactions
As Cooper suggests, NICE’s alternative to embedding CCaaS tools into CRM systems is to build a system of interactions.
Salesforce can plug Agentforce into that system of interaction, ServiceNow can fit Moveworks into it, and so forth.
Meanwhile, their AI agents can leverage all the data on the CXone Mpower platform. That includes not only consumer data. Instead, NICE will share data from its AI models, quality assurance (QA) solutions, and more.
Meanwhile, the third-party agents will memorialize their interactions back into CXone Mpower, maintaining a complete view of interactions.
For Cooper, that solves everyone’s issues and enables a consistent system of interactions.
"I think that is slightly different from the vision of others in our space, who are happy to plug into the system of record," said Cooper.
"That is a problem as it’s going to – ultimately – break up that system of interaction, and you are not going to have a consistent view. Because the CRM only provides one part of the picture.
If there is a slightly different pace to what we’re doing with big tech, it’s because we want to do it the right way, the way our customers are telling us it needs to be.
In making this point, Cooper stresses how contact centers typically integrate with many more systems than a CRM and highlights how NICE wants to go further.
Thinking Beyond CCaaS-CRM Integrations
For CCaaS providers, close relationships with the likes of Salesforce and ServiceNow are critical, and NICE is in talks with the vendors on how to further both relationships.
Yet, Cooper reiterates how the tech stack that contact centers must access extends beyond CCaaS and CRM. As such, there are many more brands it should be working with.
That’s part of the reason NICE turned to Scott Russell as its new CEO. His expertise in broader customer experience markets positions him well to expand the company’s influence.
"He has a lot of experience in working with big tech companies, like SAP, Snowflake, AWS, and so on," added Cooper. "A big part of our strategy is to work more closely with those types of organizations."
Indeed, Russell will help tell the tale of NICE’s vision of a system of interactions and why it matters.
Yet, while Russell may be the new mouthpiece, he is not ripping up the NICE playbook with this vision. As per Cooper, it has been in motion for some time.
The Pieces Are Coming Together
Think back over the past 18 months. NICE’s acquisition of LiveVox and move into UCaaS underline its vision of being that system of interactions.
With LiveVox, NICE pulled "the best of outbound" onto its platform with an intuitive proactive outreach solution that follows the various rules of individual US states, Europe, and beyond.
"It’s another example of the complexity we’re managing via a system of interactions," noted Cooper.