Episode Transcript
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Hello and welcome, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of metrocyte, a podcast for metrogy. I'm Beth Schultz. I'm the vice president of research and a principal analyst with metrogy.
And with me today is Diane Myers. Diane is our senior research director and she's responsible for our market forecasting and vendor rankings, which are part of our metrocast service, which she also oversees.
Today we're going to be walking through our third annual ranking of CCAS providers. So, Diane, get us started by just reminding everybody about the metrorank process.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, great.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: Hi.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Thanks, everyone. So, yeah, so within certain categories, and in this case, we're looking at contact center as a service, right? So the CCAS market, we do a kind of a deep dive review across a couple of different metrics, right, to look at who are the leading providers and, you know, how are they faring, you know, how are they comparing across different criteria, those criteria to even be in in it, right? We look at market share, and in this case, we look at revenue market share for ccas. That is the most kind of fair common denominator in terms of market share that we view in this market. And we look, you know, gosh, the top 20 companies.
And, you know, then we say, okay, in this case, we looked at top 12 and then did the further ranking from there. So we took the top 12 and looked at it. We looked at their financials, we looked at, see, how are they growing their market share relative or their market, you know, are they growing faster or slower than their peers? We look at the product mix, right? We look at a huge long laundry list of features and capabilities. And then we do. We have two different scores that are based on our studies where we're going out and we are interviewing or surveying buyers. And if someone says, oh, I'm a buyer of, or I use, you know, I use this solution for CCAs, we ask them across a bunch of different customer sentiment categories, right? We look to see how are they rating their company around, you know, AI features and reliability and security and things like that. And then we look at customer business success, which is how are you faring in terms of like, CSAT scores, agent turnover. Those are two that we use in this scenario or in this product area. And we look at how they are, they're rating and, you know, how they're doing basically, you know, with the Sunset, like, you know, your score using this platform and how does that compare to others? So those are our six rating criteria.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Okay, thank you for that overview. Now let's just dive right into it. So give us the rundown who had a providers, what are the rankings? And go ahead and give us a highlight of each of them as well.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Let's start with the top three.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Right?
[00:03:07] Speaker B: And number one is, is Nice. And this is the third year we're doing this report. Nice is number one for the third year in a row. And, and, and then we have five, nine and we have Genesis. But let me, let me circle back and talk a little bit about Nice. Nice is the market share leader. So that, and we do weight some of our categories and market share being kind of the key metric for leadership.
[00:03:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: You know, and so they, they get a big boost. Right. So they are the market share leader. They have very strong financials, well above average for their financial strength. They have the strongest market momentum. So not only are they the largest company, but they are outpacing the market. They are growing and doing well and gaining share, which is quite a feat when you are a larger company.
[00:03:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Sometimes you can, you know, you can grow faster and bigger when you're smaller. But Nice really has that momentum behind them. They've got all the product marketing pieces, so top scores for momentum, top scores for product mix, top scores for market share. And they don't have the top score for customer sentiment or business success, but they're still above average in those categories. So that's nice. Five nine and Genesis. Five nine. They have been the second company for, same thing for third year in a row. They are the third largest market share company in this, in the C market.
They also have well above average financial strength. They, you know, they're, they're right there with market momentum. They're right on the average. So they're not doing worse or better. They're, they're, you know, they've got really good market momentum. They've got extremely high, strong product, product mix. You know, they're, they're one of the early companies in this space. So they're just continuing to, to lead and do well on product mix. They had very, very, you know, they had the second highest customer sentiment possible score. So they did very well with that. And so, yeah, so there it's gen that' and I will tell you, Genesis, gosh, they came in, it was so close. 5, 9 and Genesis, the, the difference is actually a hundredth of a, you know, within the hundredths of scoring points. So, you know, on the surface they look, you know, almost, almost identical. And Genesis, let me talk about some of their strengths. They are the number two market share company in the CCAS market, the financial strength isn't as high because they're privately held. So we don't have visibility and access to all the different metrics we look at. There's, they have, you know, good market momentum. They have very, very strong product mix. Same as, you know, as other leading companies that, you know, they definitely are leading. They had the same customer sentiment score as 5, 9. So still, you know, really, really high. And they had well above average customer business success. So those are the top three. And I think most people would expect, you know, those tend to be, if you were to ask some people top of mind who are the big companies, who's doing well? I think Nice 59 and Genesis are always going to be, you know, roll off of people's tongues quite, quite easily. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you know, I was taking a break, taking a breath, but yeah, so, so let's look at, you know, I'm going to take them in buckets, right? So those are like the top three. And, and let me take the next, the next chunk which is Cisco, Vonage and aws. So Cisco was number three I believe last year. They have a, definitely a smaller market share. But where Cisco really stands out is gosh, their financial strength. They have the strongest financials, right. Cisco is a large corporation, just does so well.
[00:06:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: And when we do look at financials particularly around companies that are large and have multiple divisions, we look at the company as a whole, right. We, especially if publicly traded, we, we look at their top line financials. So Cisco really has that benefit. They also have very strong momentum. This last year. They're, they're, you know, they're doing really well. They're converting a lot of their on premises to their WebEx contact center.
[00:06:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: So they're to their ccause offering. They may not be leading on the product mix, but they're right in average, right. They, they have, you know, most of the key components, right. So they're just average in terms of product capabilities. And so that's, and so that, so that's Cisco, Vonage did very well this year and Vonage definitely jumped up in our rankings. So they're number five. And, and let me tell you why. What was the big thing that kind of gave them a boost and that was customer sentiment. They had the highest possible score for customer sentiment and that gave them a really big necessary boost. Their market momentum is actually below average. They had strong, they had strong financial strength because of Ericsson. So their financial strength was one of the higher ones for sure.
And then that was what, but the customer sentiment was really what set them apart. And then let's take number six, aws, which in AWS is from a market share perspective, they are actually the fourth largest CCAAS provider in the market. So that gives them some big pieces. They have good, you know, they've got really strong, solid financial strength because of the larger, you know, Amazon, they have above average market momentum. The product mix is not as robust as some of the other pieces. So they, they fall a little bit short there. And they had, you know, strong, solid customer business success. So that's the top six. And I'm not going to go into all the details with everyone else, but let me just mention who they are. Content Guru. They are out of Europe. That is where they're, they're headquartered. But they are absolutely making. This is a, this is a global study and that is where their strength is. But they are doing well and they've got some, some good activity here in North America. Then we have eight by eight. We have Sprinkler, we have Talk Desk and we have Dial Pad. Those are the top 11, right. I mentioned 12, but we ended up, you know, we looked at the top, you know, market shares and then we did the scoring and you know, we really included the top 11. I would say important to note that when we, the scoring, once we get to the scoring, once we, you know, we get past Nice and five nine and Genesis and Cisco, you know, Vonage AWS and Content Guru, their scores are so tight, they're really, really close. And then same thing with 8x8 sprinkler and talk desk, right? They're really, really close. So, you know, the scoring, the different, the, the differences in scoring between a few, a few of these groupings is really, really close.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: It's interesting to note. So if you look at 2023, 2024, you know, and you look at just kind of general market trends, you know, as you sat down to do this initial list for 2025, did it, did you have different, a different idea of what the result would be or was this pretty much in line with what you were sort of thinking about? I know it's hard because you said there was such little differentiation between some of the scoring, but is this the general top providers at least?
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Yeah, so I, you know, I'm always going to assume that Nice 5, 9 and Genesis are going to be near the top.
[00:09:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: We don't know, you know, particularly the customer pieces that come in from our study. Those are hard to know.
[00:09:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: And those can make a Difference. Those can make a change. But, but, but I assumed, right. Like, you know, and I think it would be shocking if those, if those weren't the top three.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: But below that 100% there was, you know, the fact that Vonage was number five and that was because of customer sentiment. I would not have thought that.
[00:10:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: I mean, I just jumped up from.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Diana, jumped up from what position in 2024, do you recall?
[00:10:08] Speaker B: 24. Don't know, off the top. But I'm going to look it up as we're, as we're going around. I, you know, Vonage last year and when we did the 2024 report, they were seven. So they went from seven to five. But it was because of the customer sentiment.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: And I do think of Vonage as being kind of in the more of the, the second tier of the top 10. But, but they really did get a boost. So that was kind of a little bit of surprising. Companies that did not, were not in the report last year that were this year. So Sprinkler Sprinklr had been in two years ago and they definitely have a smaller market share.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: They're not even top 10 for market share. But when we took the top 12 and decided to score across everything else, Sprinklr went from, you know, from a market share perspective of number.
Gosh, I think number 12, actually. Yeah. They were number 12 in market share and they ended up in number nine. Sorry, I had to like do a quick count. They were number nine and you know, so they went from 12 to nine.
[00:11:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: And why is that? Right.
What's that? So as a company, they had a little bit above average financial strength. They're publicly traded, so that gives them a little bit above average compared to companies that are privately held.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: So that, that gives them an advantage that we do have that data. And then the other pieces that kind of stood out for them compared to companies below them. And that was the big thing is that the companies below them, a lot of them are privately held or they didn't have a strong financial. So a lot of people wouldn't say, oh, sprinklr, they're, you know, they're really strong financially, but you know, but compared to some others, they, you know, that that gives them a boost compared to companies that were below. And what gave them a little bit of a leg up also was customer sentiment. They didn't have the highest customer sentiment. They didn't, you know, weren't well above average, but they did better than their clo. You know, the Companies that were in that kind of, that mix of evaluation.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: So sometimes that's all it takes. Right. Maybe I don't have to blow it out and be number one, but if I'm in this segment with or in this scoring with four other companies and everything else being equal, just a little bit higher score here or there can make the difference. And that's what happened with Sprinklr. Dial Pad was back and also they were in two years ago. They're number 11 this year, and we included them because I thought it was. It was worth it. They have really strong AI capabilities. And so, you know, their product mix is. Is quite strong, definitely, compared to a lot of the other companies in the bottom half. Dialpad's product kick mix is quite robust from that perspective, largely because of a lot of what they've done with AI. Yeah, that's kind of what I think about when I think about those companies in that. You know, the one company that didn't make the max number 12 is Twilio. And Twilio had been in the report the previous two years. They are number 10 with market share or 10 or 11. Yeah. So. And so their product mix isn't as robust, for sure. Their market momentum isn't as strong. So, you know, they. And same thing with their customer sentiment. They were below average. So that kind of just took them down, but not by a lot, you know, so at any given point, you know, the top 12, we have companies coming and going.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: So you mentioned Twilio as being a company that didn't make it onto the list this year. What other ones are you kind of keeping your eye on? Maybe could have made it to 2025, but they didn't.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, gosh, there's. Gosh, let me, let me go through some of that because there are so many.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: There are so many. What's the word? CCAS providers, you know, in the market. Some of them are global, some of them very regional. So I think it's important that we do, you know, and it's hard. Right, because we do look at market share. And so if you're kind of a newer company and you're just getting started in the. Probably the, the prime example, and one that I will get questions about is Zoom.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Excuse me.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: What I just said.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Of course, yeah, yeah, Zoom and Ringcentral.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Those are the two. RingCentral obviously had resold and had a strong partnership with Nice for years, and then they, they went and launched their own. But those are the two that probably we're going to get the most questions about, right what's going on. And they have, they have market momentum and their numbers just, they need just to keep growing and gaining customers to kind of break into that, you know, into that top 12, 13, 14.
[00:14:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: You know, in terms of revenue. So I would say, you know, obviously ring central and zoom. The other one people are going to always ask about is Avaya.
[00:14:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Because Avaya is a mainstay in the contact center world and they have been developing CCAAS cloud capabilities here and there. They really take much more of a hybrid approach.
You know, they have their own challenges, right, in terms of bankruptcies and changing of management teams and the like. Just, you know, they're just not fully there in terms of having a full CCAS offering. And so for, you know, for us it's more of, you know, what is actually in the market and does, does that product really fit our definition today? Other companies, I think about what we look at Microsoft, you know, we just, we can never discount Microsoft ujet but I would also say ujet and Google, you know, so you know, Google had invested heavily into Google but you know, Google's moving forward with its own AI powered solution and it's using ujet for some capabilities. So that, that kind of combination I think we can never discount. Also Salesforce, right, Salesforce doing, making strides in this space. Zendesk and there's others, but those are the ones, those would be the ones I really am keeping an eye on at the highest level.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Okay, thank you so much. So really great report, very in depth, really worth everybody taking a really kind of deep dive into it if you can. But that of course is not the only thing you've been working on. So what else is going on with the Metrocast service that you'd like to share with folks?
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we have the, the full customer experience study out over a thousand businesses from a global study where we're asking them about their technology adoption, who they're using for, you know, providers, if they're looking to make changes, what is their decision criteria. So that's a really great study that's out there and it's published. We are constantly now on a quarterly cadence with market shares and so, you know, along this whole theme around customer experience areas. We have the latest market shares up there for CCAs in this market, but also CPaaS, you know, the APIs, CRM and so always that. So just a lot of good content coming out particularly right now in this bubble in this month around the customer experience.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Let me. Add in one other thing, Diane. We cannot overlook the CX metrostar Awards. We just published those toward the end of the month and that comes out. You talked a lot about the importance of the customer sentiment and business success metrics and in determining the ranking of of our metrorank companies. Those are critical. Those determine who wins our CX Metrostar awards. In CX and this year we had nine categories. So we had besides CCAs, we had on prem Contact center, we had CPAAs and CRM agent assist text, AI agents, workforce engagement Management, Voice of the Customer, Self Service, Knowledge Management.
So if you want to know who the award winners are in that program, listen to our previous vetrasight episode or just go to the website and you can look at the individual reports as well. So that's all for me. Any last thoughts, Diane?
[00:17:35] Speaker B: No, I would say, you know, we'll be doing another Metro Rank, Beth, and something that you'll, you'll be working on.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Don't remind me.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think that's one to think about. That's around the CPAs, right? You know, so I think that's from a Metro Rank that's coming up next. And that's always a good one too.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely. So thank you for that reminder. And listeners, as always, we're really happy to hear from you. So do feel free to reach out to us. You can use the contact button on the Metrogy site or just reach out to us by email individually. And for now, that is all on behalf of the metrogy team. Goodbye till next time and take care everybody.
