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Tag: contact center

  • Microsoft Closes Competitive Gap With Contact Center Rivals

    Microsoft Closes Competitive Gap With Contact Center Rivals

    Microsoft has closed the competitive gap with contact center rivals thanks to its Digital Contact Center Platform.

    Cisco, Google, and Zoom are some of the bigger names in the contact center space, a segment of the industry that has become increasingly important in the wake of the pandemic. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the company lagged behind its rivals by not offering a comprehensive solution.

    “Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, contact centers have grown more vital for managing the customer experience,” said Gregg Willsky, Principal Analyst at GlobalData. “However, despite the increasing importance of contact centers, true contact center capabilities had been missing from Microsoft’s unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) portfolio.”

    According to GlobalData, that has changed with Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, a solution that goes far beyond the limited abilities that existed in Dynamics 365.

    “The greatest strengths of the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform include omni-channel engagement, self-service capability, and the use of artificial intelligence,” Willsky continues. “To deliver the platform, Microsoft is partnering with a wide network of independent software vendors (ISVs) and system integrators, as well as leveraging several existing Microsoft tools including Dynamics 365, Teams, Power Platform, Azure, and Nuance.

    “Despite these strengths, in the near term at least, Microsoft could struggle to gain traction in the contact center space. However, the multitude of installed Office and Teams users provides a lot of potential for the company’s presence in the market.”

    Microsoft has already been making major headway in the cloud market, thanks in large part to the scope and breadth of the company’s services. With Digital Contact Center Platform, the company shores up a previously weak point in its portfolio of available services.

  • Zoom and Five9 Mutually Terminate Their Merger

    Zoom and Five9 Mutually Terminate Their Merger

    Zoom and Five9 have called off their deal, in which Zoom would purchase Five9 for $14.7 billion.

    Zoom announced it was purchasing Five9 in July. Five9 is one of the leading cloud contact center providers. The deal was originally slated to complete in the first half of 2022, but the two companies have mutually ended the agreement.

    “While we were excited about the benefits this transaction would bring to both Zoom and Five9 stakeholders, including the long-term potential for both sets of shareholders, financial discipline is foundational to our strategy,” said Eric S. Yuan, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Zoom.

    While Yuan emphasizes “financial discipline” as a motive for ending the agreement, the deal was already under US national security scrutiny. At the same time, Yuan emphasized Zoom’s ongoing commitment to the contact center market.

    “The contact center market remains a strategic priority for Zoom, and we are confident in our ability to capture its growth potential,” Yuan continued. “At Zoomtopia, we announced the Zoom Video Engagement Center, our cloud-based contact center solution, which will launch in early 2022. Video Engagement Center will be a flexible, easy-to-use solution that connects businesses and their customers. We are building this new solution with the same scalability and trusted architecture that has made Zoom the platform of choice for businesses around the world. We also plan to maintain our valued existing contact center partnerships with companies like Five9, Genesys, NICE inContact, Talkdesk, and Twilio. We remain focused on driving long-term value creation for Zoom shareholders and delivering happiness to our customers through our broad-based communications platform including unified communications, developer, and events solutions.”