Cisco named a leader in Aragon Globe™ for Intelligent Contact Centers 2021

Data and AI will power next-generation customer experiences

Renowned industry analyst firm Aragon released their highly anticipated annual assessment of the contact center market for 2021 this week, the Aragon Research Globe™ for Intelligent Contact Centers. For the third year in a row, Cisco (Webex) was identified as a leader, and we’re both thankful for this placement and proud of the work and substantial solution investments that we believe drove our ranking.

Let’s take a look at a few highlights from the report, which contains a number of key observations about the evolving nature of the contact center market, and the acceleration of innovations driven in part by the large-scale work-from-home environment enabled by the 2020-2021 global pandemic.

Digital transformation and omnichannel communications – powered by the cloud

Aragon notes in its report the critical nature of ongoing digital transformation – not just for business efficiency through higher process automation rates but for better customer engagement.

It’s clear that consumers want choice in how they interact, and that today’s consumers are adopting digital messaging channels in droves – and want context to follow if live assistance is required.
The report states:

“Cisco (Webex), a leader in unified communications and collaboration (UCC), has continued its multi-year strategy to enhance its contact center portfolio…by leveraging acquisitions and organic engineering development.”

Hybrid cloud solutions bring value to the entire contact center deployment spectrum

Also noted is Webex’s ability to deliver innovation from the cloud to existing contact center investments. As Aragon states,

“We continue to see maturity in the ability to deploy SaaS applications as managed services on-premises. This is also known as hybrid cloud.”

This important approach is reflected in Webex’s approach to delivering new value to the more that 3.5 million agents already on Cisco contact center platforms.

High impact capabilities such as conversational AI, agent transcription, and customer sentiment analysis are all now available to our existing customers from the cloud.

Better together – the rise of the collaboration-integrated contact center

Modern customer engagement requires that contact center agents have access to the full power of their enterprise subject matter experts at their fingertips. With digital automation progressing at a rapid pace, the remaining live engagements are inevitably more complex in nature. Because of this, Aragon states,

“There is no denying the fact that unified communications and collaboration capabilities integrate very well with contact centers…more and more buyers want to buy an integrated offering…because the contact center is an advanced communications application and that some teams need more than just basic telephony and messaging.”

As a full collaboration solution suite provider, Cisco (Webex) is uniquely qualified to bring a cohesive solution including calling, messaging, meetings and contact center services to users.

In the 2021 Aragon Globe for Unified Communications and Collaboration, where Cisco (Webex) was also identified as a leader, Aragon noted the value of Webex Contact Center integration with not only the completely new Webex App experience, but also with a full collaboration device portfolio designed for both agents and the rest of the enterprise that supports them.

Cisco (Webex) honored to be identified as an innovator and leader in a rapidly evolving cloud contact center market

The past 18 months, more than any in history prior, have shown that the contact center is a key element in global digital transformation, and holds the power to create inspiring customer engagement with businesses.
As Aragon’s principal analyst Jim Lundy states:

“Cisco is well-positioned for the shift to the intelligent contact center.”

Innovation in the customer experience sector is at an all-time high, with continuous delivery of new capabilities occurring at a rapid pace. We have made significant investments to bring our customers not just the latest capabilities, but those that we hear in their own words will help them have the biggest impact in serving their own customers in a seamless, personalized, engaging way.