Top 10 CCaaS Software Vendors, Market Size and Market Forecast 2018-2023

In 2018, the top 10 Contact Center As A Service software vendors accounted for nearly 52.5% of the global CcaaS application market which grew 28.5% to approach nearly $11.5 billion in license, maintenance and subscription revenues.

In 2018, Salesforce was the market leader with 18.5% market share as number one in CcaaS market. Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories was #2 followed by Nice Systems, Cisco and Zendesk.

We ask the simple question: Who’s buying Contact Center As A Service (CCaaS) applications from whom and why? And we provide the answers – supported by decades of research – to our clients around the world. (Sample from our Apps Database)

Through our forecast period, the Contact Center As A Service market is expected to reach $27.8 billion by 2023, compared with $11.5 billion in 2018 at a compound annual growth rate of 19.3%.

Source: Apps Run The World, December 2019

Contact Center As A Service Market Definitions

Contact Center As A Service (CCaaS) is a derivative market consisting software components from the following markets:

• Collaboration Software
  Communications Vertical Software
  Customer Relationship Management Application
  Unified Communications Software

CCaaS software offerings, which can be delivered via the public or private cloud, focus on customer contact function. With multiple channels to handle customer inquiries and improve their experiences, organizations implement CCaaS systems on a global level to reduce support costs and increase revenues through automation capabilities.

CCaaS software features include chat, co-browse, contact management, help desk, social media engagement, direct and community interaction for knowledge sharing and management, voice and interactive experience manager and dynamic agent desktop.

Top 10 CCaaS Software Vendors

Here are the rankings of the top 10 Contact Center As A Service software vendors in 2018 and their market shares.

Source: Apps Run The World, December 2019

Other CCaaS software providers included in the report are: 3clogic, 3cx, Aircall, Ameyo, Arbeit Software, Aspect Software, Bright Pattern, Capgemini Odigo, Clarabridge, Connect First, Content Guru, eGain Corporation, Enghouse Interactive, Five9, Freshworks (formerly Freshdesk), IFS, Kayako, Knowlarity Communications Pvt. Ltd., LiveChat Inc., LiveOps, Medallia, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC Contact Center, NewVoiceMedia, a Vonage Company, Noble Systems, Oracle, Ozonetel Communications, Pegasystems, Puzzel, SAP, Serenova, Sharpen Technologies Inc., SugarCRM, Talkdesk, TTec, Twilio, Unify Software and Solutions GmbH & Co. KG., Vocalcom, ZaiLab, and many more.

Custom data cuts related to CcaaS Applications market are available:

• Top 100 CcaaS Vendors and Market Forecast 2018-2023
• 2018 CcaaS Applications Market By Industry (21 Verticals)
• 2018 CcaaS Market By Functional Market (16 Markets)
• 2018 CcaaS Applications Market By Country (USA + 45 countries)
• 2018 CcaaS By Region (Americas, EMEA, APAC)
• 2018 CcaaS Applications Market By Revenue Type (License, Services, Hardware, Support and Maintenance, Cloud)
• 2018 CcaaS Applications Market By Customer Size (revenue, employee count, asset)
• 2018 CcaaS Applications Market By Channel (Direct vs Direct)
• 2018  CcaaS Applications Market By Product

CCaaS Market Forecast Assumptions

Drivers and Inhibitors of 2023 CCaaS Market Projections

• Amazon Web Services’ 2017 unveiling of CCaaS offering Amazon Connect, which is based on the same contact center technology used by Amazon customer service operations, kicks off a wave of partnerships, especially among CCaaS vendors like Amdocs and eGain that aim to expand into AWS’ installed base. The CCaaS market will benefit from AWS’ entry, but the long-term risks for existing CCaaS vendors could be considerable.
• Speech recognition and natural language processing advances will help CCaaS become more ubiquitous and pervasive, allowing agents to use voice commands to augment chat and messaging, streamline task lists and improve response time despite having to handle multiple inquiries simultaneously.
• Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning will boost CCaaS adoptions, helping organizations better understand how agents handle inquiries and how that translates into better customer satisfaction.
• Vertical applications bundled into CCaaS will proliferate and potentially reshape how business processes are being done for such use cases as telemedicine in healthcare, claims processing in insurance, virtual advisors in wealth management, etc.
• Widespread use of software-defined wide area networking technologies will help expand the CCaaS market by reducing CapEx spending, while improving quality of experience and security assurance.
• Cross-system identify management could boost CCaaS adoptions by individuals performing service, support and other roles. Similarly, cross-system identities will apply to customers as well for delivering better customer experiences.
• Impact of recent mergers and acquisitions in CCaaS market could disrupt near-term investments as customers reevaluate the competitive landscape because of potential lock-in by acquisitive vendors like Cisco(Broadsoft), Genesys(Interactive Intelligence), Nice(Incontact), and Zendesk(Base).
• Messaging is replacing voice calls and CCaaS vendors are repositioning themselves in order to adapt to this seismic shift in customer support.
• Increased use of bots to deliver 24×7 customer support could reshape the role of CCaaS and potentially redefine customer interaction – similar to what automated phone directory does to company image.
• The relentless push toward customer success by focusing on selected, profitable and most visible customers could render the customer support and service function to a lesser role, potentially undermining new investments for CCaaS.
• Similarly, the drive toward selling over customer support will change the value propositions of CCaaS in the eyes of software buyers and those that demand better contact center support.
• Heavily modified contact center systems remain entrenched in certain industries and countries, impeding CCaaS adoptions.

CCaaS Vendor Overview

Salesforce

Salesforce.com Inc. is a cloud-based software company for customer relationship management products (CRM), along with a complementary suite of enterprise applications focused on customer service, marketing automation, analytics and application development. CcaaS is part of the Salesforce Service Cloud portfolio. Salesforce offers Service Cloud as Software as a Service, built on the Salesforce Customer Success Platform.

Salesforce Service Cloud revenues have grown faster than those of Sales Cloud, the vendor’s original sales automation offering. In fiscal 2018, Service Cloud grew 24% to $2.9 billion, while Sales Cloud grew a more sedate 16% to $3.6 billion.

A development that’s helping to boost Service Cloud adoption is the introduction of an entry-level package designed for SMBs. Service Cloud Essentials, which became available in May 2018, is positioned as a Service Cloud offering for the SMB sector that can scale up to any size. This gives Service Cloud a new on-ramp for startups and firms with shifting and fluctuating customer service requirements. Most recently, Salesforce launched Service Cloud Voice, a product that modernizes the contact center by embedding telephony inside Salesforce Service Cloud.

Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories

Genesys specializes in customer experience and call center technology for mid-sized and large businesses. Genesys powers more than 25 billion of the world’s best customer experiences every year. Over 11,000 companies in 100+ countries trust their customer experience platform to drive great business outcomes and create lasting relationships.  

Genesys started 2018 with an acquisition of Altocloud, an industry leading cloud-based customer journey analytics provider. By adding the Altocloud solution to its portfolio, Genesys strengthens its capability in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to help organizations deliver a highly responsive, predictive, and fully-contextual experience throughout all stages of the customer journey 

Later in July 2018, Genesys integrated with Google Cloud Contact Center AI. The integration enables brands to rapidly deploy some of the industry’s smartest bots capable of resolving issues faster while improving customer satisfaction, sales, employee efficiency and more.

In November 2018,  Genesys PureCloud contact center platform realizes triple-digit revenue growth year over year. In the first three quarters of 2018, Genesys signed deals with more than 500 customers and boosted PureCloud revenue by nearly 130% compared with the same period last year. 

Nice Systems

NICE is an Israeli-based company, specializing in telephone voice recording, data security, and surveillance, as well as systems that analyze the recorded data. The company serves various industries, such as financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, outsourcers, retail, media, travel, service providers, and utilities. Nice has 25 000 customers in 150 countries, more than 6,500 employees working in 35 local offices. 

NICE inContact is part of Nice’s product portfolio, and it provides cloud customer experience platform, NICE inContact CXone, combining best-in-class Omnichannel Routing, Workforce Optimization, Analytics, Automation and Artificial Intelligence on an Open Cloud Foundation.

In August 2018,  NICE finished the acquisitions of Mattersight Corporation. The acquisition of Mattersight further enhances NICE inContact CXone, the cloud customer experience platform. Using Mattersight PBR, organizations will additionally benefit from CXone Omnichannel Routing by leveraging behavioral analytics to make the smart connections executed in real-time.

The partnership with Atos in August 2019 made NICE inContact CXone a preferred solution for Contact Center as a Service and brought CXone to the company’s installed base of hundreds of thousands of contact center agents across the globe as well as new customers.

Cisco Systems 

Cisco develops, manufactures and sells networking hardware, telecommunications equipment, and other high-technology services and products. Through its numerous acquired subsidiaries, such as OpenDNS, WebEx, Jabber and Jasper, Cisco specializes in specific tech markets, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), domain security and energy management. 

With the acquisition of Broadsoft, in October 2017, Cisco entered the cloud communication, collaboration and contact center solutions area. Cisco Systems acquired Broadsoft for $1.9 Billion. 

At the beginning of 2019, Cisco Systems acquired Singularity Networks and Luxtera, Inc. Cisco will integrate Singularity Networks’ analytics platform capabilities into its Crosswork Network Automation portfolio and will incorporate Luxtera’s technology across its intent-based networking portfolio, spanning enterprise, data center and service provider markets.

With the acquisition of CloudCherry in August 2019, Cisco will offer services such as sentiment analysis, VOC and predictive analytics through APIs or connectors to either premises-based or cloud-based Contact Centers.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a customer service software and support ticketing system. It serves 125,000 paying customers accounts offering service and support in more than 30 languages in 160 countries and territories. The company finished 2018 with a 39% jump in revenue to reach $598.7 million.  Zendesk operates worldwide with 16 offices in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. 

In September 2018, Zendesk acquired FutureSimple, the company behind Base. Base is known for building modern, easy-to-use sales force automation software designed to help salespeople do their jobs more effectively. 

In November 2018, Zendesk launched Sunshine, an open and flexible customer relationship management platform built completely in the public cloud on AWS. Zendesk Sunshine enables businesses to connect and understand all their customer data, wherever it lives and gives their developers the ability to build and deploy customer apps and services faster. The same period Zendesk introduces Zendesk Sell, a sales force automation tool to enhance productivity, processes, and pipeline visibility for sales teams. 

Verint Systems Inc.

Verint Systems specializes in actionable intelligence solutions. The company sells software and hardware products for customer engagement management, security, surveillance, and business intelligence. Their products are designed to assist clients in data analysis, specifically large data sets. Today, over 10,000 organizations in more than 180 countries, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 100 companies and government agencies worldwide, use Verint Actionable Intelligence solutions to power their customer engagement and cyber intelligence operations.

At the end of 2018, Verint Systems acquired  ForeSee, a cloud voice of the customer (VoC) vendor.  The Verint-ForeSee combination will create an omnichannel cloud VoC portfolio available—an analytics-rich offering that will allow organizations to better measure and understand customer experiences and prioritize the improvements that will have the greatest business impact.

In April 2019,  Verint Systems added Anomaly Detection as a new capability to its expanding Voice of Customer (VoC) solutions. Anomaly Detection is part of Verint’s analytics-rich solution that helps companies automate insights and prioritize improvements to customer experience (CX) that will drive the greatest business impact. Later in June, Verint launched Dubbed Verint Unified VoC, a solution that gives customers a view of direct, indirect, and inferred VoC (voice of customer) from across key customer experience (CX) channels with automated analytics engine to deliver actionable insights.

Avaya Inc.

Avaya specializes in business communications, unified communications (UC), contact center (CC), and services. Avaya has more than 120,000 customers in 175 countries, in addition to 4,700 channel partners globally.

In 2018, Avaya acquired Spoken Communications, a leading innovator in Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions and customer experience management applications built on conversational artificial intelligence. The Spoken platform accelerates Avaya’s growth in cloud-based solutions and provides a reliable and highly scalable cloud platform for customers of all sizes.

In 2019, Avaya launched Avaya IX-CC, a cloud-native Contact Centre as-a-Service platform offering customers rapid and flexible deployment options built on Microsoft Azure. In October 2019, Avaya and RingCentral signed a strategic partnership. Avaya and RingCentral will introduce a new solution, Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral. RingCentral is contributing a $500 million investment into its partnership with Avaya.

8×8

8×8 Inc. is a provider of Voice over IP products. Its products include cloud-based voice, contact center, video, mobile and unified communications for businesses. Over one million users at 100,000 businesses around the world rely on 8×8.

8×8 entered the CCaaS world with the acquisition of Contactual in 2011. Two more CCaaS acquisitions followed in 2015, Quality Software Corporation and DXI.

In 2019, 8×8 launched a complete customer experience tool, 8×8 Contact Center, a stand-alone CCaaS offering. The 8×8 Contact Center includes automatic call distribution, interactive voice response (IVR), omnichannel engagement, outbound dialing, customer journey analytics, quality management, speech analytics, post-call surveys, and FAQ knowledgebase.

In addition to announcing CCaaS as a stand-alone service, 8×8 introduced several new solution capabilities; Customer Journey Analytics, an 8×8-developed feature that offers insight into every customer touchpoint; Expert Finder, it combines the value of 8×8 Team Messaging and AI to search and rank established message rooms based on past chats and expert interactions.

Five9

Five9 is a cloud call center software trusted by 2000+ clients to accelerate sales and power customer service. Five9 provides end-to-end solutions with omnichannel routing, analytics, WFO, and AI to increase agent productivity and deliver tangible business results.

2018 was one of the most productive years for Five9. Total revenue for 2018 increased by 29% to a record of $257.7 million, compared to $200.2 million in 2017. Five9 closed 2018 with the strongest quarter ever with fourth-quarter revenue growth accelerating to 31%. 

One of the main achievements for Five9 in 2018 was deploying 600 contact center agents in multiple worldwide locations in only one week, after the selection by one of the fastest-growing national food service delivery companies in the USA. Five9 is expecting continuous growth in 2019 with revenue range of $298.5 to $301.5 million. 

At the end of 2018, Five9 acquired Whendu, platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) provider, designed to address the requirements of the contact center. The combination will help enterprises striving to move to the cloud.

RingCentral

RingCentral Office is a cloud-based PBX system for businesses. RingCentral Office features include call auto-attendant, company directory, and call forwarding. The RingCentral Contact Center includes all the main features, from call handling to omnichannel routing, CRM integrations, to analytics for agent performance management.

At the beginning of 2019, RingCentral acquired Connect First, which supports RingCentral’s plan to expand its customer engagement services. Last year, it acquired a cloud customer engagement platform Dimelo. Dimelo’s contact center technology serves as the basis for RingCentral’s Engage platform, which manages customer interactions through an AI-based routing engine.

RingCentral’s offerings stand out through a collaborative approach that runs through the service, allowing agents to have quick access to the information they need. Another strength is the wide range of integrations RingCentral is able to handle, such as from SalesForce, Zendesk, Oracle, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Dynamics, so that communications can better work with sales, CRM, and other essential backend software.

Most recently, RingCentral entered into a strategic partnership with Avaya. Avaya will introduce Avaya Cloud Office by RingCentral (“Avaya Cloud Office” or “ACO”), new global unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution. RingCentral will pay Avaya an advance of $375 million primarily in stock for future payments and certain licensing rights.

Contact Center As A Service Win/Loss Analysis As Part Of Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database

On the buyer side, customers are investing in Contact Center As A Service systems based on new features and capabilities that are expected to replace their existing legacy systems. In many cases, competitive upgrades and replacements that could have a profound impact on future market-share changes will become more widespread.

Since 2010, our global team of researchers have been studying the patterns of the latest Contact Center As A Service software purchases by customers around the world, aggregating massive amounts of data points that form the basis of our forecast assumptions and perhaps the rise and fall of certain vendors and their products on a quarterly basis.

Updated continuously, our database features extensive Contact Center As A Service win/loss analysis. Each year our research team identifies tens of thousands of these customer wins and losses from public and proprietary sources.

The research results are being incorporated into regular updates in our Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database. You can access the Quarterly Win/Loss Analysis Scoreboard and our Enterprise Applications Buyer Insight Customer Database by becoming a subscriber.

List of CCaaS Customers in ARTW DB

Source: Apps Run The World, December 2019

Further Readings

An expanded version of this report covers the top 100+ CCaaS software vendors, offering in-depth analysis of the market dynamics, vendors’ Strengths, Customers, Opportunities, Risks and Ecosystems as well as their ability to gain Shares (SCORES) within their respective space.

We also offer win-loss analysis of the quarterly wins of these top 10 Analytics and BI software vendors and whether incumbents and upstarts pose any real threat to their standing amid shifting market requirements and user preferences.

• Feature