RES134841

The Forrester Wave™: Contact Center Interaction
Management For Large Contact Centers, Q3 2016
The Eight Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
by Art Schoeller
September 29, 2016
For Application Development & Delivery Professionals
forrester.com
Key Takeaways
Genesys, Aspect Software, Cisco Systems,
And Avaya Lead The Pack
Forrester’s research uncovered a market in which
Genesys, Aspect Software, Cisco Systems,
and Avaya lead the pack. Enghouse Interactive
and Unify offer competitive options. Interactive
Intelligence and SAP lag behind.
AD&D Pros Need A Platform That Supports
Integration And Diverse Deployment Models
AD&D pros need CCIM software that supports the
ability to customize, integrate, and craft a system
specifically geared to their unique enterprise
needs. These include the ability to deploy
portions of the system on-premises, in the cloud,
at a service provider, or through a combination of
the above.
Hybrid Deployment, Rich APIs, And A Robust
Partner Ecosystem Are Key Differentiators
The tools, APIs, and support to allow
customization with a diversity of deployment
models define the differentiators in the large
CCIM market.
Why Read This Report
Connecting customers to the right agents over the
right channel is key to an excellent, differentiated
customer experience. In our 40-criteria evaluation
of large contact center interaction management
(CCIM) providers, we identified the eight most
significant providers — Aspect Software, Avaya,
Cisco Systems, Enghouse Interactive, Genesys,
Interactive Intelligence, SAP, and Unify — and
researched, analyzed, and scored them. This
report shows how each provider measures up
and helps application development and delivery
(AD&D) professionals make the right choice.

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© 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®
,
Technographics®
, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester
Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Unauthorized copying or
distributing is a violation of copyright law. Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378
Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA
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Table Of Contents
Customization And Flexible Deployment
Define Large CCIM
The Market Is Buffeted By Acquisitions And
Varying Product And Channel Maturity
CCIM For Large Contact Centers Evaluation
Overview
Evaluated Vendors And Inclusion Criteria
Vendor Profiles
Leaders
Strong Performers
Contenders
Supplemental Material
Notes & Resources
Forrester evaluated large contact center
interaction management software vendors in June
and July 2016. We only considered products that
were generally available as of June 1, 2016, while
reference checks and analysis extended into July.
We interviewed eight firms: Aspect Software,
Avaya, Cisco Systems, Enghouse Interactive,
Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, SAP, and Unify.
Related Research Documents
The Forrester Wave™: Contact Center Interaction
Management For Midsize Contact Centers, Q3
2016
Increase Customer Service Agility With Cloud
Contact Centers
Vendor Landscape: Contact Center Interaction
Management
Vendors Battle For The Heart Of The Contact
Center
The Forrester Wave™: Contact Center Interaction Management For
Large Contact Centers, Q3 2016
by Art Schoeller
with Christopher Andrews, Ian Jacobs, Meredith Cain, and Peter Harrison
September 29, 2016

The Forrester Wave™: Contact Center Interaction Management For Large Contact Centers, Q3 2016
September 29, 2016
© 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378
2
Customization And Flexible Deployment Define Large CCIM
Today’s demanding customers have little patience to wait in a queue for customer service agents
to answer their questions. They will try to find answers on their own and then use a multiplicity of
channels (e.g., phone, email, web chat, or social) to contact companies if self-service tools fail to
satisfy their requests.1
Typically, large contact centers (as defined in our inclusion criteria) have the
resources to integrate a number of components to customize their capabilities so they can support
differentiated customer journeys.
While CCIM is moving toward more integrated suites, large contact center customers still need
integration and customization delivered on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid configurations.
Readers may seek to compare this report to its companion report “The Forrester Wave™: Contact
Center Interaction Management For Midsize Contact Centers, Q3 2016.”
Large contact centers in particular expect the following characteristics from their vendors:
›› A CCIM platform that facilitates integration and customization. The CCIM market is slowly
evolving away from best-of-breed solutions devoted to one or two channels and toward integrated
software suites managing the real-time status of agents, routing rules for managing customer
contact flow, and facilitating interaction analytics across all channels. For large contact centers,
this suite must provide a base platform for integration of diverse, best-of-breed components. AD&D
pros need a robust set of APIs delivered in a well-defined software development kit (SDK) and
supported by an extensive developer ecosystem.
›› A diversity of deployment models. It is very difficult for large contact centers to migrate all their
systems at the same time. Large contact centers face a broader range of regulatory requirements
to keep some resources (e.g., call recordings) onsite. These are just two reasons why CCIM
vendors for large contact centers need to support on-premises, cloud, and a mix (i.e., hybrid)
of deployment models. The longer-term trajectory is toward software-as-a-service (SaaS), but
because large contact centers may be slower to move, it will take more than five years for a
significant portion of the large market to move to that deployment model.
›› Customizable analytics and reporting. The CCIM market has always supported a common library
of standardized reports coupled with business intelligence (BI) tools for customization. Reporting
and analytics for large contact centers typically involve integration with many legacy systems, data
sources, and other components, which require BI and data-warehousing capabilities. For example,
an enterprise may engage an external party to capture voice-of-the-customer data, but it needs to
tie that back to the interaction history generated by the CCIM platform.
›› Sales, service, and support from an extensive channel of partners. AD&D pros typically
leverage external resources to help plan, build, and run CCIM platforms with customizations and
integrations. For large contact centers, these can range from large, global systems integrators,
which can provide a comprehensive managed service, to smaller specialists like computer

September 29, 2016
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telephony integration developers or interactive voice response (IVR) application designers. CCIM
vendors themselves also provide integration and customization capabilities, either directly to
customers or through their channel partners.
The Market Is Buffeted By Acquisitions And Varying Product And Channel Maturity
Moving to a full omnichannel software suite and, in parallel, transitioning to cloud have challenged
the established CCIM vendors we’ve evaluated in this report.2
Due to their longevity in the market,
the vendors bring relatively large installed bases to the table that provide ripe opportunities for
maintenance and upgrade revenues. Contact center managers tend to resist change, so shifting to a
new platform takes a lot of effort by competitors looking to capture market share. In this evaluation, we
see that:
›› The path to SaaS is varied, wide, and tortured. SaaS is not just retooling or creating a new,
multi-tenant CCIM software suite. The subscription model cuts across all elements of sales,
marketing, and service within a technology company.3
Cisco Systems has engaged mostly carrier
partners to host Contact Center Enterprise (CCE) as a service. Interactive Intelligence chose to
create a new product that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Avaya uses various partners to
provide hosting and managed services for Aura Call Center Elite.
›› CCIM suites are starting to include “fries with that” workforce optimization (WFO). Every
vendor in this evaluation has the ability to support the common channels: voice, email, and web
chat. But their depth of support varies (e.g., support for multiple simultaneous web chat sessions
and the ability to transfer them). Many large contact centers use individual best-of-breed solutions
for various channels, driving the need for integration capabilities for interaction analytics. Bundling
of partner WFO solutions is becoming more common, while Aspect Software, Genesys, and
Interactive Intelligence offer their own.
›› The lines between CCIM, WFO, and CRM are blurring. CRM vendors have added nonvoice
channels like social and web chat, and this is creating a “digital divide” in contact centers between
voice and digital interactions. Creating more overlap, some CRM vendors, like Zendesk, are adding
voice capabilities as well. Inquiries with Forrester clients indicate an increasing level of confusion as
to which vendors to choose for which capabilities.4
CCIM vendors in this evaluation are anchored in
voice, but they need to ensure that they are proactively positioning themselves for nonvoice channels.
›› Mergers and acquisitions are on the rise. The move to suite and cloud models stresses the
financial health and market position of the CCIM vendors, which creates a ripe opportunity for
consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions. NICE purchased cloud-only vendor inContact; Genesys
has announced the acquisition of Interactive Intelligence (which is still covered separately in this
analysis); and the industry continues to speculate about the sale of the Avaya contact center
business to help restructure its debt.

September 29, 2016
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CCIM For Large Contact Centers Evaluation Overview
To assess the state of the CCIM market and see how the vendors stack up against each other,
Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top CCIM vendors. After examining past
research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a comprehensive
set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 40 criteria, which we grouped into three high-
level categories:
›› Current offering. All of the CCIM vendors we’ve included in this evaluation come from a strong
legacy of handling voice communications. We looked closely at how they have applied the same
queueing, routing, and reporting strengths to nonvoice channels in a fully integrated manner.
In addition, we interviewed customer references and reviewed specific screen shot sequences
to see how the vendors have modernized the user interface for agents, supervisors, business
analysts, system administrators, and individuals defining contact flows. Our evaluation included
an assessment of the breadth of deployment models, integration capabilities, and a robust partner
channel to support the more complex implementations that large contact centers require.
›› Strategy. The large CCIM market will see further consolidation and maturation of suites. To score
well, the firms we evaluated needed a clear vision and road map focused on deepening the
capabilities of their suites and more deeply embedding WFO. We also weighted the transition to
SaaS heavily because we already see it creeping up into larger deployments. And we checked to
see if vendors have a broad, geographically widespread channel that is able to support managed
services; complex integrations; and multisite, large-scale implementations.
›› Market presence. The vendors we’ve evaluated primarily have large installed bases of both
systems and agent positions. In this evaluation, we used all deployment models to compute
installed base, so there is more weight and presence for the legacy on-premises vendors that have
had years to establish larger bases. Forrester will continue to monitor the market growth of cloud-
only vendors for potential inclusion in future large CCIM Wave evaluations.
Evaluated Vendors And Inclusion Criteria
Forrester included eight vendors in the assessment: Aspect Software, Avaya, Cisco Systems,
Enghouse Interactive, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, SAP, and Unify. Each of these vendors has (see
Figure 1):
›› An installed base of greater than 100 customers. The large CCIM market is comprised of well-
established vendors that have a track record and base upon which to draw maintenance and
upgrade revenues. Cloud vendors are gaining share, but that is happening largely in the midsize
CCIM market.
›› A top eight installed base rank. There is a sharp drop in installed base after the top eight in this
analysis of large CCIM vendors. A larger base also attracts more support from channel partners, which
are critical to sustain customization, integration, and support across a range of deployment models.

September 29, 2016
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›› Agent seat count over 65,000 and support for 500 or more active agent positions. The large
CCIM market is defined as companies supporting systems with 500 active agent seats and above.
These seat counts not only require customization and integration but also often necessitate more
complex, distributed deployments across multiple sites. Some of the Leaders in this Forrester
Wave reported seat counts greater than 1 million, as they have some of the world’s largest contact
centers in their bases.
›› Substantial interest from Forrester clients in the form of questions or mentions. Forrester
clients are an important, but not exclusive, source for assessing a vendor’s importance in a market.
All of the vendors we included in this large CCIM Wave have been topics of multiple inquiries
during the past two years.
FIGURE 1 Evaluated Vendors: Product Information And Selection Criteria
Vendor
Aspect Software
Avaya
Cisco Systems
Enghouse Interactive
Genesys
Interactive Intelligence
SAP
Unify
Product evaluated
Unified IP
Aura Call Center Elite
Contact Center Enterprise
Contact Center Enterprise
Business Edition
PureCloud
Contact Center
S Contact Center
Product version
evaluated
7.3
7.0
11.0
9 PRC 07
N/A
N/A
7 SP 9
9
• An installed base of greater than 100 customers.
• A top eight installed base rank.
• Agent seat count over 65,000 and support for 500 or more active agent positions.
• Substantial interest from Forrester clients in the form of questions or mentions.
Vendor inclusion criteria

September 29, 2016
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Vendor Profiles
This evaluation of the large CCIM market is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage clients
to view detailed product evaluations and adapt criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through
the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool (see Figure 2).
FIGURE 2 Forrester Wave™: Contact Center Interaction Management For Large Contact Centers, Q3 ’16
Challengers Contenders Leaders
Strong
Performers
StrategyWeak Strong
Current
offering
Weak
Strong
Go to Forrester.com
to download the
Forrester Wave tool for
more detailed product
evaluations, feature
comparisons, and
customizable rankings.
Market presence
Aspect
Software
Avaya
Cisco
Systems
Enghouse Interactive
Genesys
Interactive
IntelligenceSAP
Unify

September 29, 2016
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Leaders
›› Genesys Business Edition provides extensive capabilities and deployment options. Business
Edition support for nonvoice channels like email, chat, and SMS approaches that of best-of-
breed vendors. Genesys does not provide its own private branch exchange (PBX) or unified
communications (UC) solution, but it utilizes its SIP Server for out-of-the-box integrations with a
wide array of systems, including Microsoft Skype for Business. Proactive notifications, predictive
dialing, and native WFO round out the system. Genesys’ extensive library of G+ adapters provides
out-of-the-box integrations with CRM and other WFO packages.
FIGURE 2 Forrester Wave™: Contact Center Interaction Management For Large Contact Centers, Q3 ’16 (Cont.)
All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).
AspectSoftw
are
Avaya
C
isco
System
s
Enghouse
Interactive
G
enesys
Interactive
Intelligence
SAP
U
nify
3.59
3.60
3.94
4.34
3.66
2.90
3.00
4.33
5.00
5.00
3.50
2.00
3.00
3.00
w
eighting
Forrester’s
50%
20%
20%
15%
15%
15%
15%
50%
30%
30%
35%
5%
0%
100%
3.30
2.60
4.16
4.34
2.32
3.30
3.00
3.93
3.10
4.00
5.00
1.00
5.00
5.00
3.77
3.00
3.86
3.66
4.32
4.00
4.00
4.07
3.40
4.00
5.00
2.00
5.00
5.00
3.59
4.60
3.86
3.66
2.32
1.70
5.00
2.73
4.00
3.00
1.50
2.00
0.50
0.50
4.67
4.40
4.72
5.00
5.00
4.00
5.00
4.42
4.40
4.00
5.00
3.00
5.00
5.00
2.78
3.20
2.92
3.00
4.34
1.00
2.00
1.68
2.60
1.00
1.00
5.00
0.50
0.50
2.62
3.90
2.14
2.32
3.00
3.10
1.00
1.34
1.80
1.00
1.00
3.00
1.00
1.00
2.88
2.30
2.92
1.68
3.66
1.90
5.00
2.70
2.00
3.00
3.00
3.00
1.00
1.00
Current Offering
Product architecture
Omnichannel capabilities
Reporting and analytics
User interface
Infrastructure
CRM integration
Strategy
Corporate strategy
Supporting services
Third-party ecosystem
Commercial model
Market Presence
Installed base

September 29, 2016
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Along with capability comes complexity, and, as a market leader, Genesys also commands a price
premium. Customers will need skilled resources and, at times, additional management software
from partners to maintain the solution. While Genesys offers Business Edition in the cloud, it is not
yet fully multi-tenant, so Genesys offers Premier Edition for smaller configurations. Clients looking
for longer-term planning with Genesys find that its road map varies. While that is an indication
of market responsiveness, it places some pressure on customers’ plans. Customers who want a
system that approaches “best of suite,” a broad global support partner network, and integration
with other UC and telephony systems should consider Business Edition.
›› Aspect Software Unified IP leverages strong outbound and WFO integration. Long-term
acquisitions of WFO and dialer companies help round out the omnichannel capabilities of Aspect
Software’s Unified IP, which supports inbound voice, email, chat, and social. Out-of-the-box
integrations with leading CRM vendors are available without relying on external partners. Aspect
Software’s leadership in outbound CCIM paves a path for the company to cross-sell Unified IP
into those accounts. The Customer Experience Platform that came from the Voxeo acquisition is
an industry-leading self-service and IVR system, adding proactive outbound capabilities. Aspect
Software delivers Unified IP as a hosted solution, either directly or through partners providing
subscription-like pricing.
The company has addressed customers’ historical concerns about Unified IP’s readiness — it
has focused resources on identifying and reducing the amount of software quality issues with the
system. Aspect Software acquired a number of legacy contact center technologies to drive growth,
but for these legacy systems’ customers, the migration path is simply a forklift upgrade. Feedback
from clients indicates that the company could improve reporting by, for example, adding the ability
to report performance activity across all channels. Customers who require strong outbound and
native WFO capabilities should consider Aspect Software.
›› Cisco Systems CCE scales and is enhanced through a broad partner ecosystem. Cisco
Systems’ dominance of unified communications and data networking gives customers volume
purchasing advantages when they add Contact Center Enterprise for large contact centers.
Multisite contact centers running distributed systems can consolidate on a centralized CCE that
scales up to 15,000 agents. CCE supports voice, email, and chat, with the ability to capture
contextual data in the bundled Context Service. The Finesse agent desktop is used by the
company’s extensive partner ecosystem to integrate multiple functions and systems into an agent
portal. Many partners, including large carriers, host CCE as a cloud service.
CCE is not multi-tenant, which means that Cisco Systems will ultimately need to retool or rewrite it
to support SaaS. The company’s broad ecosystem of partners adds capabilities — but those add
complexity. Cisco Systems relies on eGain for enhanced email and web chat as well as a number
of vendors like Calabrio for WFO. Integrations require different APIs and SDKs (e.g., Finesse for
desktop, but a separate one for recording). Customer feedback from our reference calls indicated
that the CCE reporting has limitations, such as the inability to see agent activity across channels

September 29, 2016
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in one report. Exony (now owned by eGain) is a key partner for enhanced reporting. CCE is a
prospect for customers with very large contact centers, while Packaged CCE can cost-effectively
scale down to midsize contact centers.
›› Avaya Aura Call Center Elite provides scale and strong channel support. The acquisition of
Nortel Networks combined with the company’s own extensive contact center base in the mid- to
high-end market positions Avaya’s Aura Call Center Elite as an attractive system with support from
global systems integrators and developers. Many of the world’s leading large-scale contact center
outsourcers, such as TeleTech, use it. The Avaya Aura Experience Portal provides self-service
capabilities, and Avaya resells Verint Systems WFO to round out the mid-to-large CCIM offering.
Customers can engage a number of partners to source Aura Call Center Elite — an omnichannel
system — as a managed service for more subscription-like pricing.
Avaya packaging is complicated and creates issues not only at purchase but at upgrade time
as well. Licensing, maintenance, and upgrade pricing are on the high end. Avaya has finally
announced specific dates for its long-awaited consolidated platform. “Oceana” is based on “snap-
ins” that will run on the Breeze development platform — Avaya is due to deliver it at the end of
2016. While simpler subscription pricing will be available, a definitive path to SaaS architecture is
missing. Clients and prospects should get clear direction on road map and investment protection
as Oceana rolls out. Clients who have Avaya for UC and telephony can consider Aura Call Center
Elite either on-premises or as a managed service.
Strong Performers
›› Enghouse Interactive supports Contact Center Enterprise with extensive integrations.
From its early days, Enghouse Interactive designed Contact Center Enterprise to be a contact
center “behind” a PBX. So it has a broad array of PBX and UC integrations, including Skype for
Business. While it is sold both directly and through a reseller network, the support comes direct
from Enghouse Interactive. It is not a multi-tenant SaaS system, but it is available as a hosted,
subscription model. Contact Center Enterprise has some WFO capabilities, but typically, partners
such as Teleopti, Verint Systems, and others provide these. The solution supports proactive
notifications across channels, including SMS.
Contact Center Enterprise supports the major nonvoice channels such as email and chat but not
social. Enghouse Interactive is not as much of a recognized name in the market, so it sometimes
struggles with brand recognition. The company plans to port its more modern TouchPoint
user interface from the smaller Communications Center product to Contact Center Enterprise.
The overall Enghouse Interactive portfolio contains a large number of products that should be
consolidated, so that drains some engineering and support resources. Customers who want a
strong, cost-effective on-premises or hosted product that can integrate with existing UC and PBX
systems should consider Contact Center Enterprise.

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›› Unify OpenScape Contact Center adopts Circuit. Unify led the market two years ago by bringing
mobile team messaging capabilities to Unified Communications. Design firm frog design defined
the Circuit user interface, and now, that approach is being migrated across OpenScape Contact
Center. Unify has provided OpenScape Voice and OpenScape Contact Center as hosted, multi-
tenant solutions for a number of years, and some deployments support global enterprises with over
50,000 stations. Atos’ purchase of Unify provides the company with additional global reach into
large, multinational accounts. OpenScape Contact Center has a good library of off-the-shelf CRM
integrations and provides omnichannel agent capabilities.
During the past few years, OpenScape Contact Center fell behind in the race to add channel
support, analytics, and notifications. The acquisition by Atos throws another overlapping cloud-
based contact center solution (Atos Worldline) into the mix. Clients considering OpenScape
Contact Center need to investigate the Unify road map not only for omnichannel enhancements
and deeper WFO integration but also for the strategy versus the Worldline offering. Customers who
are using OpenScape for Unified Communications or Circuit should consider OpenScape Contact
Center. Unify is price-competitive and has won a number of public sector contracts, leveraging its
global systems integration capabilities.
Contenders
›› Interactive Intelligence PureCloud makes the leap to AWS. Over the past year, Interactive
Intelligence has led the dialogue in the CCIM market about moving to a microservices architecture
based on AWS — not simply using AWS as a hosting service, but leveraging it as a global
distributed operating system. PureCloud has a clean, modern, and well-organized interface across
all roles, and, along with native WFO capabilities, provides a full omnichannel system for clients
from midsize to large. Interactive Intelligence prices PureCloud aggressively and openly shares
list prices in easy-to-understand, simplified packages. PureCloud also has its own seamlessly
integrated UC capabilities.
PureCloud is in its early stages of market growth, so it comes with limitations. The product is still
new to sales and support partners, so many of them lack the years of experience they have with
the older, mature Customer Interaction Center. Reporting is limited, but Forrester expects it to grow
over time — the company’s road map includes the addition of supervisor dashboards soon, and
cobrowsing is on the product road map for a future release. As a SaaS-based product, it supports
a modern architecture, but the API and SDK are in their early stages. PureCloud is suited to clients
who want the agility of SaaS from an established and experienced contact center software vendor
as well as optional native unified communications capabilities.
›› SAP customers will benefit from a “native” SAP Contact Center. Some customers today use
CRM to support nonvoice channels while voice agents remain on a separate system. This can
create a divide when customers want to blend agents from separate systems. SAP Customer
Engagement and Commerce (CEC) bundles and integrates SAP Contact Center as part of the

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larger CRM and commerce portfolio. This not only provides bundling advantages but also some
key integrations. One example is the way cases or work items in CRM can be queued to a contact
center agent in SAP Contact Center. CEC covers all CRM domains of sales, service, and marketing,
and SAP delivers it on-premises, hosted, or as SaaS.
While SAP Contact Center is integrated with other CRM packages through external partners, SAP
sells and supports it primarily with the rest of its own portfolio. This limits the product’s broader
market appeal and reach because it is only promoted through SAP partners. Therefore, SAP
positions Contact Center for customers who have standardized on SAP CRM, BI, and commerce
and want a full range of deployment options.
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Supplemental Material
Online Resource
The online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed product
evaluations and customizable rankings.
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each
solution. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave, in part, using materials that
they provided to us by August 2016.
›› Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where
necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.
›› Product demo screen shots. We asked vendors to conduct screen shot demonstrations of their
products’ functionality. We used findings from these product demo screen shots to validate details
of each vendor’s product capabilities.
›› Customer reference calls. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted
reference calls with three of each vendor’s current customers.
The Forrester Wave Methodology
We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated in this
market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based
on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have
limited customer references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation.
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria,
we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires,
demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review,
and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.
We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or
other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave evaluation — and then score the vendors based
on a clearly defined scale. We intend these default weightings to serve only as a starting point and
encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based tool.
The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and
market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and
vendor strategies evolve. For more information on the methodology that every Forrester Wave follows,
go to http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/forrester-wave-methodology.html.

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Integrity Policy
We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with our Integrity
Policy. For more information, go to http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/integrity-policy.html.
Endnotes
1
Customers are increasingly using web and mobile self-service as the first point of contact with customer service, and
then they escalate harder questions to agents. See the “Your Customers Don’t Want To Call You” Forrester report.
2
Customer service executives face the constant challenge of simultaneously meeting customer expectations and
business cost goals. This report outlines the four steps for AD&D professionals to optimize and innovate customer
service operations: 1) discover: establish the value of customer service; 2) plan: set the right strategy; 3) act: execute
the strategy with precision; and 4) optimize: measure and improve operations. See the “Transform The Contact Center
For Customer Service Excellence” Forrester report.
3
Source: J.B. Wood, Todd Hewlin, and Thomas Lah, Consumption Economics: The New Rules of Tech, Point B, 2011.
4
The heart of the contact center is comprised of a set of complex, unintegrated technologies, which firms must
leverage to deliver quality service. But AD&D pros supporting customer service operations need cloud-ready, deeply
integrated technology suites. For more information on the market dynamics and buyer requirements for contact center
technologies, see the “Vendors Battle For The Heart Of The Contact Center” Forrester report.

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