The 2018 CRM Service Leaders: The Top Customer Service & Call Center Software and Solutions
After a busy 2016 that saw a number of big-ticket acquisitions, last year was comparatively quiet on the transaction front. But the pace of technological advancement remained steady, as the continued growth of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud computing means that contact center applications are smarter, faster, and better able to help customers help themselves.
But the trend toward self-service, in the form of chatbots and intelligent virtual assistants armed with natural language understanding, does not figure to diminish the role of human agents, who are now freed up to handle knottier problems, often working alongside their automated colleagues. Their joint efforts are increasingly aided by more sophisticated analytics, a reality marked by the debut of the Contact Center Analytics category this year. Read on to see our 2018 Service Leader Award honorees in that and eight other categories.
View the 2018 CRM Service Leaders in each category listed below:
Customer Case Management
Contact Center Infrastructure
Interactive Voice Response
Web Support
Workforce Optimization
Contact Center Search
Enterprise Feedback Management
Contact Center Analytics
Contact Center Outsourcing
The editors of CRM magazine extend their sincerest heartfelt gratitude to the industry analysts and consultants who took time out of their busy schedules to evaluate the vendors for this year’s CRM Service Awards. The 2018 awards would not have been possible without the contributions of the following judges: Dick Bucci, chief analyst at Pelorus Associates; Michael Fauscette, chief research officer at G2 Crowd; Donna Fluss, founder and president of DMG Consulting; Paul Greenberg, managing principal of The 56 Group; Ian Jacobs, principal analyst at Forrester Research; Mitch Kramer, senior vice president and analyst at the Patricia Seybold Group; Kate Leggett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research; Sheila McGee-Smith, founder and president of McGee-Smith Analytics; John Ragsdale, vice president of technology and social research at the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA); Paul Stockford, president and principal analyst at Saddletree Research; Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research; and Rebecca Wettemann, vice president at Nucleus Research.
CATEGORIES AND CRITERIA CRM magazine’s annual Service Leader Awards names one winner and four leaders (listed alphabetically) in each of nine categories, using a proprietary selection formula. The overall award rating is based on a composite score of company revenue and analyst ratings for deployment costs, customer satisfaction, depth of functionality (or breadth of services, in the case of outsourcing), and company direction. (These ratings are based on a five-point scale, with 5 being the highest.) In addition, each category cites one “one to watch”—companies deemed worth tracking for their potential to appear on that leaderboard in the future.