By 2028, companies will replace many customer experience (CX) point solutions with broad, cross-functional suites to manage CX at the enterprise level, new research from leading global technology research and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III) finds.
“Enterprises are realizing they need platforms that manage processes across the customer’s lifecycle,” says Keith Dawson, director of Customer Experience Research, ISG Software Research. “We are seeing the emergence of tools that integrate the communications components of customer needs with analytic assessments of customer value, loyalty and intent. This is a significant and accelerating change in the marketplace.”
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Customer Experience Management (CXM) defines CXM as a suite of applications built on a common platform that facilitates an interdepartmental view of customer activity and provides mechanisms for managing that activity. Some elements of that activity come from the contact center while others are derived from marketing technology. The report finds the precise mix of applications in a software provider’s suite depends on the legacy expertise of that particular software provider.
CXM has evolved to address the shortcomings of the decades-old Customer Resource Management (CRM) software category and its more departmental and application-centric approach, the report says. In contrast, CXM is based on the customer journey and the customer’s interactions with the organization across any channel.
The report finds it can be difficult for buyers to effectively compare similar or overlapping offerings from providers that stem from their different origins and, in many cases, do not directly compete against one another. The breadth of scope and expertise explains why the mix of components, users and use cases has been so diverse across CXM products.
The ISG Buyers Guides for CXM define five core areas of platform functionality across departments that combine to form an enterprise software solution: knowledge management, resource management, automation, analytics and customer journey management.
CXM software is early in its development maturity, the report finds, and it is rare to find a single offering that fits into all five areas. Many software providers start with an emphasis on their areas of origin and build additional capabilities over time.
The ISG Buyers Guide for CXM evaluates software providers and products based on support for analytics, customer journey management, knowledge management, CRM platform support, operational resource management, and process control and optimization. To be included in the CXM Buyers Guide, products must include capabilities from three of four of the following areas: resource management, automation, analytics and customer journey management. Separate Buyers Guides on Customer Journey Management (CJM) and Knowledge Management (KM) are available to more specifically examine those software categories.
For its 2024 Buyers Guides for CXM, CJM, and KM, a total of 19 providers were assessed: Adobe, eGain, Emplifi, Freshworks, Genesys, HubSpot, Microsoft, Nextiva, NICE, Oracle, Qualtrics, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Sprinklr, SugarCRM, Verint, Zendesk and Zoho.
ISG Software Research designates the top three software providers as Leaders in each category. For the 2024 studies, the leading providers in ranked order are:
Customer Experience Management: Oracle, Salesforce and Verint
Customer Journey Management: Salesforce, Verint and NICE
Knowledge Management: Salesforce, Verint and NICE
“Every organization must manage customer experience, but too often, they lack the technology to orchestrate the customer journey across channels,” said Mark Smith, partner, Software Research, ISG. “The Buyers Guide for CXM provides research insights to help understand, optimize and select software providers and products that can move the enterprise beyond the departmentally designed approaches of CRM.”
The ISG Buyers Guides for CXM, CJM and KM are the distillation of more than a year of market and product research efforts. The research is not sponsored nor influenced by software providers and is conducted solely to help enterprises optimize their business and IT software investments.
Visit this webpage to learn more about the ISG Buyers Guides for CXM, CJM, and KM and read executive summaries of each of the three reports. The complete reports, including provider rankings across seven product and customer experience dimensions and detailed research findings on each provider, are available by contacting ISG Software Research.
Organizations seeking guidance on customer experience service providers can explore existing ISG Provider Lens™ research, upcoming studies and additional details in this digital brochure.
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