Gartner Magic Quadrant Evaluates CRM Consumer Engagement Centers

With the advent of social media, contact centers are emerging into customer engagement customers, according to a report by information technology research and advisory provider Gartner (News - Alert).

These CEC centers, which use customer relationship management software in combination with social media to connect with its customer, are responsible for dealing with a variety of tasks such as engaging customers and prospective customers across multiple platforms, as well as handling things like trouble ticketing, order and case management, advisory services and problem diagnostics and resolution.

As explained in the report, an ideal CRM customer engagement center would feature countless components including real-time, analytics/decision support, social media engagement for customer service, in-line support of mobile consumers, peer-to-peer support through blogs and forums, and real-time feedback and surveys.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant recently analyzed vendors that provide customer service and support to any interaction or engagement channel. The chosen vendors were placed in one of four categories: leaders, which demonstrate a market-defining vision and the ability to execute that vision through its products, services, sales figures and expansion to multiple geographies and vertical industries; challengers, which possess exceptional sales in their chosen markets but don't have a clear understanding of their market direction or don't have the ability to profit on emerging trends; visionaries, which are ahead of their competitors in delivering innovative products and have the potential to influence the direction of the CEC market; and niche players, which posses unique CEC products but have weaknesses in certain areas such as the capacity to extend their services to the global market.

Leaders included salesforce.com, Pega systems and Oracle RightNow Cloud Service, while challengers included Oracle Siebel, SAP (News - Alert) and Microsoft. In the category of niche players were Amdocs, Parature, Kana, Zendesk, Nice Systems and Astute Solutions. Lithium Technology was considered a visionary. Each of these organizations was evaluated for both its strengths and weaknesses.