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    Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA Tel: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.forrester.com

    The Forrester Wave: Customer ServiceSolutions For Small And Midsize Teams,Q2 2014by Kate Leggett, April 7, 2014

    For: ApplicationDevelopment& DeliveryProfessionals

    KEY TAKEAWAYS

    Customer Service Is A Cornerstone For Delivering A Great CustomerExperienceHowever, delivering good service is difficult. Nearly 70% o US consumers report anunsatis actory service interaction during the past 12 months. Organizations mustnavigate rapidly changing customer expectations and look or vendor solutions thatenable the business capabilities necessary to deliver differentiated experiences.

    The Customer Service Vendor Landscape ConsolidatesTe landscape o customer service solutions has matured and converged as a result omerger and acquisition activity. Tese vendors offer solutions replete with eatures andunctions, and every vendor can just about tick every box. Customer service leadersmust understand the core ocus area o each vendor to make the right buying choice.

    Keep An Eye On This SpaceOracle Service Cloud and sales orce.com battle or the lead in this evaluation due totheir breadth o capabilities and mature business practices. Change in the customerservice vendor space will continue. Suite vendors will ll in unctionality gaps withacquisitions. Vendors in adjacent sofware solution categories will make a play orexisting customer service vendors to augment their offerings.

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    2014, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best availableresources. Opinions reect 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. Topurchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected] . For additional information, go to www.forrester.com .

    FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS APRIL 7, 2014

    The Forrester Wave: Customer ServiceSolutions For Small And Midsize Teams, Q2 2014Due Diligence Required: These Vendors Are Great At SupportingSmall And Midsize Teamsby Kate Leggett with Stephen Powers , Michael Facemire , and Victoria Boutan

    WHY READ THIS REPORT

    In Forresters 84-criteria evaluation o customer service vendors or enterprise organizations, weidentied the 11 most signicant solution providers Astute Solutions, eGain, Kana Sofware, Microsof,Moxie Sofware, Oracle (Oracle Service Cloud), Parature, sales orce.com, SAP (SAP Cloud or Service),SugarCRM, and Zendesk in the category and researched, analyzed, and scored them. Tis report detailsour ndings about how well each vendor ullls our criteria and where they stand in relation to each otherto help customer service pro essionals select the right partner or their customer service initiatives.

    Table Of Contents2 Good Customer Service Boosts Revenue,

    Poor Service Increases Costs

    5 The Customer Service Market Is On TheCusp Of Signicant Change

    7 Customer Service Vendors Focus On MarketSegments For Success

    10 The Customer Service Vendor EvaluationProcess Explained

    13 The Results: Buyers Have Many Choices ToSift Through

    15 The Results: Vendor Proles

    21 Supplemental Material

    Notes & Resources

    Forrester conducted vendor surveyevaluations in December 2013 to January2014 and evaluated 11 customer servicesolutions worthy of consideration by largeorganizations. We also surveyed vendorcustomers.

    Related Research DocumentsNavigate The Future Of Customer Service In2014February 6, 2014

    TechRadar For AD&D Pros: Contact CenterSolutions For Customer Service, Q2 2013

    April 17, 2013

    Transform The Contact Center For CustomerService ExcellenceJune 22, 2012

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    FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS

    The Forrester Wave: Customer Service Solutions For Small And Midsize Teams, Q2 2014 2

    2014, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 7, 2014

    GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE BOOSTS REVENUE, POOR SERVICE INCREASES COSTS

    In the age o the customer, executives dont decide how customer-centric their companies are customers do. And providing good customer service is a win-win or customers and companies. Inact, recent Forrester data shows that an investment in customer service technology is the secondmost important investment that companies are making in 2014 (see Figure 1). Why? Because goodcustomer service has quantiable revenue impacts:

    Good customer experiences boost long-term loyalty. Customer loyalty has economic benetsas measured over three dimensions: willingness to consider another purchase, likelihood toswitch business to a competitor, and likelihood to recommend to a riend or colleague. 1 Terevenue impact rom a 10-percentage-point improvement in a companys customer experiencescore, as measured by Forresters Customer Experience Index (CXi), translates into more than$1 billion.2 And customer service, or many companies, is a cornerstone to their customer

    experience strategy.

    Poor customer service leads to increased costs. Te cost o ailing to meet customerexpectations is high: 75% o consumers move to another channel when online customer serviceails, and Forrester estimates that unnecessary service costs to online retailers due to channelescalation are $22 million per year on average. 3

    Poor service experiences risk customer de ections and revenue losses. For example, i acompany has 4 million customers and each spends $100 per year, the total projected revenue ora year would be $400 million. Forrester survey data shows that approximately 11% o companieshave poor CXi scores.4 Tat represents 440,000 customers, and typically only about 2% o

    them complain to the contact center. Tat leaves 98% who dont complain, or a total o 431,200customers at risk to de ect. At $100 apiece, this represents over $40,000,000 million potentialloss in revenue annually.

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    113657

    Figure 1 Organizations Are Investing In Customer Service In 2014

    As your rm considers its software strategy and investments, which departmentsor business groups is it focusing on the most? (select up to three)

    Sales 38%

    Customer service 32%

    Finance 25%

    Marketing 25%

    Research and development 25%

    Field service 22%

    Order fulllment 21%

    Manufacturing 18%

    Procurement 16%

    Supply chain 14%

    Human resources 13%

    Ofce of the CEO and otherexecutive management 7%

    Other 4%

    Base: 2,074 IT executives and technology decision-makers

    Source: Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2013Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

    Good Customer Service Is Hard To Deliver

    Customers want to eel empowered to get service anywhere, anytime, and they expect their serviceinteractions to be pain- ree. Over hal o US online consumers are likely to abandon their onlinepurchase i they cannot nd a quick answer to their questions, and three-quarters say that valuingtheir time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service. 5

    Its no surprise that customers are ofen rustrated with the effort that it takes to receive customerservice. Forrester data shows that 67% o US online consumers say that theyve had unsatis actoryservice interactions in the past 12 months. 6 Tis parallels recent data rom the Accenture GlobalConsumer Pulse Research survey, which says that 91% o respondents are rustrated by having tocontact a company multiple times or the same reason, 90% by being put on hold or a long time,and 89% by having to repeat their issue to multiple representatives. 7

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    Customer service leaders o small and midsize teams aim to strike the correct balance betweencustomer needs and cost o operations. Specic challenges in nding the right balance include theneed to (see Figure 2):

    Provide multiple communication channels or customer interaction. Te breadth ocommunication channels that customers use or customer service is increasingly varied. RecentForrester data showed that 73% o US online consumers used the phone, 67% used help orrequently asked questions (FAQs), 58% used email, 43% used chat, 24% used SMS, and 22%used witter in the past 12 months. 8 Customer service agents supporting these media typesmust be able to deliver channel-agnostic in ormation a challenge or 41% o organizationsthat, or example, are unable to deliver relevant customer in ormation about their account andprole over a range o channels.

    Support end-to-end customer journeys. Customer service organizations must also supportomnichannel customer journeys journeys that start on one communication channel and moveto another with a seamless handoff between channels so that customers do not have to restart theconversation something that only 3% o organizations are extremely effective at doing.

    Empower customers and agents with consistent answers. Customer service agents rely onknowledge management solutions to effectively answer customer inquiries. In addition, 67%o US online consumers use web sel -service knowledge to nd answers to their questions. 9

    Yet, knowledge management implementations have a 58% satis action rating among US onlineadults who have used the channel in the past 12 months. 10 Tis is because knowledge is ofendifficult to locate, difficult to maintain, and not always relevant to the customers context.

    Monitor customer needs and satis action. It is critical or customer service managers toreceive direct customer eedback, pre erably as soon as the interaction with the customer hashappened. It is also critical or them to understand the general impression o their serviceoffering as expressed in the social sphere. Service managers use this in ormation to balance thecost o service with overall customer satis action so that they can make realistic tradeoffs.

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    113656

    Figure 2 Customer Service Organizations Struggle o Provide Consistent Cross-Channel Experiences

    How would you rate your companys effectiveness at implementing the

    following for your multichannel strategy?

    Ability to deliver a channel-agnostic capabilityfor customers to get relevant information 9% 32% 26% 10% 3%

    about their account and prole

    Ability to provide a seamless handoff betweenchannels for customers regardless of whether 15% 29% 24% 9% 3%

    ofine-to-online or online-to-ofine

    Ability to provide a consistentcross-channel experience

    1 = not at all effective 5 = extremely effective2 3 4

    12% 26% 19% 18% 5%

    Base: 80 eBusiness and channel strategy professionals(percentages may not total 100 because of rounding)

    Source: December 2013 Global eBusiness And Channel Strategy Professional Online SurveySource: Forrester Research, Inc.

    THE CUSTOMER SERVICE MARKET IS ON THE CUSP OF SIGNIFICANT CHANGE

    Te customer service vendor space is a mature space. Yet there have been many changes in the veyears that have accelerated with time, and more change is likely to continue. wo driving actors willaccelerate these changes: consolidation and emerging competition.

    Big Fish Eat The Little Fish, And Each Bite Broadens The Reach Of The Big Fish

    In recent years, there has been continued consolidation and turmoil in the customer servicesolutions landscape. Vendors have acquired direct competitors to ll in gaps in their offering.More importantly, vendors have acquired companies in adjacent spaces to broaden their customerengagement management capabilities and offerings. Notable acquisitions include the ollowing:

    Oracle uses its acquisitions to actualize its customer experience management suite. Oracle

    has made a series o acquisitions to round out a customer experience suite that providesconsistent experiences across the breadth o interactions and transactions that customershave with companies. Notable acquisitions include A G or eCommerce (2011); InQuira orknowledge management (2011); RightNow echnologies or multichannel customer service(2011); Market2Lead or demand generation and marketing automation (2012); Endecaechnologies or web commerce and business intelligence: Eloqua or marketing automation(2012); Collective Intellect or social intelligence (2012); Involver or social media development

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    (2012); Vitrue or social marketing (2012); BigMachines or congure, price, and quote (2013);Compendium or content marketing (2013); Responsys or marketing orchestration (2013); andBlueKai or data management (2014).

    SAP makes a ew key strategic moves. SAP, like Oracle, is ocused on providing consistent endto-end customer experiences via its breadth o products. It has made a ew, but key, acquisitionsto round out its capabilities in this area: Sybase or its mobility plat orm (2010); Ariba orprocurement (2012); Syclo or mobile asset management and eld service; KXEN or predictiveanalytics (2013); and hybris or multichannel eCommerce (2013). In addition, SAP partneredwith NetBase or social media analysis (2012) and eGain (2010) and Mind ouch (2013) orknowledge management.

    Sales orce.com has become an acquisition monster. Sales orce.com made a series o movesto quickly round out the capabilities o its Service Cloud, namely: Instranet or knowledgemanagement (2007); In ormavores or visual workow (2009); ActivaLive or chat (2010);Radian6 or social media monitoring and engagement (2011); Assistly or small and mediumsize business (SMB) customer service (2011); GoInstant or cobrowsing (2012); and PriorKnowledge or predictive analytics (2013). It has used this same tactic to broaden its customerrelationship management (CRM) ootprint, with the notable acquisition o Buddy Media orsocial media publishing (2012) and Exactarget or business-to-consumer (B2C) markingautomation (2013). Adding maturity to its end-to-end customer relationship management(CRM) solution, the introduction o sales orce1 in 2013, a plat orm or mobile application anddevelopment, has allowed sales orce to expand its reach beyond the traditional CRM categoryand set its sights on becoming a viable competitor in the plat orm-as-a-service space.11

    Kana Sofware has built its port olio via acquisitions and in turn has been acquired. Kanahas made a number o recent acquisitions to build out its customer service port olio, whichinclude the ollowing: Lagan, a government-to-citizen (G2C) CRM solution (2010); Overtone,a social media listening company (2011); rinicom, a midmarket, cloud-based multichannelcustomer service vendor (2012); and Ciboodle, a business process management (BPM)-centriccustomer service vendor (2012). Kana, in turn, has been acquired by Verint Systems (2014), awork orce optimization company looking to uni y customer service and agent utilization andper ormance capabilities. Tis cross-category acquisition indicates a possible consolidation otwo mature sofware spaces.

    Other acquisitions o note include Microsofs acquisition o Netbreeze (2013) or social listeningand Parature (2014), which helps Microsof Dynamics round out its knowledge management andchat capabilities; Nuance Communications acquisition o VirtuOz (2012), a virtual agent company;Nice Systems acquisition o enterprise eedback monitoring (EFM) vendor Fizzback (2011); andVerints acquisition o EFM vendor Vovici (2011).

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    Vendors From Adjacent Markets Emerge As Competitors

    New customer service point solution vendors ( or example predictive analytics, mobile customerservice, virtual agents) are popping up at an unprecedented rate and deliver modern inter aces anda mobile-rst strategy. You just have to look at the entry list or the yearly CRM Idol ( www.crmidol.com) competition to get a eel or the range o these vendor offerings.

    However, the most interesting disruptor to this space may be coming rom another well-established category o vendors the contact center providers and, in particular, the cloud-basedcontact center providers. Tese vendors provide an end-to-end solution or customer service:a unied communications in rastructure, robust routing, and queuing engines or interactionso all types voice, digital, and social. Tey have integrated work orce optimization enginesor agent quality management, scheduling, and orecasting. oday, they tend to have lighter-

    weight case management and knowledge capabilities, which can be easily hardened or acquired.

    Most importantly, these vendors have proven small; midsize; and enterprise-ready, large-scaledeployments. Tis category o vendor may well contain candidates that will appear in the nextupdate o this evaluation as they add more sophisticated customer engagement capabilities totheir products.

    CUSTOMER SERVICE VENDORS FOCUS ON MARKET SEGMENTS FOR SUCCESS

    In this mature customer service market, you will nd that each o the leading vendors offers achecklist o eatures and unctions. Customer service buyers must remember that more is notbetter this is especially true or small and midsize teams; many times, more is just more. In act,when you dont need or cant use extra eatures more is sometimes worse. Customer service

    organizations o all sizes need to care ully understand the customer service market segmentation inorder to ocus in on the right category o vendor that is the right size or their needs.

    Start By Asking What Size Of Organization Each Vendor Targets

    Even with consolidation, customer service solutions all into two primary groups to choose rom,although the distinctions between these categories have become less pronounced over the past threeyears (see Figure 3):

    Customer service solutions or enterprise organizations. Customer service vendors ocused onlarge organizations organizations with typically 1,000 or more agents who are primarily phoneagents offer robust case management capabilities. Tese vendor solutions can scale to serve

    very large agent populations, in the tens o thousands and higher. Tey offer their productsprimarily through the traditional on-premises licensing model, but many now also offer hostedand SaaS deployment options. Many vendors offer deeply vertical solutions and have pre- andpost-sale company resources dedicated to supporting their vertical products. Vendors in this

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    category also target midsize organizations, offering prepackaged versions o their solutions withmore-affordable price tags. We have highlighted the leading vendors in this category in ourForrester Wave evaluation o customer service solutions or enterprise organizations. 12

    Customer service solutions or midsize and small organizations. Vendors primarily targetthese solutions at teams with hundreds o customer service agents or ewer who supportinquiries over a breadth o voice, digital, and social communication channels. Other vendorstarget their solutions at divisions o customer service organizations that have dedicated teamsor digital and social customer service within a larger contact center. Tese solutions are highlyusable, ofen have very good mobile capabilities, and have a broad and deep set o multichannelcustomer service capabilities. Tey are predominately SaaS solutions, offering a rapid timeto value. Some vendors in this category have upgraded their solutions to be more suitable toenterprise-class buyers and are gaining acceptance in this segment. Te leading vendors in thiscategory are highlighted in this report.

    Figure 3 Customer Service Solutions Fall Into wo Distinct Categories

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.113657#

    Not all vendors target the same size of business

    Agentnumbers:

    Channelmix:

    Deployment:

    Small Midsizeorganizations

    Enterpriseorganizations

    10s

    SaaS

    Mixed, but

    trending toSaaS

    100s 1,000s 10,000s

    Primarily multichannel Primarily voice-based

    On-premises

    Number of deployments

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    Drill Into The Customer Service Functions That You Need To Be Successful

    Te customer service needs or a business-to-business (B2B) company are not the same as the needsor a B2C company. Likewise the needs o a phone customer service agent are not the same as that oa customer service agent supporting digital or social channels. As you rene your vendor selection,care ully evaluate the criteria in this evaluation to pick a solution that is right or your needs.Categories to evaluate include:

    Case management. Some vendors have heavyweight case management unctions that canextend to guiding through predened workows. Other vendors provide lighter-weight casemanagement unctions that support simple process ows and are suitable or many B2Ccustomer service interactions.

    Multichannel management. Customers today want to interact with customer service

    organizations over the breadth o voice, digital, and social communication channels. But its nota good strategy to deploy all available channels to your customers. You must understand whatcommunication channels are important to your customers based on their demographic, issuetype, and the journey that they want to take with you. You must then choose a vendor solutionthat is able to support your customers end-to-end omnichannel journey.

    Knowledge and content. Customer service organizations are increasingly leveraging curatedknowledge base content in order to provide accurate, relevant, and complete answers to customerquestions or virtual agents in order to support automated natural language conversations withcustomers. Organizations are also increasingly leveraging social content rom discussion orumsto complement their curated content. Vendors provide the breadth and depth o knowledge and

    content capabilities, which must be the right size or your business. In this case especially, havingtoo many knowledge eatures is ofen overkill or organizations with lightweight needs.

    Business intelligence. Customer service is all about metrics and measurement. Tesemeasurements are used to monitor and manage in real time the success o your operations orexample customer issues and expectations, as well as agent workload and per ormance. Customerservice organizations must also orecast the success o their uture operations using predictivemodeling, simulations, and statistical analysis. Small organizations have simple real-time andhistorical measurement needs, while larger organizations may look or these capabilities roma vendor solution or look to extract pertinent data rom a customer service solution to beprocessed via a business intelligence engine.

    Usability and cost. Customer service organizations, both large and small, need highly usablesolutions with modern user inter aces and user experiences that help reduce training time andincrease job satis action with the tool set. Good usability goes a long way to combatting thehigh turnover rate in most organizations. Similarly, overall cost o ownership is an importantevaluation dimension and particularly important to small to midsize teams looking orsolutions that dont break their budgets.

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    THE CUSTOMER SERVICE VENDOR EVALUATION PROCESS EXPLAINED

    Afer examining past research and through conversations and inquiries with customer servicepro essionals and vendors, we developed a comprehensive set o 84 evaluation criteria. Combined,these criteria provide a detailed look at breadth o capability, strategy, and market presence o 11small and midsize customer service solutions. We grouped the criteria into three high-level buckets.

    Current offering. Each vendors position on the vertical axis o the Forrester Wave graphicindicates the strength o its current product offering. We looked at the strength o each

    vendors products across a wide spectrum o customer service capabilities. Tese included casemultichannel support, knowledge and content, business intelligence, architecture and plat orm,mobility, usability, and cost.

    Strategy. A vendors position on the horizontal axis indicates our assessment o its strategy. We

    assessed the strength o each vendors product strategy and vision. We assessed the applicationownership experience and corporate strategy o each vendor. We used a combination o vendorevaluation responses, documentation, and customer eedback and vendor strategy briengs tocomplete this section.

    Market presence. Te size o each vendors bubble on the chart indicates its market presence.We gauged the size o each vendors customer base and evaluated the depth o human andnancial resources available to enhance its products and serve customers.

    Eleven Vendors Offer A Diverse Range Of Capabilities

    We included 11 solutions in our assessment o enterprise customer service solutions, including:Astute Solutions, eGain, Kana Express, Microsof, Moxie Sofware, Oracle Service Cloud, Parature,sales orce, SAP Cloud or Service, SugarCRM, and Zendesk.

    We did not include in the assessment solutions that specialize in one or a narrow set o customerservice unctionalities such as, or example, knowledge management vendors, chat vendors, orsocial engagement vendors. We did not include vendors ocused on a single industry. We also didnot include in our assessment customer service vendors that are suited or enterprise-size customerservice organizations. Leading vendors in this category are covered in our customer serviceevaluation or enterprise organizations. 13

    Each vendor included in the evaluation (see Figure 4):

    Offers a multi unctional customer service application. Each vendor included hasunctionality in the ollowing customer service subdisciplines: case management, knowledgemanagement, multichannel management, and business intelligence.

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    Provides multichannel sel -service and agent-assisted customer service capabilities: Te vendors and products in this evaluation can support a minimum o our o the ollowingcustomer interaction channels: phone, web sel -service, email, chat, cobrowse, customer service

    via social channels (e.g., Facebook, witter), and virtual agents.

    Has a strong presence in the customer service solutions market. Each o the evaluated vendors has hundreds, i not thousands, o customers and over $15 million in revenue romcustomer service licenses and users in 2012.

    Has a product now in general release and in use by customers. Te solutions we includedhave a specic release that was generally available at the time o data collection or thisevaluation with re erences available or contact.

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    Figure 4 Evaluated Vendors: Product In ormation And Selection Criteria

    Product version Version Vendor Product evaluated evaluated release date

    Astute Solutions

    eGain

    Kana Software, a Verint Company

    Microsoft

    Moxie Software

    Oracle

    Parature

    salesforce.com

    SAP

    SugarCRM

    Zendesk

    ePowerCenter

    eGain 11

    Kana Express

    Microsoft Dynamics CRM

    Spaces by Moxie

    Oracle Service Cloud

    Parature Customer Service Software

    Service Cloud

    SAP Cloud for Service

    Sugar 7

    Zendesk

    8.7

    11

    Version 13

    2013

    9

    Nov-13

    13.1

    Winter 14

    1311

    7

    Nov-13

    September 2013

    September 2013

    June 2013

    October 2013

    Summer 2013

    November 2013

    N/A

    October 2013

    November 2013

    November 2013

    November 2013

    Vendor selection criteria

    Offers a multifunctional customer service application. Each vendor included has functionality in thefollowing customer service subdisciplines: case management, knowledge management, multichannelmanagement, and business intelligence. Products promoted primarily as best-of-breed solutions for asingle functional area were not included.

    Provides multichannel self-service and agent-assisted customer service capabilities: Thevendors and products in the evaluation can support a minimum of four of the following customerinteraction channels: phone, web self-service, email, chat, cobrowse, customer service via socialchannels (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), and virtual agents.

    Has a strong presence in the customer service solutions market. Each of the evaluated vendorshas hundreds, if not thousands, of customers and over $15 million in revenue from customer servicelicenses and users in 2012.

    Has a product now in general release and in use by customers. The solutions we included have aspecic release that was generally available at the time of data collection for this evaluation withreferences available for contact.

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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    THE RESULTS: BUYERS HAVE MANY CHOICES TO SIFT THROUGH

    Te evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 5):

    Oracle Service Cloud and sales orce battle or dominance. Oracle and sales orce have distinctand compelling visions or customer service. Oracle ocuses on end-to-end cross-channelcustomer experiences, supported by its solutions. Sales orce ocuses on connected customers, whocontrols the relationship that they have with companies. Te depth and breadth o both companiesdeployments in the marketplace rom very small to very large reect the maturity o thecustomer service capabilities and company resources to support their customer bases.

    eGain, Moxie Sofware, and Oracle Service Cloud enable high-volume multichannel service.eGain, Moxie Sofware, and Oracle Service Cloud support robust multichannel customerservice, with each vendor having examples o small and large deployments. SAP Cloud or

    Service is a new entry in this space, with a subset o overall multichannel unctions. Tesesolutions appeal to customer service organizations that handle very large volumes o digital andsocial inquiries. Tese organizations ofen have dedicated agent teams or these channels, withseparate teams dedicated to the voice channel. In many cases, these teams are ofen part o aneBusiness or digital operations organization instead o a core customer service organization.A oundational layer o robust knowledge management delivers channel-specic answers tocustomer inquiries.

    Astute Solutions, Kana Express, Parature, and Zendesk power small teams. Tese vendorsoffer a breadth, although not depth, o customer service capabilities. Tey have a broadrange o packaging options, which are attractive to smaller teams not requiring the ull set o

    unctionality. Tese solutions are targeted at small teams, but due to their sound architecture,they are nding homes in smaller divisions o large enterprises.

    Microsof and SugarCRM ocus on supporting phone agents. With their strong casemanagement capabilities, computer telephony integration (C I), and reporting, Microsof andSugarCRM offer customer service capabilities or phone agents, but they lack the multichanneland knowledge management capabilities that other vendors offer. Microsof has recentlyaddressed this deciency by acquiring Parature and will integrate this solution into DynamicsCRM. SugarCRM relies on partners to ll these gaps, and, with its commercial open sourcedevelopment approach, it is increasingly catching the interest o larger organizations.

    Te customer service market is a mature market. Te rst products were introduced in the 1990s,and leading vendors have had solutions in the market or well over a decade. Tis evaluation o thecustomer service market or small and midsize organizations is intended to be a starting point only.We encourage clients to view detailed product evaluations and adapt criteria weightings to t theirindividual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.

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    14

    Figure 5 Forrester Wave: Customer Service Solutions For Small And Midsize eams, Q2 14

    Risky StrongBets Contenders Performers Leaders

    Strong

    Current

    offering

    Weak

    Weak Strategy

    Go to Forrester.com todownload the ForresterWave tool for moredetailed productevaluations, featurecomparisons, andcustomizable rankings.

    Market presence

    Oracle ServiceCloud

    salesforce.com

    Microsoft

    eGain

    SAP Cloudfor Service

    Moxie SoftwareZendesk

    SugarCRMKana Express

    Parature

    Astute Solutions

    Strong

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

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    Figure 5 Forrester Wave: Customer Service Solutions For Small And Midsize eams, Q2 14 (Cont.)

    F o r r e s

    t e r s

    W e i g h

    t i n g

    A s t u t e

    S o l u t

    i o n s

    e G a i n

    K a n a

    E x p r e s s

    M i c r o s o

    f t

    M o x

    i e S o f

    t w a r e

    O r a c l e

    S e r v i c e

    C l o u d

    P a r a t u r e

    s a l e s f o r c e . c

    o m

    S A P C l o u d

    f o r

    S e r v

    i c e

    S A P C R M

    Z e n

    d e s k

    CURRENT OFFERING 50% 3.13 4.05 3.28 3.15 3.93 4.27 2.97 4.04 3.10 3.28 3.69Case management 15% 2.98 4.26 3.42 4.16 3.78 3.88 2.82 4.80 3.74 4.16 3.02Multichannel capabilities 25% 3.06 4.51 3.67 2.19 4.61 4.16 2.76 3.54 2. 98 2.55 3.20Knowledge and content 15% 3.26 4.58 3.00 0.72 3.82 4.44 2.34 3.88 0.90 1.18 2.88Business intelligence (BI) 5% 1.00 4.40 3.70 3.60 4.10 4.10 3.10 2.95 3.70 2.00 4.70

    Architecture and platform 5% 2.86 4.32 2.67 4.77 3.67 4.53 3.05 4.50 3.47 3.79 3.19Mobility 5% 4.00 4.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 2.00 5.00 4.00 5.00 5.00Usability 10% 1.66 2.32 4.34 5.00 3.66 5.00 3.66 5.00 3.66 5.00 5.00Cost 20% 4.34 3.66 2.98 4.00 3.66 3.98 3.64 3.64 3.66 4.00 4.32

    STRATEGY 50% 2.06 3.06 2.79 4.02 3.13 4.48 2.81 4.46 3.97 2.95 3.23Product strategy and vision 40% 1.80 2.20 2.80 3.60 3.20 4.60 2.80 4.60 3.40 3.20 3.20

    Application ownership 20% 2.00 4.25 3.00 4.25 3.25 4.50 3.75 3.75 3.75 3.00 3.75experience managementmethodologiesCorporate strategy 40% 2.34 3.33 2.67 4.32 3.00 4.34 2.34 4.67 4.66 2.67 3.00

    MARKET PRESENCE 0% 1.50 2.30 1.50 3.67 2.10 2.56 1.53 3.32 1.60 1.87 2.63Customer base 80% 1.00 2.00 1.00 3.40 2.00 2.20 1.60 3.40 1.00 1.40 2.60Total number of employees 10% 2.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 2.00 5.00 1.00 4.00 5.00 3.00 3.00Financial performance 10% 5.00 4.00 4.00 4.50 3.00 3.00 1.50 2.00 3.00 4.50 2.50

    All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

    THE RESULTS: VENDOR PROFILES

    Leaders

    Oracle Service Cloud delivers strong support or B2C companies. Oracle Service Cloud isa key asset in Oracles customer experience management port olio. It provides a exible, easilycongurable customer service solution and is particularly strong in delivering consistent cross-channel customer service experiences. It has strong multichannel capabilities: very strongcobrowse and orum capabilities; strong chat, email response management, social customerservice, and knowledge management; and sound social listening, backed by very strongreporting. It gets high marks or usability and provides sound case management capabilities.Te solution offers quick time-to-value due to its SaaS deployment model. It has an average

    http:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.comhttp:///reader/full/salesforce.com
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    deployment size o ewer than 250 agents, and customer service organizations use it as acompanywide customer service solution, as a standalone solution to support its digital andsocial channels, or in a hybrid deployment to extend the digital capabilities o an on-premises

    customer service solution.

    Tis product came to Oracle via its 2012 acquisition o RightNow echnologies. Since theacquisition, the product team has continued to execute on a robust road map o enhancements,many o which ocus on tighter integrations to other solutions in Oracles customer experienceproduct port olio. It benets rom Oracles mature practices or implementation, user adoption,and support. However, Forrester clients tell us requently that they have lost some o theirpersonalized touch that preceded its acquisition. Oracle Service Cloud is best suited or midsizeB2C teams that offer robust web sel -service and multichannel customer service to theircustomers and that emphasize the value o customer experiences.

    Sales orce extends its reach into customer service with clear vision and sound execution.Te sales orce vision is one o a connected customer, where customers control the interactionsthat they have with enterprises. o support this vision, sales orce provides pervasive social andcollaboration capabilities in Service Cloud. In addition, sales orce provides very strong casemanagement capabilities, social customer service, and social listening. It has a sound knowledgebase, overall sound multichannel capabilities, strong reporting, but very weak business analysistools relying on its AppExchange partners to complement its product offering. All capabilitiesare delivered via intuitive inter aces at a sound cost structure. It has a strong architecture andplat orm, and, with an average deployment size o 200 agents and a range o packaging andpricing options, it is suitable or midsize teams.

    Sales orce is adopting an increasingly vertical strategy. It currently ocuses on a hand ul okey verticals (nancial services, media, government, healthcare, retail, and automotive), and itrelies on strategic partnerships or deeper vertical offerings. It has also segmented its sales andsupport unctions into two business units one dedicated to enterprise accounts and one tomidsize accounts, which helps better support each type o account. Sales orces differentiated

    vision and aggressive product road map has allowed it to rapidly increase its ootprint ocustomer service deployments both large and small. Sales orce best suits organizationslooking or a SaaS-based, easy-to-use, rapidly deployable customer service application withstrong social capabilities.

    Microsof offers a exible, cost-effective customer service solution. Te primary buyers oMicrosof Dynamics CRM are upper midmarket and enterprise customers that require easy-touse, exible customer service solutions that yield productivity gains or their customer serviceorganizations. As a result, Microsofs strategy ocuses on delivering these results across a choice odeployment options (on-premises, cloud, partner-managed, or hybrid), payment options (license,subscription, or nancing), and access points (mobile, Outlook client, browser, or SharePoint

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    site). Microsof Dynamics CRM provides strong customer service capabilities delivered via arobust, scalable plat orm and architecture and gets high marks or usability (based on the amiliarOffice user inter ace [UI] look and eel). It offers very strong support or native business process

    management and provides strong support or case management or phone agents.

    However, Microsof Dynamics CRM relies on its recent acquisition o Parature to providesupport or multichannel customer service, knowledge management, and social customerservice. Microsof Dynamics CRM relies on its Netbreeze acquisition to provide social listeningcapabilities. It has a broad range o industry templates or vertical solutions, which complementthose available rom an extensive partner network. Microsof offers an attractively priced solutioncompared with other vendors, especially when the solution is bundled with the Microsof Officesuite and with its recent Parature acquisition. Te company also has a solid product road mapand vision or uture enhancements. Microsof Dynamics CRM is best suited or B2B companiesthat have made a commitment to the Microsof technology stack and that require integrationwith other Microsof solutions such as Microsof Office, SharePoint, and Lync.

    Strong Performers

    eGain excels at knowledge-powered digital customer engagement. eGain solutions have been amainstay in the multichannel customer service space or over a decade. eGain provides a customerengagement hub: multichannel capabilities that access a common knowledge base and a commoncase management ramework, backed by solid reporting. Tis enables eGain to deliver consistentservice experiences across digital channels and to support customers in their cross-channel

    journeys. eGain has overall strong multichannel capabilities, but has a dated UI. It has very strong

    email response management, page push, and cobrowse; strong chat, including very strong videochat; and sound social customer service and social listening. eGain has very strong knowledgemanagement and virtual agent capabilities that include the ability to guide the user to the bestanswer. Companies deploy eGain as a suite or or a subset o channels ( or example, email, chat,and knowledge) or as a singular channel ( or example, email, chat, knowledge). eGain has largesuite deployments ranging upward o 20,000 agents, as well as single-channel deployments. Withan average agent seat size o over 500 agents, eGain may be too heavyweight or smaller teams.

    eGain has a sound cost structure, offering exible investment options based on agent seats, volume o sel -service sessions, or volume o sales offers, as well as tiered cloud and on-premisesinvestment options. It also has packaged pricing or jumpstart options. eGain has a long-standing relationship with Cisco Systems, which is the original equipment manu acturer (OEM)or eGains email and chat products or its Unied Contact Center Enterprise product. Ciscoalso resells the entire eGain solution. Although eGains solution is comprehensive rom a eatureperspective, the company relies on customer and partner eedback and organic growth to evolveits products as opposed to a strong vision. eGain is best suited or B2C buyers that need robustengagement solutions with advanced knowledge capabilities to support a breadth o channels ora single digital channel.

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    SAP Cloud or Service complements and extends the SAP CRM solutions. In recentyears, SAP has released an end-to-end cloud customer engagement solution port olio, whichincludes cloud offerings or CRM, nance, enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capitalmanagement (HCM), procurement, and social collaboration. SAP Cloud or Service is a newaddition (released in 2013) to SAPs cloud offering or CRM (SAP Cloud or Customer solution,which includes sales, marketing, service, and collaboration products). SAP built all these cloudsolutions on a common architecture using SAP Hana as its plat orm, and it leverages commonapplication services such as reporting and analytics, security, integration, and collaboration.SAP Cloud or Service is positioned as a separate product, but it can also be deployed in ahybrid mode to complement and extend the native capabilities o SAP CRM.

    SAP Cloud or Service has a sound architecture and plat orm, strong integration, soundcustomization and conguration, and very strong security capabilities. It also has a solid set o

    predened key per ormance indicators (KPIs), reports, and dashboards or customer service.Its multichannel and knowledge capabilities are varied in maturity. It has sound email andsocial customer service capabilities. It does not have native chat, social listening, or knowledgemanagement capabilities; instead, it leverages SAP Business Communication Managementor customer-to-agent chat, SAP Social Media Analytics by NetBase or social listening, and

    Mindouch or knowledge management. It has ew deployments to date, with an averagedeployment size o ewer than 100 agents. However, the product is strengthened by SAPs strong

    vision or customer service, its sound application ownership experience, and SAPs very strongcorporate strategy. SAP Cloud or Service is best suited or companies that are committed toSAP, that need to rapidly deploy customer service solutions to its customer base or that arelooking to augment the capabilities o SAP CRM.

    Moxie Sofware allows customers and employees to connect or service. Moxie offers twointerconnected solution suites: Customer Engagement Spaces, a digital customer interactionhub, which provides multichannel customer service, and Community Spaces, which allowscollaboration within and outside o the enterprise. Tese solutions bring customer andemployee engagement together making it easier to capture and share knowledge and servicecustomers. Moxies Customer Engagement Spaces offers very strong multichannel capabilities:

    very strong email response management, social listening, page push, and cobrowse andstrong chat, including very strong video chat and social customer service. Moxie has a strongknowledge base and sound orum support. It also has very strong reporting or customerservice. Companies ofen deploy Moxie sofware as a suite, or a subset o channels ( or example,email, chat and knowledge) or or a single channel ( or example, email, chat, knowledge).

    Moxie has a strong architecture and plat orm and an average deployment size o 500 agents.However, it has weak business process and workow tools. Moxie has a sound cost structure andattractive pricing or very small teams starting at 20 agents or 100 knowledge articles. Moxie has

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    a sound cost structure, vision or solving customer acing problems, and application ownershipexperience. Moxie is best suited or customer service or sales buyers needing support or high-

    volume digital interactions.

    Zendesks mobile-rst mindset delivers highly usable customer service solutions. Zendesktargets its mobile-rst customer service solution to customer service teams with between 10and 250 agents. Its simplicity, usability, and application ownership has garnered it over 40,000customers since its inception in 2007. Zendesk offers a straight orward solution with sound,simple case management and multichannel management and knowledge base capabilities. It has

    very strong reporting and dashboarding, enabling teams to track correlations between relatedkey per ormance indicators. In addition, Zendesk allows users to compare their KPIs to theirpeers. KPIs are available by industry, audience, and company size and help users understand thelevel o service that they deliver. It has a sound architecture and plat orm that is robust enoughto support large implementations o over 5,000 agents.

    Zendesk is a SaaS solution that typically requires no implementation. Small teams can signup or the service and congure the sofware themselves. For larger deployments, Zendeskuses a network o partners who can assist with more complex implementations, includingcustomizations, design, and data migrations. It offers very strong support, with boot campsor best practice training in customer service. Zendesk has an aggressive product road map,solid business vision, a clear ocus on its target market, and strong revenue growth. Zendesk isbest suited or small customer service teams looking or a modern, mobile-rst multichannelsolution and a company to help them understand best practices or service.

    SugarCRM offers the customization exibility o an open source plat orm. SugarCRMoffers a exible plat orm built on open source components and open standards, which allowsorganizations to take a basic CRM plat orm application and build upon it using their owntechnology management resources or add-on modules that are available through SugarCRMspartner and developer communities. SugarCRM provides a sound architecture and plat ormwith very strong integration support and security and strong support or customization andconguration. It has very strong usability. It also offers strong case management capabilitiesand social listening capabilities, but it has weak support or business process and workowtools. However, SugarCRM provides weak support or most other customer service capabilities,including multichannel capabilities, knowledge base, and social customer service.

    SugarCRM has a sound product strategy and vision and a sound application ownershipexperience. Te product is available as an on-premises or SaaS deployment via private cloud,public cloud, and partner cloud deployments. Its average deployment size is 20 agents, however,customer-service-led deals are much larger, resulting in SugarCRM emerging on the radar as a

    viable option or both small and large organizations. SugarCRM best suits organizations needingphone-based customer support and seeking exible pricing options with deep customizationexibility in a packaged CRM application.

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    Kana Express balances cost o operations with customer experience. Kana Express is aSaaS-product that Kana Sofware acquired in 2012 rom rinicom. It is a straight orwardmultichannel product with strong usability and a rapid time to value. It has sound casemanagement capabilities and a sound knowledge base and virtual agent. It also has soundmultichannel capabilities: sound chat, email response management, and social customerservice capabilities. It has weak social listening capabilities and very weak orum capabilities.Kana targets this product to small customer service teams with an online ocus within midsizebusinesses and divisions and subsidiaries o larger enterprises, and it has an average deploymentsize o between 20 and 50 agents. Full implementation, including typical integrations withtelephony and back-office systems, usually takes a ew weeks.

    Kana Express has a small global ootprint o 250 customers, with a very small presence outsideo the Benelux region and in North America. Although Kana has a sound business vision or the

    solution, and the product has a sound application ownership experience, Kanas recent acquisitionby Verint, a company ocused on enterprise buyers, puts the long-term emphasis o this product inquestion. Kana Express best suits small organizations ocused on delivering multichannel servicewith sound knowledge management to their customers using a rapidly deployed solution.

    Parature balances agent productivity with customer experience. With an average deploymentsize o 45 agents, Parature offers a breadth, but not depth, o multichannel capabilities toover 3,000 customer service teams. It has sound chat, email response management, and socialcustomer service capabilities as well as usability. It offers a simple knowledge base with strongknowledge retrieval capabilities and solid knowledge authoring and publishing workows. It has

    very weak orum capabilities and lacks social sentiment analysis and virtual agent capabilities.

    It offers a exible portal structure to allow single teams o customer service agents to supportseparate brands. It also offers strong reporting capabilities, with a breadth o customer servicereports to allow organizations to monitor their operations.

    Microsof acquired Parature in January 2014. Microsof will continue to offer Parature as astandalone product. Microsof will also leverage Paratures chat and knowledge capabilities to llin the gaps in its product offering. It currently offers prepackaged connectors rom DynamicsCRM to Parature, which will be strengthened in 2014 as well as attractive bundled pricing toenhance the Parature ootprint within the Dynamics CRM installed base. Parature is best suitedor small teams looking to deploy a multichannel solution with an emphasis on web sel -service.

    Contenders

    Astute Solutions delivers agent productivity with a ocus on select industries. With anaverage deployment size o ewer than 100 agents, Astute Solutions ocuses on midsize teamsmore than on small teams in the consumer packaged goods, retail, restaurant, and airlineindustries. Its ePC product offers solid, across-the-board capabilities, which are enhanced byother products in the Astute port olio. ePC offers sound incident management capabilities, with

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    solid scripting and strong workow. It has sound multichannel capabilities: sound customer-toagent chat, but weak chat supervisor tools; strong email response management; and sound socialcustomer service. Te core product has very weak native social listening capabilities, instead

    leveraging the strong capabilities o the Astute social relationship management (SRM) product.It has sound knowledge base and very strong virtual agent capabilities, which are integrated intoits core knowledge management solution. Astute ePC has very weak reporting. Full reportingcapabilities including dashboarding, advanced data visualization, and advanced are providedby the Astute Insights solution. It has sound integration, customization, and conguration, butweak security and usability.

    Astute has a small customer base, which it supports with basic user adoption and supportmethodologies. Astute continually assesses and optimizes the economic value that customersrealize, building strong loyalty within its customer base. Te company has a weak business

    vision or the product, which is centered on simpli ying the agent experience by building simple,integrated tool sets in order to deliver better customer service. However, Astute has a sound

    vision or solving customer- acing problems. Its ocus on a hand ul o industries has allowed itto be protable and experience strong revenue growth year over year. Astute best suits midsizeteams in consumer- ocused companies with knowledge management needs, which can utilizethe breadth o the Astute port olio to complement core capabilities o its ePC solution.

    SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

    Online Resource

    Te online version o Figure 5 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailedproduct evaluations and customizable rankings.

    Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave Evaluation

    Forrester used a combination o several data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses o eachsolution:

    Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluationcriteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls andbriengs where necessary to gather details o vendor qualications.

    Customer re erence survey. o validate product and vendor qualications, Forrester alsoconducted a survey o some vendors current customers.

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    The Forrester Wave Methodology

    We conduct primary research to develop a list o vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluatedin this market. From that initial pool o vendors, we then narrow our nal list. We choose these

    vendors based on: 1) product t; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have limited customer re erences and products that dont t the scope o our evaluation.

    Afer examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developthe initial evaluation criteria. o evaluate the vendors and their products against our set o criteria,we gather details o product qualications through a combination o lab evaluations, questionnaires,demos, and/or discussions with client re erences. We send evaluations to the vendors or their review,and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view o vendor offerings and strategies.

    We set de ault weightings to reect our analysis o the needs o large user companies and/or

    other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document and then score the vendors basedon a clearly dened scale. Tese de ault weightings are intended only as a starting point, and weencourage readers to adapt the weightings to t their individual needs through the Excel-basedtool. Te nal scores generate the graphical depiction o the market based on current offering,strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as productcapabilities and vendor strategies evolve. For more in ormation on the methodology that everyForrester Wave evaluation ollows, go to http://www. orrester.com/marketing/policies/ orresterwave-methodology.html.

    Integrity Policy

    All o Forresters research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, is conducted according to ourintegrity policy. For more in ormation, go to http://www. orrester.com/marketing/policies/integritypolicy.html.

    ENDNOTES1 Forrester data conrms the strong relationship between the quality o a rms customer experience (as

    measured by Forresters Customer Experience Index) and loyalty measures such as willingness to considerthe company or another purchase, likelihood to switch business, and likelihood to recommend. See theJuly 7, 2011, he Business Impact O Customer Experience, 2011 report.

    2 o help customer experience pro essionals prove the business value o a better enterprise customerexperience, we built simple models that show how revenue increases when a companys CustomerExperience Index (CxPi) score goes up. Our models show that the benets are signicant across all 11industries we looked at. Wireless carriers and airlines have the largest potential upside: more than $2 billion.Customer experience pro essionals should use the interactive models in this report to estimate the rangeo benets their rm might see. Tat data combined with customers verbatim comments and customerexperience stories will help customer experience leaders make a power ul case or change. See the June10, 2013, he Business Impact O Customer Experience, 2013 report.

    http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/forresterhttp://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/integrityhttp://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES59072http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES97721http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/forresterhttp://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/integrityhttp://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES97721http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES59072
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    3 When consumers switch rom the Web to the phone, email, or chat, a companys cost to serve them goes updramatically. Forrester built models to add up the unnecessary cost that a retailer might incur as a result omissed sel -service opportunities. Calculations showed an extra $22,567,967 in sales and service costs that

    could have been avoided i the website had enabled users to complete their goals. See the January 13, 2011,2011 Will Challenge he Status Quo O eBusiness Online Customer Service report.

    4 For the seventh consecutive year, Forrester asked more than 7,500 consumers to rate the experiences theyhad with 175 brands across 14 industries. One-tenth o the brands we asked about earned scores in the

    poor or very poor categories. See the January 21, 2014, he Customer Experience Index, 2014 report.

    5 Over hal o US online consumers are likely to abandon their online purchase i they cannot nd a quickanswer to their questions, and three-quarters say that valuing their time is the most important thing acompany can do to provide them with good service Source: North American echnographics CustomerExperience Survey, 2013.

    For more data on the effects o customer experience, see the March 11, 2013, Understand CommunicationChannel Needs o Cra t Your Customer Service Strategy report.

    6 Source: North American echnographics Customer Experience Online Survey, 2013.

    7 Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Survey measured the experiences o 12,867 customers in 32 countriesand across 10 industries to gain insight into the changing dynamics o todays nonstop customers andassess consumer attitudes toward marketing, sales, and customer service practices. Te survey included1,256 US customers. Source: Global Consumer Pulse Research, Accenture ( http://www.accenture.com /microsites/global-consumer-pulse-research/Pages/home.aspx).

    8 Tis data was derived rom the North American echnographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q42012 (US), which asked US customers what communication channels they had used to receive customerservice in the past 12 months.

    9 Forrester asked 7,506 US online consumers what communication channels they had used to receivecustomer service in the past 12 months. Source: North American echnographics Customer ExperienceOnline Survey, Q4 2012 (US).

    10 With a 67% overall average adoption rate across generations, help and FAQ sections are the mostcommonly accessed online customer service channel, and usage o this communication channel hasincreased by 10 percentage points in the past three years. But with a 58% satis action rate, this channel hasone o the lowest-reported satis action ratings. Tis is the result o ew companies having solid knowledgemanagement programs in place to optimize content based on content usage data, search term analysis, and

    customer satis action ratings. See the March 11, 2013, Understand Communication Channel Needs oCra t Your Customer Service Strategy report.

    11 Sales orces ambitions are to help clients create Internets o customers through anytime, anywhere,intelligent interactions and services. Sales orce1 helps uni y the weak integration between its variousplat orms and tools. See the November 26, 2013, Quick ake: With Sales orce1, Finally, An IntegratedCloud Plat orm report.

    http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES58437http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES109081http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES88421http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES88421http:///reader/full/http://www.accenture.comhttp://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES88421http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES88421http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES109021http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES109021http:///reader/full/http://www.accenture.comhttp://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES109021http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES109021http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES88421http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES88421http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES88421http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES88421http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES109081http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES58437
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    FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS

    The Forrester Wave: Customer Service Solutions For Small And Midsize Teams, Q2 2014 24

    2014, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 7, 2014

    12 For a detailed evaluation o these solutions or enterprise organizations, see the April, 7, 2014, heForrester Wave: Customer Service Solutions For Enterprise Organizations, Q2 2014 report.

    13 Eleven vendor solutions suitable or enterprise customer service organizations are evaluated in ourevaluation o customer service solutions or enterprise organizations. See the April 7, 2014, he ForresterWave: Customer Service Solutions For Enterprise Organizations, Q2 2014 report.

    http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113656http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113656http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113656http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113656http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113656http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113656http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113656http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES113656
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