Unified Communications-as-a-Service adoption is quickly growing as companies seek to leverage its benefits including rapid availability of new features, more predictable costs, ability to easily scale, and a unified interface delivering integrated calling, messaging, and meetings. UCaaS adoption among our research participants has grown from less than 19% in 2018, to 47.3% by the end of 2020. UCaaS now represents the largest segment of the UC architecture landscape (including UCaaS, on-premises, and hosted solutions). Among those still operating on-premises calling platforms, almost 40% are either planning to move to UCaaS, or are currently evaluating such a move.
Over the last several years the UCaaS provider landscape has also rapidly expanded, providing buyers with an ever-growing list of options to consider. UCaaS providers range from smaller startups, to established UC providers who now offer UCaaS in addition to legacy solutions. Therefore, it is imperative that buyers conduct due diligence in evaluating the different solutions on the market.
One key way to conduct provider analysis is by gaining insight into how current UCaaS customers view their providers based on their own experiences with services, features, and support. To conduct this analysis, Metrigy gathered data from those responsible for procurement and / or operations of UCaaS solutions. Research participants have already deployed UCaaS and so they are able to share their honest (and anonymous) viewpoints on how those providers have fared across a number of key performance metrics. Participants rated their UCaaS providers using a 1- to 4-scale, where 4 = Excellent, 3 = Good, 2 = Just OK, and 1 = Poor in each of the following key performance metrics:
- Technical features of the service
- Response time to problems and questions
- Reliability of the service
- Account team support
- Innovation of the provider
- Audio performance of telephony capabilities
We gathered data on 15 total providers, 8 of whom had enough ratings to qualify for inclusion in our report. Those providers are 8×8, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), AT&T, Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, and RingCentral. Among included providers, Avaya had the top overall customer sentiment score of 3.39 out of a possible 4.0. The average among providers was 3.26.
Avaya’s customer sentiment scores were driven by top scores in technical features, reliability, and audio performance. Avaya also scored near the top overall for innovation. Avaya’s customers give high marks to the capabilities of its solution, as well as its high quality.
Given these scores, Avaya is well positioned to succeed in the UCaaS market as customers are highly satisfied with their experiences in using its solutions. Consider these customer sentiment scores as you evaluate competing solutions in the marketplace to select the right UCaaS provider for your needs.
