Contact center employees have long had a siloed existence, typically separated from their business peers physically as well as virtually. Fortunately, many companies are starting to knock down the barriers, and positive business results are following.
We see evidence in our data on platform integration. For example, integrations not being extensive enough is the No. 3 factor driving companies to explore switching from one vendor to another, as we found in our Customer Experience MetriCast 2024 research with 1,566 organizations globally. This was not the case in previous years’ MetriCast studies.
Similarly, we know from our global Customer Experience Optimization (CXO): 2024-25 research study that most of the 544 participating companies see value in platform integration—and the highest value, at that. Asked to rate value of platform integration on a one-to-seven scale, with one being least valuable and seven most valuable, nearly 87% selected five (18.0%), six (33.7%), or seven (35.2%). Additionally, this study’s success group, based on measured business improvements, is twice as likely to give platform integration the top value rating than the non-success group.
In the CX realm, most companies have already integrated their contact center platforms with a customer relationship management (CRM) platform (70.7%) and, to a lesser degree, a service management platform (50.9%), as we found in the CXO study. More than 40% of companies also already have integrated their contact center and communications platform-as-a-service and AI development platforms. Lower down the list, but directly relevant to being able to take contact center agents out of their silo, is integration with the unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) platform.
While 30.1% of companies have already integrated contact center and UCaaS platforms, 43.3% say they are planning to do so. This is the biggest growth area for platform integration.
Without barriers between the customer-facing contact center platform and the employee-facing UC platform, companies stand to benefit in a variety of ways. Some are operational, others impact customer experience. In the CXO study, the top value of contact center-UC integration comes in giving agents (and supervisors) a way to provide feedback for sales and marketing programs based on their customer engagements, for nearly 57% of companies. Similarly, nearly half see value in enabling the sharing of customer feedback with product development teams.
Other value propositions, both for the workforce and operationally, are:
- Providing the opportunity for conversations between frontline and back-office people over the same app – 52.0%
- Cost savings/bundled pricing – 50.4%
- Bringing collaboration capabilities into the contact center – 45.5%
- Allowing agents to bring business experts into customer interactions – 44.7%
- Consolidating analytics across contact center and UC – 42.3%
- Allowing agents to use video or screen-sharing during customer calls – 39.0%
With these capabilities comes business improvement. When asked about the results of integrating contact center and UC for their businesses, 61.0% of companies report higher revenue and better employee productivity. Slightly fewer, 59.8%, have seen CSAT improvement, while 51.2% have seen costs go down.
Worth noting that integrating contact center and UC does not necessarily require using the same provider for both—though many companies do. In the study, three-quarters of companies say they’re using the same provider. And in making that vendor decision, the contact center platform carries more weight than the UC platform for most companies.
For those companies looking to break agents out of their siloed existence, integrated the contact center and UC platforms is highly advisable. Business benefits are sure to follow.
