6 Major Players In CRM Customer Engagement Center Platforms ...

These providers have recently been named major players in CRM customer engagement center (CEC) platforms for 2021 by analyst house Gartner, Inc.

Organizations across industries can use all manner of tools and software to engage and manage their customers. One of those tools is CRM customer engagement centers (CECs), which include various software applications designed to offer customer service and support by engaging with customers intelligently, proactively, and reactively. CEC applications are typically developed around case management records and processes to help companies improve their understanding of customers.

The following six CEC providers were named Leaders in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center. The report highlights and scores top products in the CEC marketplace and names these six providers’ solutions as cornerstones in the space. However, each provider’s products and market share differ, making them appealing to a wide audience of marketing and CRM customers. To help you learn more about these companies, we’ve put together a brief blurb about each of them alongside links to product details if you want to learn more. The list is organized alphabetically.

6 Major Players in CRM Customer Engagement Center Platforms

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 product suite includes functionality for everything from customer data to human resources to supply chain management and other applications designed to help companies reach larger audiences, monitor case volumes, establish customer priorities, and more. The company’s customer engagement center capabilities are supported by Microsoft Dynamics 365’s Customer Service, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, Customer Insights, and Voice offering applications.

Oracle has been providing organizations across industries with enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM), customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise performance management (EPM), and supply chain management (SCM) software for over forty years. The company’s CEC services come from its Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience suites. They are a good fit for B2C and B2B organizations, primarily in the high-tech and manufacturing sectors.

Pegasystems, also known simply as Pega, uses its scalable architecture and low-code platform to help enterprises make informed decisions, stay productive, and remain agile for current and upcoming market trends. The company’s CEC solutions include customer engagement and case workflow automation and are available via its Pega Customer Service offering. The company works with global organizations in the financial services, government, and healthcare sectors.

Salesforce offers one of the most expansive and fully mobile CRM products in the marketplace. The platform includes all of the company’s sales and marketing applications, most notably the Sales and Marketing Clouds, Service Cloud, Analytics Cloud, App Cloud, and IoT service. In addition to its core CRM features, Salesforce also offers its customers an AI-based analytics tool named Einstein. Its CEC solutions are best suited for large enterprises and global midsize B2C and B2B companies.

ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management (CSM) solution can help companies unite their customer-facing teams and communications with back-office teams, processes, and systems. By doing so, ServiceNow customers can resolve issues quicker, identify and fix problems preemptively, and simplify customer engagement to streamline the handling of requests. The company works with clients worldwide, but the majority of its CEC clients are technological, asset-intensive, and case-centric service organizations.

Zendesk provides its global customers with a CRM platform that focuses on customer service and sales team needs. With sales automation software, mobile access, pipeline visualization, management tools, lead management, and reporting capabilities, Zendesk is a good fit for companies that prioritize sales pipeline development and progression. Its CEC offering stems from the Zendesk Support application (which is part of the larger Zendesk Suite), which combines customer communication with engagement orchestration features.