Actionary Research

How CCaaS Vendors Can Remain Relevant in a Shifting CX Landscape

August 30, 2025 / 10 min read

Summary

The customer experience (CX) landscape is evolving as diverse vendors, including CRM, Customer Engagement Centers (CEC), and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) providers, increasingly encroach on the Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) market. This shift is driven by AI advancements and the growing value of data integration across CX functions. Traditional CCaaS players face significant challenges as competitors leverage AI and data to offer more integrated and holistic solutions. This note aims to provide buyers with insights on what to look for in leading CCaaS vendors, and their solutions, based on areas they should be focusing on to deliver true CX capabilities.

Key Take: CCaaS vendors must form broader partnerships and enhance data integration to advance in personalization, employee engagement, and AI-driven capabilities. Failure to do so may risk their relevance in an evolving CX landscape.

A Decline in Customer Experience Quality is Fueling Market Opportunity for CCaaS Competitors

The Forrester CX Index report for 2024 reveals that CX quality in the US has reached an all-time low, marking a third consecutive year of decline. The decline has been widespread, affecting more than half of the 221 brands surveyed across 13 industries, with industry-level declines being broader and steeper than ever before. AI is leveling the playing field and vendors from various sectors are aggressively expanding into the CCaaS market, driven by the need for more integrated and data-driven customer solutions.

Customer Experience is at its lowest, ever. The 2024 Forrester CX Index report reveals that 39% of brands have experienced a significant drop in their CX scores—more than double the 17% decline seen in 2023. The report, which has been conducted annually for eight years and surveys between 85,000 and 120,000 online adults who have interacted with a brand, highlights pervasive issues such as inefficient customer service and digital experience gaps. Even top-performing “elite” brands struggled, with six of the 11 highest-ranked brands showing flat scores and four experiencing significant declines compared to 2023.
CCaaS vendors remain vital as contact center experts, addressing the core needs of customer-facing roles and brand management. As specialists in managing customer interactions, CCaaS vendors provide essential capabilities that effectively integrate voice and digital channels, supporting consistent and reliable customer service. Voice infrastructure and related innovation is harder to provide than pure web-based or digital solutions. CCaaS vendor deep expertise in contact center dynamics allows them to maintain a strong position in technology investment decision-making processes led by customer service leaders. Contact centers typically offer unique challenges to solve that differ from the rest of the digital workplace.
The race for businesses to deliver on AI promises has changed buying behaviors. Advancements in Generative AI are enabling CCaaS competitive solutions to deliver on two key promises — to do more with less and offer deeply personalized customer engagement. Seamlessly connecting data from sales, marketing, customer service, and digital commerce — or becoming more capable in the applications that power everyday productivity — facilitates a more holistic approach to CX powered by AI. CRM and UCaaS vendors have expanded their influence in the CX ecosystem by aligning with buyer goals [1][8]. Improving self-service capabilities to lower costs, enabling AI-assisted staff workflows to improve efficiencies and providing “co-pilot buddy” benefits to make staff more capable is pushing buyers to increasingly explore solutions outside the traditional CCaaS technology landscape.
A modern codebase is crucial to delivering on AI promises that improve customer experiences. Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, recently shared how Amazon’s GenAI assistant, Amazon Q, reduced its core app update developer time from 50 days to just a few hours. It saved the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years of work to just modernize the codebase — no new features. AI-driven innovation becoming the norm means vendors must demonstrate the benefits of a flexible, modern codebase to get ahead of competitors. CCaaS providers must deliver on AI promises but then be able to keep pace based on the underlying software architecture being designed to do so.
Turnkey solutions offer greater value and simplify deployments but muddy the waters on what was clear CCaaS value. The demand for deeply integrated, easy-to-deploy solutions that provide immediate value is increasing. Co-innovation between CCaaS and CRM applications creates a unique and differentiated offering — demonstrating CCaaS vendor acceptance of the crucial importance of a co-existing applications play. Buyers feel more secure investing in an ecosystem where the value extends beyond a simple CCaaS plus a CRM adapter to address the CX challenge. When an existing CRM application is already embedded in the organization, it becomes a platform that naturally extends to include contact center capabilities — allowing staff who have already adopted the CRM app to continue using tools they find valuable [1].

The Pressure is On — CCaaS Vendors Face Growing Competition from CRM and UCaaS Providers to Solve the CX Challenge

CRM and UCaaS providers offering competitive solutions to what were typically CCaaS buyer aligned challenges or ambitions is accelerating. These providers are capitalizing on traditional CCaaS platform limitations based on the distillation and management of more comprehensive, data-driven solutions that better address customer needs. Advancements in AI and a demand for a more integrated customer engagement solution across the organization is making it hard for traditional CCaaS vendors to stand out.

Traditional CCaaS vendors continue to sell the promise of addressing CX ambitions but aren’t solving an org-wide problem. Gartner defines CX as the customer’s perceptions and related feelings resulting from both one-off and cumulative interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems, channels, or products [4]. Effective CX management requires a strategic approach that involves carefully designed customer journeys and the use of enabling technologies to improve interactions across all departments and touchpoints — not just customer service. While CCaaS vendors are recognized for their expertise in contact center operations, their limited focus on the broader customer experience ecosystem, including sales and marketing, is increasingly seen as a shortcoming. Traditional CCaaS vendors that continue to “stick a CX badge on their solution” and expect customers to view it as such are being viewed as not offering a holistic solution for an org-wide problem, (see Beyond the Hype — Realigning Customer Service Strategies for Real CX Impact). CCaaS providers integrate with CRM, ERP, and other critical applications out of necessity over looking to provide a more deeply, holistic solution, that shows more responsibility in solving the real-world CX challenges illustrated in the Forrester CX Index report.
Traditional CCaaS vendors lagging in codebase innovation are at a disadvantage against CRM and UCaaS competitors that are driving AI-based disruption. As the pace of AI-advancement accelerates, vendors with older, inflexible technology stacks are feeling the pressure to deliver updates with the speed, efficiency, and agility analogous to the perception that comes with being a pioneer in AI [5]. Slow responses are chalked up to be based on outdated development approaches or underlying platform — not a good perception when trying to convince buyers of the benefits of unique AI capabilities. Applications built on legacy designs struggle to incorporate new AI capabilities, integrate with other applications, or scale personalized experiences effectively. Being able to compete becomes harder and risks eroding customer trust and loyalty, as organizations seek solutions that can do more than solve immediate challenges, and adapt to evolving needs to deliver on AI promises.
Traditional CCaaS vendors still rely too heavily on the importance of cloud as a differentiator. While the initial shift to cloud-based CCaaS solutions gave vendors an advantage by modernizing Contact Center Infrastructure (CCI) and solidifying CCaaS as a critical component of the “technology stack,” this is no longer sufficient to maintain a competitive edge, (see Cloud Is 28 Years Old — Catch up Now to Be Able to Compete in the AI Innovation Race) [3]. The initial threat forcing the move from Contact Center Infrastructure (CCI) to CCaaS for some vendors, of being viewed as just the plumbing to enable a CRM application, is creeping back. As CRM and UCaaS providers increasingly leverage advancements in AI to enhance customer engagement and expand into adjacent markets, such as Quality Management (QM), the unique value proposition of CCaaS solutions is being challenged. Buyers are looking for more value from data to drive new levels of personalization in outcomes. CRM vendors are well-positioned to capitalize on this, using data to connect customer interactions holistically across sales, marketing and service contexts. UCaaS providers address complex voice and network integration challenges well and can contact-center enable thousands of existing users, making them serious competitors in the CCaaS space.

CCaaS Vendors Remain Key to Customer Experience but Must Adapt to a Broader, Evolving Landscape

While CCaaS vendors are still essential for managing customer interactions, their future relevance will depend on their ability to evolve and provide holistic solutions that deliver value across the entire customer lifetime journey. Vendors should prioritize personalization through intelligent data integration, and use AI to support workflows that break down silos between front and back-office operations across departments. By aligning with broader CX strategies, CCaaS vendors can enhance their relevance and impact in an increasingly competitive landscape.

CCaaS vendors must demonstrate their role as integral parts of the CX technology stack, beyond the traditional CCaaS value proposition. Companies like Zendesk and Zoom are using AI and machine learning to improve interactions throughout the organization, creating a more connected brand experience. ServiceNow and Genesys are setting a turnkey app standard by integrating CCaaS with Customer Service Management (CSM) applications, while Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 CCaaS offers tight integration out-of-the-box significantly enhanced by co-pilot features. RingCentral considers Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service through RingSense AI, which turns insights from webinars into actionable content that supports both sales and customer service. More connected to the core people data and across departments provides a more compelling true CX solution.
CCaaS vendors must clearly demonstrate the adaptability and flexibility of their technology. Vendors like Talkdesk, which have invested heavily in industry-specific cloud capabilities, supported by a modern codebase and co-pilot functionalities are a good example. Such vendors are better equipped to protect both AI users and the customers engaging with these technologies. To stay relevant, vendors need to show their ability to adapt to evolving environments, such as the new wave of cloud models—including distributed, fog, multi-cloud, and edge cloud—and support ongoing AI innovation without being constrained by their core application architecture. Vendors should be able to provide concrete examples that illustrate their responsiveness to changing market demands, proving their agility and capacity to deliver sustainable value.
CCaaS vendors must focus on delivering value through AI outcomes, not just AI as a feature. To stand out in a crowded market, CCaaS vendors should integrate AI seamlessly into their solutions, emphasizing how it enhances customer and employee experiences rather than promoting AI as a premium or separate feature [8]. Vendors should demonstrate how AI capabilities address real CX problems, such as those reflected in declining CX scores. For example, while AI can automate tasks like wrap-up transcriptions or provide real-time sentiment analysis, the emphasis should be on how these capabilities improve response times, personalize customer interactions, or reduce staff workload—ultimately leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty. Embedding AI into core offerings as a standard component aligns better with customer expectations and delivers greater value.
Integration of AI-powered personalization from adjacent markets will help CCaaS vendors to remain relevant in the evolving CX landscape. CCaaS vendors must look beyond traditional contact center solutions and consider how advanced AI tools, like like Amazon Personalize and Amazon Bedrock’s generative AI foundation models (FMs), can enhance their personalization capabilities. For example, Selfridges, a leading UK department store, utilized these technologies to create targeted recommendations and more refined search experiences (see The Importance of Knowing Your Customer: How Personal Touches Drive Buying Decisions). By using generative AI to tailor product descriptions to individual online buyers, Selfridges achieved a 130% increase in click-through rates and a 270% uplift in “add to bag” actions. CCaaS vendors can adopt similar technologies, or develop their own, to deliver deeper personalization across customer interactions in sales, marketing, and service channels.
Use AI-enabled workflows to bridge the gap between front and back-office operations. To compete effectively against providers of unified communication solutions, CCaaS vendors need to extend beyond traditional customer-facing roles and integrate themselves into broader organizational workflows. By leveraging AI to create intelligent workflows, CCaaS vendors can enhance coordination between customer service and other departments, such as sales, finance, and logistics. This integration breaks down silos and ensures every customer interaction benefits from comprehensive organizational knowledge.

CCaaS vendors must focus on developing holistic solutions that align with the full spectrum of customer needs, from initial engagement through post-sale support. This includes leveraging AI to deliver personalized experiences beyond live engagement alone, bridging organizational silos with intelligent workflows, and providing seamless integration with broader CX technology ecosystems.