NICE inContact - Best New Version of a Contact Center Solution

Company: NICE inContact, Salt Lake City, UT
Company Description: NICE inContact is the cloud contact center software leader with the world’s #1 cloud customer experience platform, CXone. NICE inContact’s solution empowers organizations to provide exceptional customer experiences by acting smarter and responding faster to consumer expectations. NICE inContact is recognized as a market leader by leading industry analyst firms.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Contact Center Solution – New Version

Nomination Title: NICE inContact CXone Helps Companies Fuel CX Amid the Pandemic

NICE inContact CXone – multiple updates announced between January 2020 and October 2020.

As customer expectations shift in the experience economy, businesses need to drive agility with built-in adaptability. NICE inContact’s cloud customer experience platform, CXone, enables a truly seamless omnichannel experience with the contact center at the heart of all interactions.

The CXone Fall 2020 update takes a holistic approach to improving both agent and customer experiences, helping organizations of all sizes modernize and remain agile and resilient in today’s increasingly digital landscape. A unified, cloud-native platform, CXone delivers the world’s most comprehensive digital-first omnichannel offering in the Contact Center as a Service market, as the first and only platform unifying best-in-class omnichannel routing, analytics, workforce optimization, automation, and artificial intelligence on an open cloud foundation. Contact centers can avoid disruptions and continuously manage productivity and agent performance in any location.

In terms of IT architecture, CXone APIs allow contact centers to break down the siloed nature of their tech infrastructure. CXone rolled out several new integrations in the past 18 months that enable remote employee collaboration and distributed virtual contact centers. For example, in May 2020, NICE inContact announced a CXone integration with Zendesk, creating a true customer engagement hub for contact center professionals. At the end of 2020, NICE inContact released its Microsoft Teams integration, which enables company-wide collaboration and gives agents seamless access to the tools, systems and people they need, all in Teams. CXone also recently integrated with cloud communication providers Zoom Video Communications and RingCentral, delivering integrated solutions that quickly and productively enable remote employee collaboration via phone and video communications.

CXone also rolled out an integration with Salesforce Einstein — a first-to-market, AI-powered analytics application that uncovers new contact center performance insights by analyzing blended contact center and CRM data to pinpoint specific recommendations for improving KPIs.

All of these integrations are available through NICE inContact’s CXone@home, a cloud-native offering designed to enable contact centers that are not using a cloud platform to transition their workforce to work-from-home in 48 hours or less. Launched at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, NICE inContact offered CXone@home free for 45 days with no commitment or contract.

Outline the market performance, critical reception, and customer satisfaction with the product or service to date. State monetary or unit sales figures to date, if possible, and how they compare to expectations or past performance. Provide links to laudatory product or service reviews. Include some customer testimonials, if applicable (up to 350 words):

By the end of March 2020, NICE inContact had already helped over 10,000 contact center employees transition to work-from-home with CXone@home, empowering companies big and small to keep vital business functions running during a public health crisis. Overall, NICE inContact hit a significant milestone in 2020, surpassing 500,000 users worldwide in 100 countries.

NICE inContact has assisted several blue-chip brands this year, including student-loan servicer ECSI. ECSI’s service team started working from home at the outset of the pandemic, which has fueled the organization’s reliance on digital communications channels. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, NICE inContact helped ECSI move 140 people home in less than 48 hours and improved call quality at the same time. During the transition, when ECSI’s softphone system (from another vendor) failed, NICE inContact provided its voice-as-a-service solution for free. Prior to all of this, the company implemented Advanced Chat for CXone in 2019, and chat abandon rates fell by 86%, while customer satisfaction rose by 13%.

Another COVID-19 success story involves Trupanion, a medical insurance provider for pets, which made the decision to proactively shift to working from home in late February to keep employees safe. Within 72 hours of making that decision, all agents were online and remotely active thanks to NICE inContact CXone, ensuring distressed pet owners had the support they needed during the trying time. Like ECSI, Trupanion has seen its relationship with NICE inContact grow the past year. Prior to the pandemic, Trupanion leveraged CXone to achieve stunning results in 2019, including a better average speed of answer by 66%, increased forecast accuracy by 88% and boosted agent retention by 55%. This all happened prior to the public health crisis, which put Trupanion in a better position as contact rates – specifically phone calls – significantly jumped nationwide amid the pandemic.

NICE inContact technology was not just built for for-profit companies. United Way of Connecticut also quickly responded to Covid-19 by establishing two call centers through CXone, ensuring work from home agent deployment and support.