The CRM market has become increasingly competitive, and those used within customer service environments are no exception.<\/p>\n
Gartner refers to these as Customer Engagement Center (CEC) CRMs.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the crowded nature of the CEC space, the analyst highlights that the top 20 vendors have a combined market share of less than 70 percent.<\/p>\n
As such, selecting the best-placed vendor is complex and will become even more so as smaller providers differentiate by targeting specific verticals or geographies.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Gartner deep dives into some of the most prominent options available to its enterprise clients, pinpointing five market leaders.<\/p>\n
CX Today defines a CRM Customer Engagement Center as an offering that supports service experiences through managing cases, composing workflows, and sharing data.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, these systems connect closely with sales and marketing CRMs, centralizing customer experience data, and pulling more relevant data in from the broader enterprise ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Additionally, such solutions will enable digital conversations, automate those interactions, and derive insights from them as CECs swallow up the service stack.<\/p>\n
Other common features pinpointed by Gartner include composable architectures, workforce engagement management (WEM) solutions, and collaboration tools (among others).<\/p>\n
After sharing these common features, Gartner divided 12 prominent CEC vendors into four categories: Leaders, Challenges, Visionaries, and Niche Players. Here\u2019s how they performed.<\/p>\n
Leaders in the Gartner Magic Quadrant balance a compelling vision, a “market-defining ability” to deliver on that vision, and “solid business results”. This year\u2019s Leaders are:<\/p>\n
Gartner spotlights “innovation pace and scale”, “extensive deployment resources”, and “industry-specific offering” as the three core strengths of Salesforce Sales Cloud.<\/p>\n
To accelerate the innovation cycle, Salesforce finished rewriting its Customer 360 apps this year. Service Cloud is one such app and is now part of a unified CRM environment, enabling Salesforce to democratize innovation, put Data Cloud to work, and overlay Agentforce \u2013 its new AI Agent platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet, Gartner does fail to pinpoint two key Salesforce differentiators, perhaps due to its limiting “three strengths, three cautions” formula.<\/p>\n First is Salesforce\u2019s expanded CCaaS integration program<\/a>. The expansion will enable many contact center providers to embed their customer engagement channels within Service Cloud.<\/p>\n As such, organizations that have already gone live on particular channels with their CCaaS vendors may embed those experiences within the CRM. More significantly, however, this co-innovation offers customers choice and presents a vision for closer CRM-CCaaS integrations.<\/p>\n Second is the My Service Journey solution<\/a>, which helps users understand all the available capabilities. That\u2019s massive in helping service teams plan and achieve ROI without searching through release notes, webinars, online communities, etc.<\/p>\n While Gartner notes that Salesforce offers significant deployment resources, My Service Journey is a central cog that new customers shouldn\u2019t overlook.<\/p>\n The core strengths of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service are “innovation pace”, “global scale”, and its “comprehensive customer service platform”, as per Gartner.<\/p>\n The latter came to the fore in 2024 with the introduction of Microsoft\u2019s CCaaS platform: Dynamics 365 Contact Center<\/a>. Indeed, the tech giant pledged to connect the CX ecosystem. That\u2019s a powerful message for a CIO already managing everything on Azure.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Microsoft promised to infuse generative AI (GenAI) across the service workflow. Gartner hints at this but misses something bigger.<\/p>\n Indeed, the analyst bypasses how Microsoft \u2013 alongside competitors Oracle, SAP, and Zoho \u2013 not only has all that CRM data but HR, finance, and supply chain data, too.<\/p>\n Such broad ecosystems connect service teams with the enterprise data they rely on. They also allow brands to go deeper on service automation, especially as agentic AI takes hold in the enterprise.<\/p>\n As a result, customer support teams may better understand and deal with more complex queries where the answers sit outside of the CRM.<\/p>\n Oracle Fusion Service excels in its “high volume, high complexity focus”, “unified conversational workspace”, and “process automation innovation” – according to Gartner.<\/p>\n Take the latter. Oracle added an Automated Service Agent to its CEC<\/a>, analyzing past service cases with AI, inferring the root causes, and creating action plans to address them.<\/p>\n Such innovation also demonstrates how Oracle \u2013 like Microsoft – benefits from its ecosystem and doubles down on it.<\/p>\n In doing so, Oracle prioritizes multi-platform customers and engages them in large-scale transformations. As such, it rarely chases business outside its install base.<\/p>\n Instead, Oracle innovates for existing customers. Consider its new quasi-CPaaS offering \u2013 the Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP)<\/a> \u2013 that fixates on allowing them to build what\u2019s needed, as opposed to leveraging what\u2019s immediately available in its Fusion apps. That illuminates the “high complexity” focus Gartner spotlights.<\/p>\n Another eye-catching capability that may entice customers \u2013 which Gartner misses – is that Oracle doesn\u2019t charge for AI. For Big Red, it\u2019s just a feature embedded across its product, and there\u2019s big value within that.<\/p>\n Gartner underlines “GenAI-enabled workflow enhancements”, “large-enterprise fit”, and “depth and breadth of integrations” as Pega Customer Service\u2019s leading strengths.<\/p>\n Its GenAI Coach<\/a> is an excellent example of the former. It takes cross-system insights and puts them to work with workflow automation for enhanced insights and productivity gains.<\/p>\n Indeed, while Gartner likes to box companies into neat categories, Pegasystems blends CRM, business process management, and low-code application solutions. One doesn\u2019t dominate.<\/p>\n All this feeds into its autonomous enterprise vision<\/a>, which proved ahead of its time as agentic AI became a hot topic. After all, Pega understood the move towards an organization that understands more than customer and employee data but its internal processes, too.<\/p>\n As such, Pega is ahead of the curve in mining and self-healing back- and front-office flows that impact customers, employees, and partners.<\/p>\n The report notes how ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) stands apart with its “innovation pace and scale”, “market momentum”, and “industry-specific workflows”.<\/p>\n While it\u2019s not the conventional CEC provider, Gartner is correct in asserting ServiceNow has momentum. Indeed, Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow<\/strong>, shared how it\u2019s “growing faster than markets, especially the customer service management market,” during its Q3 2024 earnings call.<\/p>\n Why? Because ServiceNow is massively attractive to the IT buyer, who \u2013 now AI is all the rage \u2013 is increasingly calling the shots. While Gartner doesn\u2019t note this, that\u2019s a CX-wide trend facilitating the vendor\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n Of course, that\u2019s because ServiceNow is an ITSM leader. However, IT will also sense the opportunity to complete workflows that go beyond what most consider “CRM” today, take them into back office systems, and drive enterprise efficiencies. ServiceNow is a prime candidate for developing such strategies thanks to its workflow automation expertise.<\/p>\n Lastly, like Salesforce, ServiceNow is also doing an excellent job of broadening its relationships and co-innovating with prominent CCaaS providers<\/a> like Genesys, Five9, and Zoom. Again, that\u2019s significant in supporting a more connected contact center operation.<\/p>\n Challengers in the Gartner Magic Quadrant demonstrate a healthy install base, geographical footprint, and current knowledge of their customers\u2019 needs. However, they may trail Leaders in their ability to win new business or capitalize on emerging trends. This year\u2019s Challengers are:<\/p>\n Visionaries in the Gartner Magic Quadrant present innovative solutions, anticipate rising trends, and influence the market\u2019s direction. Nevertheless, they may lag Leaders in their global recognition or track record for execution. This year\u2019s Challengers are:<\/p>\n The Zendesk Suite earns plaudits from Gartner for its “overall usability”, “innovation”, and “robust core functionality”.<\/p>\n Its fully-formed WEM suite<\/a> exemplifies the latter, including forecasting, scheduling, intraday management, quality assurance, coaching, and gamification solutions.<\/p>\n While most competitors rely on a standalone vendor or a CCaaS provider to deliver this functionality, Zendesk may help contact center customers converge their service stack.<\/p>\n Gartner also highlights several AI use cases as examples of its innovation. Yet, its creative pricing plan is perhaps the best example, blending various pricing models \u2013 such as outcome-, usage-, and seat-based \u2013 to drive greater cost flexibility.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also a crucial move for more CEC vendors as agent seats may soon drop as AI & automation take a greater hold of customer service. As such, many competitors may soon slice their own profits.<\/p>\n So, why is Zendesk not a Leader? For Gartner, its “contract renewals” process and “larger enterprise support” are two significant blockers.<\/p>\n Gartner underscores “AI-led innovation pace”, “composability”, and “knowledge management” as the eGain Customer Engagement Suite\u2019s core strengths.<\/p>\n The latter comes as little surprise, given eGain\u2019s heritage in creating contact center knowledge base solutions. In 2024, it added to its Knowledge Hub with solutions to automatically capture, craft, and create knowledge articles.<\/p>\n These knowledge articles then power a GenAI-fuelled, customer-facing virtual agent, which \u2013 thanks to the ongoing knowledge creation cycle \u2013 continuously improves and automates more conversations. Brands may also bring their own bot, leveraging a third-party provider.<\/p>\n Such a cycle exemplifies eGain\u2019s vision. Yet, Gartner cautions about the vendor\u2019s limited market presence and customizability.<\/p>\n Niche Players in the Gartner Magic Quadrant have established themselves as prominent CEC providers, often performing well across specific industries or geographies. Yet, Gartner suggests they “exhibit weaknesses in one or more important areas” and haven\u2019t kept pace with market demands. This year\u2019s Niche Players are:<\/p>\n SAP Service Cloud differentiates through its “modular architecture”, “GenAI-based productivity tooling”, and “industry-vertical strategy”.<\/p>\n The modular architecture is innovative, allowing in-app customizations and extensibility, which are crucial components for its enterprise customers.<\/p>\n Many of these will invest in SAP\u2019s broader enterprise ecosystem, which \u2013 as with Microsoft and Oracle \u2013 offers considerable potential for SAP\u2019s CX applications, like Service Cloud.<\/p>\n For instance, consider Joule and the vendor\u2019s Knowledge Graph, which grounds SAP\u2019s copilot<\/a> in enterprise-wide SAP data. That helps funnel insight to customer-facing teams and enables CX leaders to spot emerging issues before they become more significant.<\/p>\n Such capabilities are much more differentiative than the summarization and email drafting use cases for Joule in Service Cloud that Gartner pinpoints.<\/p>\n Gartner highlights “easy try and buy”, “SMB and midmarket focus”, and “time to value” as the cornerstone strengths of Freshworks for CX.<\/p>\n That “easy” mantra extends across the Freshworks ecosystem, most recently in the launch of its “uncomplicated” AI Agent: Freddy<\/a>. It\u2019s also evident in its free trials and simple licensing model.<\/p>\n These costing options enable that time to value Gartner pinpoints, while the easy nature of the platform allows brands to deploy the solution “without vendor assistance”.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Freshworks primarily trails in its customer experience, per the analysts, with clients noting “ongoing challenges and dissatisfaction” with the responsiveness of support teams.<\/p>\n Service Creatio earns commendation from Gartner for its “modular architecture”, “workflow automation”, and “industry-specific offerings”.<\/p>\n That architecture allows customers to build hybrid applications that fit specific industry and business needs, with no-code building blocks to support the process.<\/p>\n Creatio then complements that with a pricing model that \u2013 while it may seem a little confusing \u2013 significantly lowers the price of entry. That\u2019s a big plus Gartner skips.<\/p>\n “AI maturity” is a caution that Gartner identifies, with some white-labeled features in the mix. Yet, Creatio does stand out for its composability, allowing service teams to orchestrate new service experiences without significant IT resources.<\/p>\n Gartner credits Zoho Desk for its “pricing and value”, “ease of implementation”, and “field service capabilities”.<\/p>\n Indeed, the product is available at a lower price point than the other vendors evaluated \u2013 according to Gartner.<\/p>\n For the analyst, this supports its portrayal of Zoho as “best fit” for smaller companies, and \u2013 while that\u2019s its heritage \u2013 it\u2019s becoming an outdated perception.<\/p>\n After all, Zoho is a company going upmarket, securing global, multi-million dollar deployments.<\/p>\n Moreover, it doesn\u2019t only do CRM; it does HCM, finance, supply chain\u2026 it even came out with a payroll solution in the US. All this on one platform ensures new visibility, which is massive in the future of AI-led service delivery.<\/p>\n However, Gartner does isolate Zoho Desk\u2019s lack of industry-specific accelerators and add-on products, which may hinder its march upmarket.<\/p>\n HubSpot Service Hub wins plaudits for its “pricing and license model”, “data aggregation”, and “SMB and market fit” in the report.<\/p>\n The former comes as HubSpot introduced “Core” and “View-Only” seat options<\/a>, with the latter allowing new users visibility of CRM data for free \u2013 democratizing service insights.<\/p>\n Yet, most notably, HubSpot has transitioned successfully from its marketing origins into a full-suite CRM. It is now thinking much more about tying its hubs together to generate new efficiencies and innovation. That\u2019s its “Smart CRM” playbook.<\/p>\n Consider its recent acquisition of Frame AI<\/a>. While that may appear more sales-orientated, the conversational intelligence solution will help HubSpot spread new customer insight across the business and aid customers\u2019 proactive and predictive service delivery.<\/p>\n However, Gartner still pokes holes in Service Hub\u2019s base functionality while noting that customers “should anticipate customization challenges.”<\/p>\n ServiceNow has raced into the Leader quadrant, placing as a Challenger in last year’s edition<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet, that\u2019s the only significant change regarding vendors returning to the evaluation.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, two names have dropped off. Appian and SugarCRM no longer feature, with Gartner citing \u2013 somewhat questionably \u2013 that they “do not pursue the CRM customer engagement center market.” Last year, these vendors secured Niche Player status.<\/p>\n In 2024, Creatio and HubSpot stepped in to fill the void within the same quadrant.<\/p>\n Yet, while the Gartner Magic Quadrant remains mostly stationary, enterprise technology doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n As such, it\u2019s perhaps time for Gartner to evolve these reports and more closely consider the CRM platform\u2019s role within the enterprise and the significance of its surrounding ecosystem.<\/p>\n After all, the target audience for these studies is its enterprise customers. Increasingly, these brands want to compile their service, sales, and marketing data.<\/p>\n As such, Gartner may wish to unify its reports for sales force, marketing automation, and CEC platforms or \u2013 at the very least \u2013 factor ecosystem further into its evaluation criteria.<\/p>\n Discover more CX Today rundowns of other Gartner Magic Quadrant reports below:<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The CRM market has become increasingly competitive, and those used within customer service environments are no exception. Gartner refers to these as Customer Engagement Center (CEC) CRMs. Reflecting on the crowded nature of the CEC space, the analyst highlights that the top 20 vendors have a combined market share of less than 70 percent. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4063,"featured_media":66108,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61014,62063],"class_list":["post-66106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crm","category-marketing-sales-technology","tag-crm","tag-customer-engagement-center","tag-customer-engagement-platform","tag-enterprise","tag-magic-quadrant","brands_to_track-creatio","brands_to_track-egain","brands_to_track-freshworks","brands_to_track-hubspot","brands_to_track-microsoft","brands_to_track-oracle","brands_to_track-pegasystems","brands_to_track-salesforce","brands_to_track-sap","brands_to_track-servicenow","brands_to_track-zendesk","brands_to_track-zoho","editorial_type-interview","intent-evaluation","target_audience-enterprise-buyer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMicrosoft<\/h3>\n
Oracle<\/h3>\n
Pegasystems<\/h3>\n
ServiceNow<\/h3>\n
Gartner Magic Quadrant Challengers<\/h2>\n
\n
Gartner Magic Quadrant Visionaries<\/h2>\n
\n
Zendesk<\/h3>\n
eGain<\/h3>\n
Gartner Magic Quadrant Niche Players<\/h2>\n
\n
SAP<\/h3>\n
Freshworks<\/h3>\n
Creatio<\/h3>\n
Zoho<\/h3>\n
HubSpot<\/h3>\n
What Has Changed Since 2023?<\/h2>\n
\n