Nextiva CCaaS, a Broader Vision
Nextiva recently unveiled the new Nextiva Contact Center, extending its contact center as-a-service (CCaaS) plans for businesses from two to four user bundles. This includes two voice-only call center packages which Nextiva has already been selling, and two more advanced contact center offerings – Nextiva Contact Center Pro and Nextiva Contact Center Enterprise. These contact center offerings include omni-channel support that allows agent-customer interaction through more convenient or preferred digital channels, such as online live chat and email. Multi-channel reporting and analytics around all engagement channels adds a more complete view of a customer’s journey from self-service through agent interaction. This helps with identifying and correcting problems, ensuring prospective customers are directed to the best agent, and optimizing the overall customer experience.
Nextiva’s expansion into advanced, omni-channel contact center is a natural next step for the company’s all-in-one business communication software called NextOS. Nextiva introduced the NextOS platform in May 2018 to offer businesses a unified communications solution, rather than forcing customers to purchase communications-related services a la carte. NextOS combines business phone service, a range of built-in CRM features, and some leading-edge analytics that make use of natural language processing and machine learning, along with additional Nextiva patented technologies. Read more on the company’s evolution as a top Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) provider in North America and the NextOS platform here.
Today, Nextiva Contact Center is sold as a separate subscription, but used in conjunction with NextOS. Contact center agents are able to consult with experts across their company in real-time via chat or in conference calls to resolve customer issues more quickly and help drive a desired outcome, whether this involves purchasing a product, signing up for a service, registering for an event, or some other action. Nextiva Contact Center also enables advanced functionality like whisper coaching, custom reporting, CRM integration and omni-channel support (voice, chat and email), with additional options for Advanced IVR, Workforce Management, Quality Management (agent performance, gamification), Outbound Campaigns, and Agent Scripting.
Four Call and Contact Center Plans
Nextiva’s four CCaaS plans cover a range of call center and contact center needs. The two previously available call center plans, Nextiva Call Center Pro and Call Center Enterprise, are based on BroadSoft BroadWorks Call Center (Nextiva utilizes BroadSoft (now Cisco) call control technology for its business phone service). These plans enable traditional call center capabilities associated with inbound voice call queuing and distribution.
Both of the newly offered Nextiva CCaaS packages, Contact Center Pro and Contact Center Enterprise, are based on Cisco’s recently introduced Customer Journey Platform (CJP) that combines the acquired BroadSoft CC-One omni-channel cloud contact center solution (formerly Transera) with the digital capabilities of Cisco’s Care for WebEx Teams (previously known as Spark Care). These plans are designed to address omni-channel engagement as prospective consumers increasingly educate themselves before engaging with an agent over the phone, using channels like email or chat. A multi-channel approach to reporting and analytics that spans all engagement channels provides insight into the consumer’s overall experience, helping to improve the chances of a positive outcome.
- Call Center Pro ($50/agent/month) has traditional voice call center features, including Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) based on agent availability, queue- and skill-based routing with unlimited call queues, historical and scheduled reporting and wallboards, call recording, and more. Call Center Pro is based on BroadSoft’s BroadWorks (now Cisco) Call Center.
- Call Center Enterprise ($100/agent/month) is a more full-featured voice call center service that builds on Call Center Pro with additional capabilities like configurable call handling, real-time queue management, whisper messages and supervisor silent monitoring and barge-in. Call Center Enterprise is based on BroadSoft’s BroadWorks (now Cisco) Call Center.
- Contact Center Pro ($100/agent/month) is a voice-only contact center offering, but adds more sophisticated capabilities like multiple skills per agent, supervisor whisper coaching, customized reporting, and CRM integrations (Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, and Zendesk), as well as advanced options for a Drag & Drop Flow Builder, Web Callback, Analytics-based Routing and integration with third-party premises-based systems. This plan is Cisco’s “Customer Journey Business Edition: Standard Agent,” renamed by Nextiva as Contact Center Pro.
- Contact Center Enterprise ($130/agent/month) builds on Contact Center Pro to add support for omni-channel interactions (voice, chat and email engagement today, with SMS text messaging and social media coming next), along with reporting and analytics across these channels. This plan is Cisco’s “Customer Journey Business Edition: Premium Agent,” renamed by Nextiva as Contact Center Enterprise.
Note that all four plans optionally support Nextiva’s Advanced IVR, including speech recognition, text-to-speech, and voice biometrics (based on technology from cloud IVR partner Inference Solutions). The new Contact Center Pro and Contact Center Enterprise also support additional advanced options for Workforce Management, Quality Management, Outbound Campaigns, and Agent Scripting.
A Broader Vision
The newly introduced Nextiva Contact Center with omni-channel customer engagement will appeal to many businesses as a step toward embracing today’s digital forms of communication. Voice, chat, and email interactions are supported now, with plans to add text messaging and social media channels later in 2019.
But there’s a broader vision at Nextiva. Developments are underway around the company’s NextOS platform and next-gen analytics which will transform communications and improve customer experiences and outcomes even further – the ultimate goal of any type of contact center. Over time, we can expect to see movement toward incorporating contact center technology as part of the NextOS all-in-one platform that already bundles Business Phone Service (UCaaS), CRM, Chat, Survey, and Analytics. Folding in CCaaS will be a natural progression.
Nextiva’s engineering team, now 300 strong, is actively building advanced analytics for NextOS that make use of emerging technologies like machine learning and natural language processing. Innovative solutions developed in-house will eventually surpass the capabilities of today’s Nextiva Contact Center and position Nextiva’s NextOS unified platform to meet the needs and expectations of the enterprises and contact centers of tomorrow. Nextiva has its eye on the bigger picture. Stay tuned.