Avaya Experience Platform vs. Zoom Contact Center

The Avaya Experience Platform is well suited to allow remote working for call center agents. Staff can log in and work from anywhere using Chrome and their user credentials. The technical issues and lack of some features have caused some frustration for our staff and made it difficult to get buy-in for this product across all call center groups. This is difficult because a solution like this is intended to make their work more efficient as opposed to causing frustration.

Incentivized

Perfect for companies that have agents all over the place, e.g., different offices or WFH. Also good for companies that aren't big enough to have a "phone guy" as this platform allows IT to do the phone work as it doesn't require esoteric knowledge like other phone systems.

• The app and the ability to use the "office" phone while on the road.
• There's an easy implementation and training process to get everyone on board quickly.
• Flexibility of transferring calls to different mediums - I can switch a phone call to a conference or patch in other parties with ease.

Incentivized

• Fairly simple GUI designer tool to define the Contact Flows. There are only a few elements, but they aren't many Design Widgets types, but just enough to get you started to the majority to the use cases you might encounter. There are plenty of opportunities to improve and enhance, but considering how "young" the product is, I think Zoom did a good job to provide a good Contact Center solution for the entry-to-medium level customers/users without needing to have a dedicated Contact Center resident expert to take care of the solution.
• The way the Queues are define, embeds in a fairly simple matter many of Call Handlings Contact Flows design like Timers, Overflow handling, Callback keeping the position in the Queue handling, etc. These things are defined directly into the queue so you don't have to build the logic for it into the Contact Flow design itself. That includes in many cases prompt handling and timers.
• Their Low-Code/No-Code motto comes handy when it comes to embed Chat Engagement Channels into Web Pages, where embedding a simple "iframe little piece of XML definition to call a JavaScript Applet" into a Web Page is all that is needed.
• Having the "Contact Center App" just embedded into the Existing Zoom Client App is another plus I see: Agents that are force to wear "multiple hats" handling regular phone calls and Contact Center calls, don't have to waste time switching apps, other than the productivity ones so it is one less App the Agents and Supervisor need to worry about.

• One are for improvement for Avaya is the ability to operate behind the VPN. For the virtual employee, this is an issue as we are unable to use it behind the VPN and it must be launched from the remote desktop.
• The color scheme could definitely use some updating. The charcoal gray background of Avaya's windows, coupled with the black font is not very contrasting. I have used Avaya for years and would love to see an update as to its color scheme to better fit the virtual employee.
• Avaya could also improve the way an employee moves within the program by titling the icons seen or expanding the Avaya window to allow for a better understanding of what each con does. For example, the Work History window would go unnoticed, had I not been playing with the software one day. These little items are unknown to many professionals in my industry as they sit in the window with no explanation.

Incentivized

• The Teams dashboard for monitoring agents needs some customization options.
• Friendly names, I would like to be able to name a number and when it rings you can see the name of the number.
• Point flows at flows would be nice, instead of flows to queues only.

Incentivized

I have always found Avaya's technology and support to be the best in the industry. Even as they worked out financial difficulties and continue to fend off competitors they have adopted and incorporated new technologies. They have done so in a logical and supportive manner and offered all these benefits as they went along. I haven't seen any of their competitors do any of this.

Incentivized

I find Avaya easy to use but I am not a beginner. I think it is much more difficult for beginners unless the administrator has some basic programming skills. The system is getting more difficult to use but I enjoy learning and haven't found myself stumped yet.

Incentivized

I give it this rating because the support services of Avaya have proven to be reliable when needed. Great feedback for our queries has always been received from the support agents. 24/7 availability of support, which is very essential as our Call Center department also functions this way, therefore, the knowledge and technical support we require is always available to us.

No, everything was implemented by Avaya Support

Incentivized

Switched from Polycom to Avaya, although polycom worked well there were too many reoccuring connectivity issues and the turn around time for solving them was also too long. Avaya has fewer connectivity problems and their support is much better too. Pricing wise they were similar so we didn't have much to lose.

Incentivized

There are options and ways to get to specific feature sets that are similar to what Zoom can offer. Many of the Zoom included features are add-ons for the RingCentral offering. So cost goes up and can also be an add-on difficulties/deployment costs as well. When we reviewed the features needed and the cost comparison, Zoom was less than half the cost with many of the features baked in as opposed to add-ons

• It does what we need it to do, so we don't heavily invest in this technology but rather into the manufacturing end of our business.
• We believe we have more than achieved the return on our investment for the Avaya phone system and associated equipment.

Incentivized

• We migrated away from a telephony system that was antiquated and almost unusable for what we wanted to do, so Zoom has been a huge improvement for us!
• We're continuing to roll out new channels of contact for customers -- Calls, chat, video, email, etc.
• We're still getting our sea legs from a reporting perspective, and that could always be better, but so far the biggest improvement was for our staff actually using the software. They really enjoy the simplicity and robustness of the software.