Item: Cisco Unified Contact Center
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Cisco UCCE has been deployed in my customers' environment for nearly 15 years and has been their single Contact Center platform for around 10 of them. It encompasses all business areas that require Contact Center type services. It was the first centralized platform that truly allowed the customer to achieve multi-site business rule based routing of their phone calls.

Pros and Cons

Provides you with a solid routing engine that was built to handle Service Provider level throughput - if you need stability and a work horse this is the platform for you.
The core features on the whole are good, but where UCCE is very good is the eco-system of Solutions Plus partner integrations that expand on the core capabilities with the market leaders in areas such as WFO, Campaign Management, Biometrics and Natural Language.
The investment Cisco makes in the CC space means they are always improving the platform features, scale and reliability.

Campaign Management is poor and really you need a separate platform to run a Dialler.
The licensing model is out dated and you have to size the platform for a theoretical maximum amount of calls for that worst day of the worst year.
Due to it being a physical install it is susceptible to EOL issues and as such there is no concept of ever-greening as you get with a SaaS equivalent.

Return on Investment

The removal of 4 disparate ACD systems within the environment and replacement of it with UCCE was a big positive in terms of ROI and decreases in support and maintenance costs.
The negative side is the cost of additional integrations from the Solutions Plus partners to take you beyond the out of the box capabilities.

Alternatives Considered

Genesys Engage (formerly PureEngage)

The closest comparison would be the Genesys Engage platform in terms of it being a non-SaaS CC environment and aimed at the higher end environment in terms of scale and complexity. Genesys [is] better if you want an all-in-one solution with accountability sitting in one area, but this can be costly. UCCE can deliver almost everything in one platform like Genesys, but is reliant on its partner integrations to give a 'comparative' experience.

Usability

Once set up and working it is a solid platform but it does take quite a bit of up front effort from a team of knowledgeable technical staff. The script editor and management tools are pretty intuitive and the Web Reskilling tool allows agents to be re-skilled on the fly so that is useful. The MIS tool is okay, but if you really want a good MI presentation layer then you need to invest in an add-on.

Support Rating

Cisco documentation is really good for this platform as it is a well established and seasoned service from Cisco so there is a plethora of information out there. The support from SI partners is also very strong as they needed to prove to Cisco that they were capable of selling, designing, implementing and supporting a CCE platform before being allowed to do any of those items.

Key Insights

Do you think Cisco Unified Contact Center delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Unified Contact Center's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Unified Contact Center live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Cisco Unified Contact Center go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Unified Contact Center again?

Other Software Used

Verint Workforce Engagement (Verint Workforce Optimization), Nuance Digital Engagement Platform

Likelihood to Recommend

Large and complex customer environments where the call flows integrate with multiple back-end systems within a customer's Data Center are a good fit for UCCE. It also caters well for customers with a widely distributed workforce that are connected via good networking links or have remote workers.

Small contact centers with simplistic call flows and no future need for complexity like Biometrics and the like would do better from choosing a contact center such as Contact Centre Express or Webex CC as an example.

Cisco Contact Centre Enterprise

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Unified Contact Center