IFS | mplsystems Recognised in the Gartner 2017 Magic Quadrant

Gartner has named IFS | mplsystems Visionary in 2017’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), Western Europe.

This is the third successive year that IFS | mplsystems have been given this recognition and it follows the company’s inclusion in the 2017 Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center(CEC) in May earlier this year.

By receiving both of these awards, IFS | mplsystems is one of only two vendors to appear in both these Magic Quadrants, which the company believes illustrates its ability to deliver effective omnichannel service through its unique combination of CCaaS, CRM Customer Service and AI-enabled automation.

“Making complex customer service simple has been central to our customer proposition, and we are delighted that Gartner has yet again recognised us as a Visionary,” says Paul White, Director of Customer Engagement at IFS | mplsystems.

“From our unique omnichannel grouping functions, to embedding AI and automation within our agent applications, we have led innovation in the contact centre market over the past three years, and we are honoured that Gartner has recognised us once again.

“Our configurability and ease of integration of the solution, as well as the high level of support offered is confirmed by our clients through their loyalty and satisfaction levels.

“We look forward to continuing our positive influence on the global contact centre market through the IFS family, which gives us immediate access to a worldwide sales, delivery and support network.”

The report recognises that the market is maturing and this is reflected within the market overview section, which discusses how “the drive to develop the contact center into the ‘customer experience center’ is adding new dynamics to the CCaaS market”.

Companies are revising their evaluations and selections of vendors to provide non-voice channels (email, webchat, video chat, social and so on) to their customer service environments.

“During the past 5 to 10 years, many have looked to either their CRM vendors or best-of-breed specialists to provide these customer interaction channels,” Paul White adds.

“However, voice-based interactions continue to make up a significant portion of interactions in contact centres. As companies look to evolve their customer support to become more customer-centric across all interaction channels, some are recognising the benefits of acquiring both their voice and non-voice channels as a package from a single vendor — and very few CRM vendors support phone-based assisted customer service.

“Benefits include the use of a consistent business rule management capability for routing, queuing and escalating interactions across channels; this enables the company to prioritise handling of the best customers, regardless of customers’ chosen channels.

“Obtaining all interaction applications from a single vendor also makes it easier for companies to manage reporting and staffing across channels, rather than having to integrate operational performance data across separate systems.

“Customer interaction desktops are a CEC-related subject that has attracted a notable increase in client inquiries. A ‘single view of the customer’ through multiple digital channels is something that most organisations recognise would improve the customer experience.

“However, with multiple touchpoints for customer contact across disparate application platforms, it is difficult to achieve without significant development effort by the customer service organisation.”

IFS | mplsystems’ vision is to ‘make complex customer service simple’, which is achieved through their unique combination of omnichannel communications, CRM Customer Service and AI-enabled automation providing service and support staff with pioneering intelligent desktop applications.

Bringing together calls, email, chat, mobile and social messaging with contextual customer data in a single unified CRM Agent Desktop, these applications guide agents through complex processes and  transactions.

The data mash-up concept takes data from multiple sources across an enterprise and intelligently adapts to present agents with the precise data they require to resolve a customer request, rather than forcing them to search multiple tabs and menus. Alongside this, simple-to-configure workflow delivers automated processing and prompts.

The impact is a dramatic improvement in agent efficiency combined with transformed customer experience because agents can deliver rapid, informed omnichannel service.

IFS | mplsystems feels that being recognised as a Visionary all three years that this Magic Quadrant has been in existence shows that the company has proved itself a robust vendor, paving the path for contact centres to future-proof themselves with the right service solution.

Furthermore, IFS | mplsystems believes that its improvement on their position for the Ability to Execute is a reflection of feedback by its customer base.

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