Max Ball

4 weeks ago | forrester.com | Max Ball |Noel Yuhanna |Dipanjan Chatterjee

This is my second CCaaS Wave. To the uninitiated, the familiar set of vendors in this Wave could make it appear almost as if there has not been much change in this market.  Looks can be deceiving.  Two years has made a big difference for CCaaS vendors, as Forrester’s newly published The Forrester Wave: Contact Centers as a Service, Q2 2025 reveals. The CCaaS vendors have marched forward through a time of incredible change.

1 month ago | smartcustomerservice.com | Max Ball

One of the great joys of being an analyst is having the time to look at new buzzy technologies and form opinions on whether they will be useful for contact centers. Then I get to spend time talking to folks about how the technology will make a difference in the contact center. The latest hot new thing is agentic artificial intelligence. This is a real and exciting technology, bringing the ability to act to AI.

Feb 14, 2025 | smartcustomerservice.com | Max Ball

The development environment is the window to companies' software package souls. If you understand how to build applications on a piece of software, you have also learned how it works. Turns out there is no lack of windows to the soul of a contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) system in 2025. As generative artificial intelligence (genAI) and large language models open new opportunities and capabilities for CCaaS systems, the vendors are adding tools to their offerings.

Dec 12, 2024 | forrester.com | Max Ball

Just adding a chatbot on your website or mobile app will not reduce customer service calls. Sometimes as an analyst it is my job to break someone’s heart, like the times when I must tell a customer service team that it is not surprising that their well-designed chatbot is not reducing customer service calls. In fact, it’s doubtful they will ever see the return on the investment they promised their managers.

Oct 8, 2024 | forrester.com | Pushpa Marwal |Amy Bills |Max Ball

In an era, where people have started doing everything on their phone: is your bank’s mobile app evolving at the pace of your customers’ expectations? Our latest Digital Experience Review of Indian mobile banking apps is just out. It reveals a landscape ripe with innovation yet marked by notable gaps in customer experience (CX). In 2024, Forrester reviewed and evaluated 6 key players to identify best practices, their usability, effectiveness, and their customer experience.