Last week, the research and advisory firm Gartner published the CRM Customer Engagement Magic Quadrant and Kustomer was announced as a new entrant. The leadership team here at Kustomer couldn’t be more excited. Gaining entrance into this Magic Quadrant is a huge accomplishment and recognizes all of the hard work that the Kustomer team has put into making a stellar product since our inception in 2017. This debut underscores Kustomer’s important role in the space, as we continue paving the way for the next generation of customer service CRM, driving intelligent and scalable experiences.
This is Gartner’s third installment of the CRM Customer Engagement Magic Quadrant, which is defined as: “The market for software applications used to provide customer service and support by engaging intelligently — both proactively and reactively — with customers by answering questions, solving problems and giving advice.”
Each year, Gartner analyzes the market and reviews the most relevant providers and their products and services, placing no more than the top 20 leading vendors in the Magic Quadrant. The process is fairly grueling as Gartner goes in-depth on criteria such as:
Market Presence and Momentum
This category covers vendor market recognition and company growth, and includes areas such as:
- References: Minimum of 15 references have to be provided that cover an array of clients from different geographical locations.
- Functional Breadth: Gartner reviews each vendor across seven categories of functionality such as real-time intelligence, automation of engagement, and case management.
- Market Awareness: Each vendor has to be a recognized player in the industry as demonstrated by potential clients shortlisting them or having a meaningful presence at industry leading events.
Ability to Execute
This category covers vendor product depth as well as financial health and ability to execute a go-to-market strategy across areas such as:
- Product/Service: Eleven critical capabilities are analyzed here such as case management, digital engagement and usability.
- Overall Viability: Vendors are examined on their overall financial health and their ability to demonstrate continued investment in the product.
- Sales Execution/Pricing: Vendors are reviewed on their ability in a variety of go-to-market activities.
Completeness of Vision
This category covers vendors market understanding, ability to innovate, and their geographic strength across areas such as:
- Market Understanding: Vendors are assessed on how well they understand customer needs and are able to translate those into product functionality.
- Offering (Product) Strategy: This examines how a vendor approaches product development with an emphasis toward differentiation, functionality and methodology.
- Innovation: This reviews the vendor’s innovation practices and their ability to be preemptive in pushing away new market entrants.
After evaluating Kustomer across these categories, analysts at Gartner noted, “Kustomer provides a modern customer service platform, connecting interactions and platform-based events. B2C organizations looking to move away from traditional customer service tickets and case management in favor of more first contact resolutions should consider Kustomer. Reference customers indicated that Kustomer delivers on the fundamental essentials with a high degree of reliability and usability.”
Kustomer’s strongest assets highlighted in the Magic Quadrant were:
- Conversations: Companies looking to move from a case management-only system to a 360-degree view of the customer with conversations at the center.
- Modernization: Modern platform connecting to many external systems.
- Reliable and usable: A system with a high degree of reliability.
Kustomer is thrilled to be included in the latest CRM Customer Engagement Magic Quadrant. Says Kustomer CEO Brad Birnbaum, “Kustomer is a modern CRM for customer service, focused on the customer to follow their entire service journey and optimize every experience. The next generation of customer service CRM does more than just manage support conversations. Kustomer is a company’s single record of customer truth, managing and contextualizing data to drive smarter processes that scale your business, not your headcount. We are honored to make our debut in the Magic Quadrant and be recognized by Gartner for our innovative approach to customer service CRM.”
The full report with in-depth findings can be found here.
