Avaya and Genesys are two of the most popular contact center platforms on the market.
Contact center software is integrated heavily into various business processes and teams. It would be very painful to rip it out to replace it with a different solution, so it’s important to get it right the first time.
We’ll compare these two solutions’ pros, cons, and pricing to help you make the right choice. We’ll also pit them against Nextiva to see which UCaaS provider comes out on top.
Avaya vs. Genesys: The Pros
Let’s dive right into the pros and cons of both Avaya and Genesys. First, the pros.
Pros of Avaya
Avaya is popular among users for its flexibility, suite of integrations, and ease of use.
Flexibility
Avaya is fully optimized for a distributed workforce. Unlike traditional phone systems, which are limited to one location, Avaya office phones can be used anywhere as long as you have the VoIP application and Internet access. This is a core benefit for hybrid teams coordinating communication across in-person and offsite employees.
Team members can easily transfer calls to different destinations without long wait times or a negative impact on the caller’s experience. Avaya is easy to set up, too. You can do it yourself or request deployment from the technical team.
Integrations and customization
Avaya also has robust integration capabilities. It integrates with on-premises voice PBX and third-party software like Salesforce CRM, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Office 365. These integrations help you build a more robust contact center.
It also provides several customization options to set up your contact center workflow according to your organization’s needs. For example, you can create custom dashboards to monitor call center data and activities in real time.
Innovative features
Avaya offers advanced capabilities for powering a modern contact center for your organization. These include AI noise cancellation, personalization features, and a dashboard for agents with detailed information about the call center status.
Let’s dig into its AI noise cancellation feature further. It eliminates background noise for the caller and the agent during customer interactions. Whether your agents are taking calls at home or in a workstation, they’ll always deliver crystal-clear communication.
Workforce engagement
You need to boost workforce engagement to improve your contact center’s productivity. Avaya offers a suite of features that are really useful in this regard.
For example, its quality management system enables omnichannel customer engagement by tracking customer interactions across multiple channels in a single platform. It also offers workforce management features like gamification and text analytics to drive employee compliance and performance.
Full-spectrum management
Avaya is an all-in-one contact center solution that offers almost everything you need to deliver omnichannel customer experiences. It includes more than 120 real-time and historical reports, seamless business integration, and simple deployment.
Full spectrum management in a contact center improves efficiency, productivity, customer experience, and tracking/reporting. It enables agents to quickly identify recurring issues, provide personalized support, and track key metrics.
Pros of Genesys
Genesys is known for its self-service support tools, automation features, and ease of use.
Self-service tools
More than 80% of respondents in the 2022 Digital-First Consumer Report said they want more self-service options from organizations.
Genesys provides interactive voice response for automated call routing, voicebots, and chatbots which help you provide 24/7 customer support across multiple channels.
Agent support tools
Genesys empowers you with the necessary tools for supporting your agents and streamlining workflow to deliver high-quality customer conversations.
For example, its agent scoring feature lets you rate agents based on how well they handle specific cases, which is important for skill-based call routing. It also supports multichannel ticket management for coordinating customer conversations across multiple touchpoints.
Ease of use and configuration
Genesys users have praised its easily configurable views, streamlined agent activation/deactivation process, and the simplicity of creating dashboards.
Automated outbound campaigns
Genesys offers tools for creating multichannel marketing campaigns, including proactive and progressive notifications and advanced list management.
Progressive notifications send automatic alerts to agents when a campaign goes live. Then, they can join the campaign, accept calls, and view call details simultaneously. They can also reject a call and pass it on to the next available agent.
Seamless migration and usability
Genesys is noted for its seamless migration from other platforms and overall ease of use. Customers recognize how easy it is to integrate the platform into existing business workflows without investing in high migration costs.
Avaya vs. Genesys: The Cons
Despite their top-notch capabilities, Avaya and Genesys have several shortcomings that impact user experience negatively.
Cons of Avaya
The most common complaints with Avaya are frequent delays and downtime.
Latency issues
It’s common to experience app delays due to high latency. This can be a huge setback for a virtual call center where every second counts.
Imagine you’re trying to transfer a customer’s call to another agent, but you can’t do so because the app isn’t responding. This causes long call wait times, which negatively impacts the overall customer experience.
Service interference
Occasional downtime and service issues can interfere with call quality and connection. For example, one user complained that Avaya’s system sometimes experiences errors that abruptly disconnect calls:
High operating costs
Avaya’s published pricing is questionable at best because you still need to talk to sales to get a realistic figure on the cost of its contact center.
Its pricing page states: “Pricing shown is based on 200-399 named users over a three-year term.” These steep requirements are hard for most small businesses to entertain.
Cons of Genesys
The biggest cons of Genesys are the complex interface and the lack of advanced reporting.
Complexity for some users
While Genesys Cloud CX is praised for its features, some users find it complex. For example, this user said that one needs expert knowledge to deploy and use this platform. And this customer felt frustrated by the lack of advanced features and the unnecessarily complex deployment process:
Administration and reporting
G2 user reviews suggest that Genesys customers are dissatisfied with the platform’s reporting and dashboard capabilities. Reports have few customization options, and certain metrics are unaccounted for, such as longest wait time.
Many users have had to build out unsupported functions by themselves using the Genesys API. Creating these walkarounds might be straightforward for tech-savvy teams, but it costs a lot of time and financial resources for non-technical teams, who likely need to hire external developer support to achieve this.
Occasional issues with calls
Some Genesys users also struggle with poor call connectivity and general performance issues.
Sometimes, the platform gets very slow, especially when there is an update. In extreme cases, it gets stuck or pauses for a few minutes. This is quite frustrating when it happens during a call, as this person experienced:
Comparing Avaya and Genesys vs. Nextiva
Given both tools’ shortcomings, it’s no surprise that businesses look for alternatives.
Here are a few areas where Nextiva’s contact center solutions outshine Genesys and Avaya.
1. Ease of use and implementation
Nextiva has an impressive 4.6 out of 5 ease of deployment user rating on Gartner Peer Insights:
Something that stands out for our customers is how easy Nextiva is to set up. You can implement it yourself in minutes, even if you’re not a tech whiz. We provide detailed implementation guidelines, plus our team is always on deck to answer your questions and walk you through the process.
The user experience is great, too. Unlike Genesys, where customization gets in the way of usability, Nextiva’s interface is clean and organized, making it easy to find the features and tools you need. Hear from our users:
2. Pricing transparency and value
There’s no hide-and-seek for Nextiva’s pricing plans. You don’t have to “talk to sales” to know how much each plan costs or compare their features. You’ll find all this information on our website to help you make an informed decision quickly.
Compared to Avaya and Genesys, Nextiva’s plans are more flexible. Take Genesys, for example. It charges a usage-based fee that quickly racks up for businesses with variable call volumes. This is on top of significant upfront costs for implementation.
Nextiva, on the other hand, only charges a monthly subscription fee. You can also opt for a contract term to save more on plans.
3. Customer support and reliability
Reliable service and customer support are two of the most important things to consider when choosing a contact center solution — and Nextiva checks both boxes.
With 99.999% uptime and continuous network monitoring, a Nextiva-powered contact center experiences virtually no service disruptions. That can’t be said for Avaya, whose users experience frequent service and call quality disruptions.
Nextiva also provides reliable customer support across all plans and multiple channels. Our support team is available via email, in-app chat, and phone calls. You can also troubleshoot issues using information from our extensive knowledge base. Here’s how one customer describes their experience with our support team:
Avaya and Genesys offer strong support, but it’s not as consultative and white glove as Nextiva’s.
You Get It all With Nextiva
Avaya and Genesys are solid contact center solutions. But if you’re looking for a reputable UCaaS + CCaaS service provider with transparent pricing and reliable customer support, Nextiva is the best choice.
Nextiva’s unified communications solutions offer multiple integrations with advanced CRM, like Salesforce and Hubspot, a mobile application that keeps your team connected on the go, and voice and video call recording.
