There are a number of pundits discussing CRM systems adding CCaaS and what that means for both CRM and CCaaS.
For my money, CRM systems are mainly crap. They are a closed environment with a lousy UX (user design). They are clunky and create resistance to use. CRM systems are closed for the benefit of the system. Your data is locked in their SaaS. Now you have to pay to access YOUR data in their system. Can you see how stupid that sounds?
To leverage AI, you have to have access to the data. The CRM data is rarely inside an open API environment, because Salesforce or Zoho or whatever want to keep that data inside their system. Now the CRM customers have to use marketplace partners to do anything with THEIR own data.
You want to have AI play with your CRM data? Good luck. Most CRM systems are designed so you have to use their AI Agents and GenAI on YOUR data in their system.
Now CRM providers wants to go to the contact center with their closed system. So now all of your customer data will be locked up. Make it make sense.
CRM software is just a user interface to your SQL data. Today, with Lovable, anyone can design their very own interface to that data. Why be forced to use a clunky interface to input and output your own data? Before the pandemic, SLINGR.io was designing UI’s for businesses to make customer CRM systems. All the customer data sat in an SQL database. Any business that did that would be so far ahead of the game today because all of their data would be in an easily accessible database.
I think for a while, maybe 3 years, SF will win this battle in the enterprise but when Millennials reach the C-suite, that will start to unwind. This generation grew up with the iPhone and don’t like the clunkiness of Windows nor do they like Android – mix that with the advancement of AI coupled with the significance of owning your own data – and this all falls apart.
With CCaaS, while the data is contained in a closed system, the analytics and wallboards allow people to see their data.
Call recording is mixing with AI for transcription, sentiment analysis and more. With the advent of vCons, businesses will be able to own their own call recordings as well as every conversation in a JSON format with metadata. This will be separated from the CCaaS platform, but available to all of the systems: UCaaS, CCaaS, AI and CRM.
Strolid uses vCons to capture omni-channel conversations, record it all, transcribe it all and dump it all into the CRM record (in Zoho). AI touches every conversation for insights and analysis – and ultimately for sales.
When I talked to companies that are Platinum partners with CCaaS vendors, vCons were a way for them to add great value to their customers by giving them their data back and allowing the AI of their choice to eat all the conversational data.
In many ways, the CRM providers are looking for anyway to add value and relevancy, but it is still a closed system.
Ticketing systems have expanded as well. Every software company bloats, making perhaps good-enough software that sits in one interface instead of making an easy open API in order for data to flow. Kind of like 8×8 and Nextiva adding a diet CRM to their CCaaS system.
When you think about it, the bloat doesn’t say much for the category leader, right? If Salesforce made a truly great product that was easy to use and people liked it, there wouldn’t be 1,600 CRM providers in the US alone as of 2025. But it is the same with any software – there are 2000+ UCaaS providers, many of them also offering CCaaS and CPaaS and soon Agentic AI. There were over 2000 Agentic AI companies funded since 2024. It is a noisy environment for a Buyer to choose from.
I think when you consider the price for both CRM and CCaaS per user and yet the company doesn’t have access to the data. I think THAT will be the swinging point. Some companies have already figured this out and are in the process of extracting themselves from SaaS to Probase and their own LLMs. In a few years, this will be normalized.
All that said, Avaya and Mitel are still around because who would want to godfather the project to replace that rat’s nest of duct tape and bailing wire to move to a more streamlined and modern system? It will be the same with CRM. I remember when Siebel was the enterprise CRM choice. But in this case, Data will be the lifeblood of any organization. At some point all that data will be extracted from silos and SaaS systems and back to the org’s data lake.
