Having Fun With Year-End Vendor Awards

As we wrap up the year, I thought it would be fun to hand out my own set of industry awards. Take these with a grain of salt—many are just for entertainment. Most reflect my experiences and insights from various analyst events and countless vendor interactions throughout the year. If you want to nominate a vendor for a category, drop it in the comments or send me a message.

Best Marketing Ingenuity – 8x8

CMO Bruno Bertini delivered a bold rebrand that literally breaks out of the box. The latest marketing campaign - “The Power of You”—complete with cinematic visuals and generative AI production—puts customers at center stage and highlights their achievements in a fresh, engaging way.

Best Persistence – Avaya

Despite skepticism from naysayers, Avaya continues to innovate. Its Infinity Platform provides a practical evolution path for existing customers, and the company added agentic AI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) support—proof that Avaya isn’t fading away anytime soon.

Best Catch Up (or Most Improved Player) – Cisco

Cisco is back in the CCaaS spotlight. After trailing the pack for a while, Cisco now offers a much more complete portfolio—agentic AI, new AI-powered quality management, industry-specific integrations, and a compelling “connected intelligence” vision where humans and AI collaborate seamlessly. And the results have been impressive – cloud contact center product orders increased 79% year over year in Q1 FY 2026.

Best “We’re Back!” Reinvigorated Marketing (and AR) – Tie: Dialpad and UJET

Dialpad has reemerged after a relatively quiet period, refreshing its marketing and analyst relations and launching new agentic AI capabilities aimed at shaking up the market. Expect to see and hear a lot more from Dialpad in the coming months as the company sets its sights on leading customers to agentic AI.

UJET let Google take the sales and marketing reins early in their partnership, but is now back on the scene with renewed channel engagement and an energized sales organization.

Best Hope for Humans and AI Working Together – Five9

Five9 flipped the script: instead of AI augmenting humans, it’s humans augmenting AI. By keeping people in the loop, Five9 envisions human and AI agents working hand in hand—not replacement, but enhancement.

Best Dressed CEO – Five9

CEO Mike Burkland stole the show at the CX Summit in full Nashville cowboy style. 'Nuff said.

Best Views of NYC at an Analyst Event – Global Relay

Global Relay’s New York HQ wowed analysts with incredible views, as well as in-depth and interesting sessions on digital communications governance, archiving, compliance, and communications surveillance for collaborative messaging applications and front-office workers.

Best Display of AI at the Sphere – Google

Google opened Cloud Next 2025 with an AI-powered sneak peek of an enhanced “Wizard of Oz” at the Las Vegas Sphere. Using DeepMind’s capabilities and its latest LLMs, Google used AI-driven "outpainting" to extend scenes, enrich environments, and reimagine the film for the Sphere’s curved, immersive display.

Best Ability to Say “I Told You So” – Mitel

While the industry raced toward multitenant public cloud, Mitel held its ground, insisting that public cloud isn’t the answer for everyone. Many organizations continue to prefer hybrid, private cloud, or on-prem solutions—vindicating Mitel’s commitment to customer choice.

Best “Come Together” Moment – NiCE

NiCE’s acquisition of Cognigy was a masterstroke. Pair the leading CCaaS vendor with the leading conversational AI provider, and you get an impressive, forward-looking Customer Engagement Platform. The deal positions NiCE to innovate faster and gain momentum in the CX AI market.

Best Job Filling Really Big Shoes – Scott Russell, CEO, NiCE

Scott has a strong vision for the company, along with contagious energy. His focus on partnerships and openness should help NiCE expand to other areas beyond the contact center and continue strong growth and leadership.

Best at Minding the Gap – RingCentral

RingCentral filled a valuable market gap with its Customer Engagement (CE) Bundle—combining calling, collaboration, and light contact center features. It’s ideal for the underserved market of companies that can’t afford to miss customer interactions but don’t need the complexity of a full contact center solution.

Best “We’re Listening – and Then Some” – Sprinklr

Sprinklr evolved from social listening origins into a full Unified Customer Experience Management (Unified-CXM) provider. Its AI-native platform spans Service, Social, Marketing, and Insights—and uniquely leverages social listening to enhance CX intelligence.

Best Way to Stand Out in a Crowd – Talkdesk

Talkdesk keeps doubling down on its vertical expertise, taking specialization a level deeper with sub-verticals (think healthcare providers vs. payers). This isn’t lip service—they’re restructuring go-to-market and sales around these industries and going genuinely deep.

Best “We’re Still a UCaaS and CCaaS Player” – Vonage

After being acquired by Ericsson, Vonage was primarily focused on its Network APIs and CPaaS business, making some people wonder about the future of its UCaaS and CCaaS offerings. Vonage put those doubts to rest, introducing new Voice AI Agents, expanding partnerships with Salesforce and ServiceNow, enhancing its VCC Intelligent Workspace with AI, and more, to engage customers and employees across all channels from anywhere with context.

Cutest Bots – Verint

Verint’s ever-expanding bot family continues to grow—forecasting bots, wrap-up bots, knowledge bots, and many more. These automation tools streamline workflows and consistently deliver measurable results: lower labor costs, improved CX and EX, and higher revenues.

Best Kept Secret (For Now) – Wildix

Wildix is a well-established European vendor quietly gaining traction in North America. At its first analyst event, the company unveiled a strategic vision rooted in European values and a purpose-built, partner-led approach for SMB and mid-market customers. The secret is definitely getting out…

Best Longest List of Applications – Zoho

Zoho wins this by a landslide: 88 products (and counting), with more than 50 tightly integrated applications and the Zoho One bundle offering 45+ apps. They may have added another one while you were reading this.

Best Pivot – Zoom

Zoom pulled off a highly successful transformation from a video/meetings company to an AI-first platform for employee and customer experience. Zoom CX is growing at high double digits year over year, as customer counts are up 60%; while the number of Workvivo customers rose 70% in Q3.

“And the Emmy Goes To” - Zoom

Zoom earned an Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Award for “Zoom for Broadcast,” used widely by broadcasters to streamline high-quality video and audio integrations.

If you’d like to add new categories, suggest nominations, or disagree with any of these—let me know!