An eventful week for CX: Amazon silences Chime, Mitel courts Genesys, and quarterly earnings from Five9, RingCentral, and NICE
Updated on February 24, 2025: Response from Mitel.
Amazon admits defeat with Chime retreat and adopts Zoom, Microsoft, and Webex
Rest in peace, Chime. When the largest customer of your app is yourself… then maybe it’s time to take another look.
Chime was yet another internal app developed by Amazon, launched in 2017 and turned into an external product as well. The company is known to be a powerhouse in developing in-house tools then productizing them (think Amazon Connect), but sometimes that doesn’t make as much sense as buying off-the-shelf. Even truer when there are quite a few enterprise-grade videoconferencing apps in the market.
Hence Amazon’s decision to sunset Chime in 2026 and do what most proper global enterprises have done: buy Zoom. And use Microsoft apps. And integrate Webex.
Is Mitel’s new partnership with Genesys another distress call?
Learning about this “strategic partnership” actually raised a flag about Mitel for me.
Not that partnerships are bad, even the kind with your competitors. It may even be necessary especially in today’s diverse CX market where it’s common for customers to pick and choose multiple providers.
In the past four years the company has partnered with major competitors RingCentral, Zoom (after dumping RingCentral), and now Genesys. It bought Unify from Atos Group. It’s one of the first vendors to proclaim that hybrid cloud is the future and made that bet.
But it has not seen much payoff or gained much traction in the market.
For over two decades that I’ve been a practitioner and observer in the industry, there are a couple of indicators which I see as potential distress signals coming from a vendor.
One, when a company with a full-fledged product portfolio starts to resell competitors’ products and/or offer services to implement them.
Two, when a company starts to pump out press releases about many executive appointments and award recognitions, instead of about new customers and reaching financial milestones.
Honestly I hope I’m wrong and that Mitel remains a healthy UC solutions vendor in the years to come...
According to Mitel’s VP of Analyst Relations, this partnership is “a tactical, regional play to serve super large customers” in what makes sense for them in alignment with Mitel’s AI and hybrid strategies.
Five9, RingCentral, and NICE report latest earnings
Don’t care to read about numbers and percentages? I’ve got you covered with a one-sentence summary:
Five9 finally posts net income for 4Q2024...thank you activist investors? (Also announced: the retirement of CFO Barry Zwarenstein effective March 31, 2025. EVP of Finance Bryan Lee will assume in the interim.)
RingCentral earnings are meh and another net loss for the quarter. (Reshuffles CIO and CMO Kira Makagon to a promoted President and COO role.)
NICE continues to print money.
As we discussed earlier, I highly recommend this piece on Mitel's CX strategy. https://www.mitel.com/blog/unlocking-customer-experience-potential-mitel-leads-with-ai-and-hybrid-strategies - In short, the Mitel CX speedtrain is moving full steam ahead as planned. What Eugene is referring to is a tactical partnership to support very large customers via direct channel, case by case basis. Hope this helps clarify—happy to set up calls or briefings as needed.