The Real Economic Impact of Unifying CRM and Contact Center Platforms

Customer experience leaders have been talking about “unification” for years. Unified data. Unified agent desktops. Unified journeys across voice, digital, and self-service.

What’s changed recently is that we now have hard economic evidence showing what that unification actually delivers.

A December 2025 Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Genesys and Salesforce, quantifies the financial and operational outcomes organizations can achieve by adopting CX Cloud, a jointly engineered solution that brings together Genesys Cloud and Salesforce Service Cloud into a single CX platform The-Total-Economic-Impact-Of-CX….

Rather than focusing on features, the study answers a more important question:
What measurable business impact does a unified CX platform create?

Why Fragmented CX Stacks Are Still Holding Teams Back

Across industries—manufacturing, healthcare, insurance, technology—the organizations interviewed by Forrester shared a consistent starting point:

• Siloed on-prem or partially cloud-based contact center tools

• Disconnected CRM and telephony platforms

• Heavy manual work for agents

• Limited visibility into the full customer context

The result was predictable: longer resolution times, higher operating costs, inconsistent service quality, and limited ability to scale.

This is not a tooling problem alone. It’s an architecture problem. When CRM and CCaaS platforms operate as separate systems, efficiency gains are capped—no matter how good each tool is on its own.

What the Forrester TEI Study Quantified

Forrester modeled a composite global organization with:

• $2.5B in annual revenue

• 600 contact center agents

• ~80,000 weekly customer interactions

Over a three-year period, the study found:

• 266% ROI

• $10.8M net present value (NPV)

• $14.8M in total quantified benefits versus $4.1M in costs The-Total-Economic-Impact-Of-CX…

These outcomes were driven by four core impact areas.

1. Retiring Legacy Systems Actually Matters

One of the most underestimated benefits of CX modernization is what you can turn off.

By consolidating telephony, workforce management, call recording, transcription, and custom integrations into a single CX Cloud architecture, the composite organization eliminated overlapping tools and reduced IT maintenance effort.

Result:
~$2M in cost savings over three years from system retirement and reduced development and management overhead The-Total-Economic-Impact-Of-CX….

The takeaway: modernization is not just about adding capabilities—it’s about removing structural inefficiencies.

2. Self-Service Isn’t Just Deflection—It’s Capacity Creation

CX Cloud enabled more intelligent self-service through chatbots, IVR, and automated messaging, tightly integrated with CRM data.

The study showed:

• A 10% increase in self-service completion rates

• Fewer seasonal hires

• More time for agents to focus on complex, higher-value interactions

Result:
~$4.9M in productivity and staffing cost savings over three years The-Total-Economic-Impact-Of-CX….

The important nuance: the organizations did not simply “cut agents.” Many reinvested this capacity into CX quality, onboarding, and proactive engagement.

3. Unified Agent Context Drives Real Efficiency

When agents no longer need to jump between systems, efficiency gains compound quickly.

With a single agent desktop combining Genesys interaction handling and Salesforce customer context, the composite organization reduced mean time to resolution (MTTR) by 2 minutes per interaction.

At scale, that adds up.

Result:
~$6.5M in efficiency gains from reduced handle time and improved agent readiness The-Total-Economic-Impact-Of-CX….

This reinforces a critical lesson: agent experience is not a “nice to have.” It is a primary driver of operational economics.

4. AI-Assisted Conversations Unlock Incremental Revenue

The study also quantified something CX leaders often struggle to prove:
service-led revenue impact.

With AI-powered agent assist—surfacing relevant knowledge, prompts, and recommendations in real time—agents were better equipped to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Result:
A 1.5% revenue and margin uplift, worth ~$1.4M over three years The-Total-Economic-Impact-Of-CX….

This was not driven by aggressive selling, but by better timing, context, and confidence during customer conversations.

The Benefits That Are Harder to Quantify—but Hard to Ignore

Beyond the financial model, organizations reported:

• Higher CSAT scores (up to 40% improvement in some self-service channels)

• Improved agent satisfaction and lower turnover

• Faster onboarding and better coaching

• Reduced compliance and audit effort due to cleaner data capture

These outcomes are harder to model precisely, but they directly influence long-term CX maturity and resilience.

What This Means for CX Leaders

The Forrester study makes one thing clear:
The value is not in CRM or CCaaS alone—it’s in how they are unified.

Technology choices matter, but architecture, integration, and operating model decisions ultimately determine whether these benefits materialize.

This is where experienced systems integrators play a critical role—not as resellers, but as partners who:

• Design scalable CX architectures

• Align CRM, CCaaS, data, and AI capabilities

• Help organizations retire legacy complexity

• Translate platform potential into operational outcomes

At Latitude CX, we see this pattern repeatedly across industries: the organizations that succeed treat CX Cloud as a business transformation initiative, not just a platform deployment.

Final Thought

If you’re evaluating the future of your contact center and service operations, the question is no longer whether to modernize—but how deliberately you unify your CX stack.

The data is now clear.
The opportunity is execution.

References & Further Reading

• Forrester Consulting, The Total Economic Impact™ of CX Cloud (December 2025) The-Total-Economic-Impact-Of-CX…

• Forrester TEI Methodology Overview: https://www.forrester.com/tei/

• Genesys CX Cloud Overview: https://www.genesys.com

• Salesforce Service Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/service/ent