Unpacking NICE MpowerUnpacking NICE Mpower

NICE announced the launch of CXone Mpower this week at NICE Interactions in Las Vegas, the company’s annual user and partner event. The press release describes MPower as,” bringing the entirety of CXone together with Copilot, Autopilot and Actions to create the world’s first and only CX-aware AI platform.” The three offerings described were announced in 2023 and support NICE’s theme for Interactions: AI Realized.

If the AI solutions named above that drive MPower were released 2023, what is Mpower? If we go back to the description, it includes everything that is part of the CXone platform - CCaaS, WEM, digital engagement and analytics – plus not just the previously announced Copilot, Autopilot and Actions but all Enlighten AI solutions (more below) that create a CX-aware AI platform. Mpower itself is not a platform; it is an offering, as described in the Mpower datasheet.

In a conversation at Interactions with Barry Cooper, president CXone, NICE, I asked, “Is Mpower essentially a pricing and packaging strategy?” His answer was no … and yes. I will expand on each in order below.

Empowering Transformation

It is no accident that the offering name, Mpower, evokes empowerment. Cooper told me that Mpower is designed for a company wanting to make a complete CX transformation. This could be a prospect with legacy premises equipment and 10+ other systems poorly integrated delivering CX today.

Another type of Mpower prospect would be a NICE or competitor’s customer wanting to take its digital engagement and automation to the next level - with all the AI and Gen AI NICE has built, including NICE’s 1,000+ pre-built Enlighten models.

From Cooper’s point of view, Mpower is about supporting companies that are looking to modernize every aspect of its customer experience: for customers, agents, supervisors, and management throughout the company that depend on CX data and analysis. Customers who choose Mpower may not implement every capability immediately – choose to add capabilities in a controlled way – but are looking to make one decision so that innovation can occur continuously.

Mpower Pricing

The accompanying slide highlights Mpower pricing and themes. Think of Mpower as a new license type, a new package, for purchasing CXone and all AI capabilities.

Before Mpower, NICE offered six CXone packages, ranging from Digital Agent ($71 per agent per month), a digital first package that supports routing, recording and reporting for 30+ channels to Complete Suite ($209 per agent per month), which includes omnichannel blended routing for digital and voice, quality management, workforce management, performance analytics and voice of the customer functionality. Note that all the prices shown here are list prices; volume and other discounts may apply.

CXone Mpower adds to the Complete Suite package every Enlighten, i.e., AI and Gen AI, solution for one price, $249 per agent per month. Beyond what is shown on the slide, Mpower includes Enlighten Actions, Enlighten AI Routing, knowledge management and the previously referred to 1,000+ pre-built Enlighten AI models.

The one addition to the monthly Mpower license cost is usage-based pricing for each Autopilot or Copilot session, e.g., each conversational AI session or agent assist session. Each “session” is defined as a continuous interaction with a customer within a 24-hour period, meaning, for example, that a complex chat interaction with a customer could span 24 hours – with periods with no activity as the customer or agent engages in other tasks.

During a pre-briefing hosted by Chris Irwin-Dudek, global head corporate communications and Andy Traba, vice president of product marketing, both of NICE, Irwin-Dudek offered additional color on the definition of a session. “If there happens to be six engagements or 20 engagements, where they interact with a brand, they disconnect and reconnect, for the next 24 hours, there is no additional charge.”

Does this mean that in order to get any Enlighten solution a customer has to buy all of them? No, it does not. Customers of the six other CXone packages can add package-appropriate AI services a-la-carte, e.g., Enlighten Copilot, an AI-companion released in 2023 for agents and now available with versions for supervisors and administrators, or Enlighten Autopilot, GenAI-enhanced conversational AI.

CX AI Pricing Landscape

When NICE VP of product marketing Andy Traba presented the Mpower slide, I was reminded of a similar announcement, Saleforce’s Einstein 1 Service, summarized in the graphic below.

As explained by Ryan Nichols, chief product officer for Service Cloud, Salesforce, in March 2024, “this edition of Service Cloud contains everything you need to achieve the automated service that's promised with Einstein One for service; not just the Generative AI which is included in Einstein One for Service, but also the channels on which it runs - digital engagement and Service Cloud Voice.” (See the graphic for the other included capabilities.)

Like Mpower, Einstein Service can be added to other packages, i.e., Enterprise or Unlimited Editions, as an add-on to an existing license.

Similarly, Genesys has recently announced a new token-based AI pricing strategy, detailed in “The Big Reveal: Genesys AI Experience.”

I believe all three of the vendors are responding to customer requests for more simplified pricing. Each is attempting to make the AI buying decision more seamless for themselves and for their customers. There is also an built-in discount in these pricing strategies – each is less expensive than what preceded it or buying all of the individual capabilities. I believe there is enough built-in advantage in the Mpower plan to encourage accelerated adoption of NICE’s Enlighten suite.