Contact Center Software

What is the best Contact Center Software?

Contact center software is a centralized system for managing customer communication across multiple channels such as phone, email, text, social media, and website. 

Contact Center software provides integrated tools for managing customer interactions and stores all the details of each communication so that every agent has access to a customer’s history and can serve them effectively without asking for information a customer has already provided. 

Contact Center tools also help route and escalate customer service inquiries or requests to ensure that customers are helped in a timely manner by the agents best suited to handle their requests.  

The top Contact Center features are:

  • Multi- or Omni-Channel Support Options (Email, Phone, Chat, Social Media)
  • Self-Service Support Tools
  • Social Media Integration
  • Call Recording and Monitoring
  • Agent Coaching Tools
  • Customer Data Organization
  • Workflow Automations
  • Integration with Other Business Software Solutions
  • Remote, Mobile Access
  • Easy-to-use Interfaces and Dashboards
  • Reporting and Analytics

The business benefits of contact center software include:

  • Enhanced customer experience
  • Improved customer acquisition and retention rates
  • More integrated communication channels for customers
  • Cost-savings
  • Increased efficiency and productivity
  • Supported brand-building
  • Increased profitability and longevity
  • Reduced customer churn
  • Improved agent loyalty and job satisfaction
  • Faster support resolution times
  • Deeper insights with reporting and analytics

Contact center solutions are becoming more advanced each year so you can expect to see tools and features that are highly tailored to improving your customer journey from sales to service. 

Customer service is integral to the success of companies, no matter the industry or size, and contact center software solutions are more available and affordable for all levels of business than ever before.

Cloud-based contact center software systems are a trend growing at lightning speed for businesses of all types and sizes. Cloud-based contact center software is affordable for businesses in every stage of growth, and is extremely easy to access and use through an internet connection. This means that you enjoy the advantages of a remote workforce, and even scale your customer service to a 24/7 operation easily to service your customers around the clock.

Omni-channel support is one of the fastest growing trends in customer care. You can leverage the power of updated contact center software by serving your customers across all communications modes in a smooth and synchronous manner. 

Self-service customer support portals and tools are also popular contact center software components. Offering a self-service portal where your customers can find answers to commonly asked questions can help boost your contact center productivity by reducing the number of basic questions that come to your agents.

There are many contact center software systems available on the market, each offering an array of powerful, effective tools to support your customer interactions. Selecting or switching to the best contact center software system for your company involves deep business examination and thoughtful research and analysis of the features and system capabilities that will best suit your business now and scale with you as you grow.

Top 10 Contact Center

Centrical / LiveVox / Service Cloud / CXone / Talkdesk / VanillaSoft / Bright Pattern / Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center / RingCentral / Genesys

WH Score
9.9
Zoho Desk
9reviews
Starting Price:$0 / user / per month
Zoho Desk is an award-winning, context-aware help desk software along with multichannel capabilities. Zoho Desk packs advanced multi-stakeholder process management, embeddable self-service, and a powerful AI assistant and brings together all the tools and context your teams need to deliver great cus...
WH Score
9.9
PanTerra - Streams
28reviews
Starting Price:$20 / user / per month
PanTerra Streams: All-In-One phone, text / sms, fax, team messaging, business analytics and file sync & share from the ONLY all-in-one, customizable app.    
WH Score
9.9
Centrical
1review
Starting Price:N/A
Centrical is a comprehensive employee engagement and performance management software that helps companies increase productivity, improve employee engagement, and drive business results. With Centrical, you can streamline performance evaluations, goal setting, and development planning all in one plac...
WH Score
9.9
LiveVox
1review
Starting Price:N/A
Livevox is powerful contact center platform that centralizes all of your customer support tools and features into one system that is powered by a purpose-built CRM. This enables your teams to provide great customer service while also streamlining your internal operations through time-savings and pro...
WH Score
9.6
Zendesk Suite
388reviews
Starting Price:$125 / user / per month
Zendesk Voice is the cloud based contact center software solution from Zendesk. It can be seamlessly integrated with the Zendesk solution. Using Zendesk Voice, call center operations can improve their efficiency and reduce their costs of operations.  
WH Score
9.5
Service Cloud
37reviews
Starting Price:$150 / user / per month
Accelerate your business to attain round-the-clock performance with Salesforce Service Cloud. The modern consumer expects access to customer service when it is convenient to them and their hours rather than the operating times of the call center–Salesforce helps clients meet this need by equip...
WH Score
9.4
CXone
31reviews
Starting Price:N/A
The world’s #1 cloud customer experience platform.    
WH Score
9.4
Talkdesk
45reviews
Starting Price:$125 / user / per month
Customers expect more from contact centers today, and legacy systems can’t keep up. Talkdesk CX Cloud™ is a new kind of cloud contact center – an end-to-end solution on a single platform, delivering everything you need to make customer experience your competitive advantage while op...
WH Score
9.3
Sangoma Technologies

Sangoma Technologies

21reviews
Starting Price:$25.99 / user / per month
Sangoma offers one of the most popular Unified Communications platforms, available both as a cloud and an on-premise solution. Businesses can also opt in for the hybrid solution for multiple locations.   
WH Score
9.3
VanillaSoft
15reviews
Starting Price:$99 / user / per month
VanillaSoft brings together the very best of CRM, Lead Management and Sales-by-Phone tools into one powerful, queue-based lead management solution for inside sales teams, call centers, and other sales-by-phone professionals. VanillaSoft’s intuitive and easy-to-use queue-based lead management softwar...

Learn more about Contact Center Software

What is Contact Center Software?

Contact center software is a centralized system for managing customer communication across multiple channels such as phone, email, text, social media, and website. Contact Center software provides integrated tools for managing customer interactions and stores all the details of each communication so that every agent has access to a customer’s history and can serve them effectively without asking for information a customer has already provided. Contact Center tools also help route and escalate customer service inquiries or requests to ensure that customers are helped in a timely manner by the agents best suited to handle their requests.  

How Does a Contact Center Work?

A contact center works by centralizing all the requests or questions that come in from customers by phone, email, chat, social media, text, and web into a singular system. Agents can route customers or escalate issues between communication channels and provide an efficient, streamlined experience for new or returning customers. Customer interaction history is stored in a contact center and can be used in real-time to help customers as well as be analyzed to identify areas of improvement in the contact center. 

What Does Contact Center Software Do?

Contact Center software provides tools and features that help companies better manage both inbound and outbound customer interactions that take place in a variety of communication modes such as phone, email, chat, social media, text, and web. 

What's the Difference Between a Contact Center and a Call Center?

The difference between a contact center and a call center is in the communication channels that customers can use for service, answers, and requests. In a call center, customers can only contact agents by phone. In a contact center, customers can reach agents in a variety of communication channels including phone, email, text, chat, social media, web, and more. 

What are the Common Features of Contact Center Software?

The common features of Contact Center software include:

  • Multi- or Omni-Channel Support Options (Email, Phone, Chat, Social Media)
  • Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
  • Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
  • Self-Service Support Tools
  • Social Media Integration
  • Call Recording and Monitoring
  • Agent Coaching Tools
  • Customer Data Organization
  • Workflow Automations
  • Integration with Other Business Software Solutions
  • Remote, Mobile Access
  • Call Recording, Call Transfers, and 3-Way Calling
  • Easy to use Interfaces and Dashboards
  • Reporting and Analytics

What are the Benefits of Contact Center Software?

The benefits of Contact Center software include:

  • Enhanced customer experience
  • Improved customer acquisition and retention rates
  • More integrated communication channels for customers
  • Cost-savings
  • Increased efficiency and productivity
  • Supported brand-building
  • Increased profitability and longevity
  • Reduced customer churn
  • Improved agent loyalty and job satisfaction
  • Faster support resolution times
  • Deeper insights with reporting and analytics

Who Uses Contact Center Software?

Customer service agents and managers use contact center software on a daily basis. However, there are other departments that can benefit from customer data and insights gathered in the system, making it a useful tool for sales teams, project managers, and executives as well. 

What are the Challenges with a Contact Center?

The challenges with a contact center can include:

  • Inadequate agent training or knowledge
  • High agent attrition rates
  • Poor customer experience and satisfaction
  • Low customer retention rates
  • Not enough or too many complex tools for managing customer interactions

Which Companies Should Buy Contact Center Software? 

Companies looking to improve customer interactions and streamline work for service agents should buy contact center software. Contact center software can be customized to use in most any industry handling inbound or outbound communications, and tools and features are available in a variety of pricing plans to best suit the needs of a company. 

How to Buy Contact Center Software?

You can use the following checklist to help you determine how to buy the best contact center software for your business.

  • Focus on business needs, customer communication issues, and growth goals driving the decision to get a new or upgraded contact center system.
  • Plan for data migration, implementation costs, IT involvement, and any downtime that may impact ongoing customer service.
  • Make a plan to support user adoption through training.
  • Understand the support processes you’re looking to streamline and automate.
  • Don’t skip the product demos offered by contact center software vendors to show features and functionality.
  • Understand reporting and analytics needs for measuring agent success and improving customer experience. 
The right software for your business

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