Contact Center Software

What is Contact Center Software?

Contact Center software is a centralized suite of tools and applications companies use to provide cloud-based customer support by voice, email, phone, chat, and social media in one platform. Contact Center solutions provide a variety of inbound and outbound support features, process and workflow automations, AI chatbots, and business system integrations to create a robust support hub. Contact Center software is beneficial for companies in many industries because it automates service processes, reduces operational costs, improves agent performance, and enhances customer experience.  

While many leading Contact Center vendors have now evolved to deliver full-scale CX capabilities, existing contact center software can still be integrated with third-party CX software solutions for enhancing end-to-end customer journeys and insights. Since support is an important element of the overall customer experience, contact centers are popular use cases for Digital Experience Management (DXM) solutions as well.

Key Capabilities of Contact Center Software

  • Omnichannel Support: Contact Center systems provide customer support tools across multiple communication modes, including phone, email, chat, and social media. The system synchronizes communication history across all available communication channels so that customers can receive streamlined support, no matter their chosen communication method.
  • Inbound and Outbound Support: Contact Center solutions typically offer inbound support tools to handle reactive, incoming customer inquiries and outbound support tools to send proactive communication.
  • Call Management: Contact Center software provides extensive tools for managing, routing, and properly handling calls to create a seamless process for both agents and customers, including call routing and call recording.
  • Integrations: Contact Center software integrates with VoIP tools to centralize voice communication and can also be integrated with CRM software to consolidate customer data and support history.
  • Workforce Management: Contact Center solutions typically have integrated Workforce Management tools to streamline agent scheduling and automate volume forecasting.
  • Artificial Intelligence & Automation: Contact Center software uses AI to automate processes, support agents with real-time insights, and streamline support, including:
    • Predictive Dialing
    • Agent Assist
    • Chatbots & Virtual Assistants
    • Intelligent Call Routing
  • Customer Journey Management: Many Contact Center providers include customer journey management tools and analytics to optimize customer experience and streamline operations.
  • Supervisor Tools & Agent Coaching: Contact Center software provides supervisor tools and dashboards for call monitoring and coaching, to improve agent performance.
  • Reporting & Analytics: Contact Center software offers reporting and analytics, including speech and text analytics, to help companies analyze interactions and improve support processes.

To learn more about Contact Center software, jump to our Contact Center FAQs.

Top 10 Contact Center Software

Zoho Desk / Centrical / PanTerra - Streams / Crexendo / VanillaSoft / Vonage / RingCentral Contact Center / Salesforce Service Cloud / LiveVox / Switchvox Cloud

WH Score
8.7
CXone

CXone

33reviews
Starting Price:$135 per user / per month
CXone helps organizations of all sizes be the first choice of customers, the first to innovate, and the first choice employer. Only CXone delivers one unified experience, on one cloud native platform, fast onboarding of new employees and capabilities, with embedded AI to keep your team one step ahea...
WH Score
8.7
Talkdesk

Talkdesk

47reviews
Starting Price:$75 per 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
8.6
Zendesk Suite

Zendesk Suite

389reviews
Starting Price:$49 per user / per month
Zendesk Suite is an end-to-end customer relationship platform that combines help desk, voice and CX capabilities into one powerful application. AI is a key capability at Zendesk, offering users the ability to infuse intelligent automation across a variety of areas, from customer interactions to inte...
WH Score
8.5
Avaya UCaaS

Avaya UCaaS

23reviews
Starting Price:N/A
With a bedrock of experience and the continuously trained expertise of system specialists, Avaya develops optimum, tailor-made and cutting-edge communication solutions to support and optimize business processes for industries of all kinds. 
WH Score
8.5
Fusion Connect

Fusion Connect

9reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Fusion Connect is a premier provider of integrated cloud solutions for enterprises across North America. Their mission is to drive growth, efficiency, and productivity by assisting businesses in developing and implementing innovative strategies. With a comprehensive suite of cloud-based services, in...
WH Score
8.5
Avoxi

Avoxi

6reviews
Starting Price:$0 per user / per month
Avoxi provides expert cloud communications that emphasize the international calling needs of hotels, cell centers, tour companies and other global enterprises concerned about business at the local level. Their superior VoIP services deliver numerous services to meet the needs of a worldwide business...
WH Score
8.5
Five9

Five9

73reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Five9 is a leading provider of cutting-edge communications software that's designed to revolutionize customer interactions and engagement. With a focus on enhancing customer service and optimizing operational efficiency, Five9 offers a comprehensive suite of advanced features tailored to meet the di...
WH Score
8.5
ICTBroadcast

ICTBroadcast

20reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Growing business become easy with ICTBroadcast’s unified communications solution for call center, B2B and telemarketing strategies. By offering a comprehensive broadcasting platform that offers voice, SMS, Email and Fax support, service providers become all-around experts in customer care and ...
WH Score
8.4
Enghouse Interactive

Enghouse Interactive

17reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Enghouse Interactive’s contact center solutions provide a comprehensive set of contact center interaction management tools including outbound dialers. Enabling you to manage customer information, decrease time-to-answer, and route multiple contact channels to your agents. Reliable, useful informatio...
WH Score
8.4
Bright Pattern

Bright Pattern

39reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Customers benefit when contact center services are convenient, need-focused, and offered through a range of access points. Bright Pattern’s ServicePattern contact center solution maximizes customer service with a blended interaction distribution that enables agents and customer contact through voice...

Contact Center Topics

Learn more about Contact Center Software

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 through a variety of communication channels including phone, email, text, chat, social media, web, and more. 

What's the Difference Between Contact Center Software and CRM?

Although Contact Center software and CRMs are both used to manage customers, they are a completely different set of tools. For one, Contact Center software provides tools and applications to support customer service teams and automate processes across various communication channels such as phone, email, chat, and social media. CRM software, on the other hand, stores contact data and history to help companies organize information and manage relationships.

Is There a Difference Between B2B and B2C Contact Center Software?

While the core technology is the same in B2B and B2C contact center software, the implementation and customization of the software to fulfill business needs will differ substantially. Support tools, necessary integrations, and agent training requirements are some out of many factors that will differ substantially between B2B and B2C businesses, so it is important to ensure contact center systems are properly set up and integrated to support core business support needs.

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