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 / VirtualPBX

WH Score
8.3
Nextiva

Nextiva

67reviews
Starting Price:$17.95 per user / per month
Nextiva is a cloud-based VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) software for businesses of all sizes. The Nextiva platform offers advanced communication and collaboration tools, such as voice and video calls, messaging and conferencing. With Nextiva, businesses can easily communicate and collaborate wi...
WH Score
8.3
Sharpen

Sharpen

7reviews
Starting Price:$25 per user / per month
Sharpen is an omnichannel contact center platform that offers businesses the tools they need to provide customers with an incredible experience. From automatic, skills-based inbound routing to call management to integration with existing CRM software to embedded reporting and analytics, we ensure cu...
WH Score
8.2
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
8.2
Ameyo

Ameyo

8reviews
Starting Price:N/A
High cost savings and rapid deployment characterize Ameyo’s powerful cloud solution for Inbound, Outbound, and Multichannel contact centers. Their emphasis on a one-stop solution empowers users to effectively outsource resources and infrastructures to ensure a continuous improvement in technol...
WH Score
8.2
Evolve IP

Evolve IP

3reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Evolve IP call center is cloud based: it supports multi-location call centers, provides incredible control and helps businesses to achieve superior performance without having to invest in on-site systems. Evolve IP call center gives agents and supervisors access to a wide range of features designed ...
WH Score
8.2
Allworx

Allworx

6reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Unlike many competing systems, Allworx gives you plenty of choice in telephone technology. It can support analog and VoIP lines in any combination, meaning that you can adapt new technologies at once, or gradually. This way you have the freedom to implement the solution at your own pace, without com...
WH Score
8.2
Genesys

Genesys

38reviews
Starting Price:$75 per user / per month
Aging call center platforms and burdensome equipment capital are quickly finding themselves questioned in the modern era. The costs of maintaining traditional infrastructure with upgrades and replacements may prove as detrimental to a business model as the risk of customer dissatisfaction in the eve...
WH Score
8.1
PanTerra Cloud Contact Center

PanTerra Cloud Contact Center

6reviews
Starting Price:N/A
PanTerra Cloud Contact Center is the result of the dynamic partnership of PanTerra and Five9. This all-in-one communication solution is designed to enhance customer satisfaction, slash wait times, and streamline workflows.  Customizable plans are tailored to unique business needs, ensuring you ...
WH Score
8.1
BroadVoice Cloud PBX

BroadVoice Cloud PBX

20reviews
Starting Price:$10 per user / per month
BroadVoice is a VoIP telephone service provider that enables customers to transmit and receive voice and video communications via a broadband Internet connection.
WH Score
8.1
Freshdesk

Freshdesk

10reviews
Starting Price:$0 per user / per month
Freshdesk unifies contact center capabilities with the expertise and knowledge of help desks, giving consumers the benefit of having all their solutions in one place. A powerful, comprehensive ticketing system keeps all active agents aware of what others are doing to increase productivity and avoid ...

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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