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
7.5
Twilio Flex

Twilio Flex

14reviews
Starting Price:$0 per user / per month
Twilio is a cloud communications platform that enables developers to build, scale, and operate communications within their applications. Twilio provides a set of APIs for voice, video, chat, and email communications, allowing developers to quickly add communication capabilities to their apps.
WH Score
7.4
Zultys

Zultys

6reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Zultys, founded in 2006, is one of the first companies to offer a true SIP-based PBX solution for businesses. The company invested heavily in research and development in order to deliver one of the most reliable, cutting-edge IP PBX solutions for SMBs. The Zultys MX platform is a high-performance, y...
WH Score
7.3
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 ...
WH Score
7.2
Alvaria CX Suite

Alvaria CX Suite

3reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Designed for 50+ agents, Aspect Via cloud contact center is the only solution that goes beyond the call center to unify the entire enterprise around the customer by eliminating barriers that divide departments and fragment work flows. As a SaaS offering tailor made for the cloud, Aspect Via offers n...
WH Score
7.0
Envision

Envision

0reviews
Starting Price:N/A
Customers expect more from business contact centers today, and while many business are rating their services as top-of-the-line, consumer reporting shows a sharp divide in opinion. Envision’s renowned Workforce Optimization solution steps in to close this gap by delivering transformative custo...
WH Score
7.0
Firmao

Firmao

0reviews
Starting Price:$19 per user / per month
Firmao is an online CRM software that is tailored to the CRM needs of small and medium businesses in service, sales, and manufacturing. Firmao is also a great CRM option for remote teams who need centralized tools for dynamic growth.
WH Score
6.8
8x8 Contact Center

8x8 Contact Center

7reviews
Starting Price:$85 per user / per month
8x8 offers scalable, unified, and secure contact solutions suitable to a wealth of business needs across multiple industries. Traditional high costs for equipment and installation are eliminated through the use of a cloud-based service that offers rapid deployment of agents from business centers, ho...
WH Score
6.7
HostedTel

HostedTel

0reviews
Starting Price:$99 per user / per month
HostedTel’s predictive dialer transforms leads into customers by allowing sales agents to spend less time prospecting and more time selling. Automated messaging means that a representative need only record a callback message once and the predictive dialer will automatically play it for any ans...
WH Score
6.3
Hermes360

Hermes360

1review
Starting Price:N/A
Empower your employees to deliver amazing customer experiences Vocalcom’s intuitive and data-driven call center software. Whether consumers try to reach your through phone, e-mail, social media, or other venues of communication, VocalCom offers a shared database for all incoming requests that ...
WH Score
5.9
C-Zentrix

C-Zentrix

0reviews
Starting Price:N/A
C-Zentrix has been acknowledged as one of the leading contact center solutions worldwide, with robust infrastructure and compact single box installations that support up to 180 agents on one server. Support for multiple venues of communication includes such necessities as IVR, ACD, Call Conferencing...

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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