Are you looking for call center software for your business?
Many customers like to reach out to businesses by phone to get information or help. Having a call center service for your business can streamline your customer support and provide a better user experience.
In this article, we’ll share the top call center software so that you can select the best option for your business.
How to Find the Best Call Center Software
Offering customer support through phone calls is a great way of helping your users. However, it can be hard for small businesses that are quickly growing to handle a large volume of incoming or outgoing calls.
With the help of call center software, you can respond to multiple phone calls at once, answer customers’ questions more quickly, help your sales team reach a larger audience, improve the overall support process, boost customer engagement, and increase customer satisfaction.
There are a few features you should look for when selecting a call center software for your business needs, such as:
- Interactive Voice Responses (IRV) – You should choose a software solution that offers automated responses through IRVs, greets a customer when they call, and helps to direct them to the right department.
- Cloud Contact Center – A cloud-based call center allows your remote team to attend to customers from anywhere in the world without having to be on-premises.
- Multichannel Support – Also called omnichannel routing, this lets your support staff respond to customers from social, live chat, email, phone calls, and other channels, all using the same software.
- Call Routing & Voicemail Option – You should look for software that allows voicemail and call routing features, so customers can share their queries even when the call center agents aren’t available.
- CRM Integrations – By integrating customer relationship management (CRM) software, you can make the best use of your customer information and get a complete picture of how often they call, their support tickets, and more. Some tools also offer CTI (computer telephony integration) to identify customers through phone numbers.
- Reporting and Analytics Tools – Your call center software should provide additional reporting and analytics tools to see how well your customer support is performing.
- Call Recording – You can perform quality management checks and training by listening to recent call recordings.
That said, let’s take a look at some of the best call center software you can choose for your business.
1. Nextiva
Nextiva is the best virtual business phone number service in the market. It’s the perfect solution for remote teams since Nextiva is completely cloud-based.
Your support agents can simply log in to the Nextiva desktop or mobile app to handle all incoming calls. Plus, it includes complete help desk software as well. It lets you talk with customers across multiple communication channels, be it phone, voice, SMS, live chat, video, or social media.
With the Nextiva contact center solution, you also get screen popups that can be tailored according to your brand. There’s also a speech-enabled IVR feature that helps customers when they contact you.
You can take IVR a step further and automate routine tasks. This way, you can reduce the cost of hiring more agents and efficiently handle high call volumes. It also allows support agents to focus on attending important calls while IVR solves repetitive problems.
Besides that, Nextiva offers affordable cell phone plans and more features like a toll-free number, voicemail to email option, call recording, HD video conferencing, auto-attendant, and more.
You can also easily integrate it with different CRMs and communication tools like Salesforce, Oracle Sales Cloud, Microsoft, and more. It even offers APIs and SDKs for specific uses and allows you to set up workflow automation.
Note: At WPBeginner, we use Nextiva for all our business phone needs because the software offers robust features and affordable pricing plans. As a small business, it helps our team attend to incoming customer calls from anywhere in the world without having to share their personal cell phone numbers.
Besides that, Nextiva also allows us to send text messages and connect with customers through its video conferencing features.
Expert Review: In our experience, Nextiva helps provide exceptional customer experience and offers a complete cloud-based business phone service, which makes it the best call center software.
2. RingCentral
RingCentral is a popular business VoIP service provider and lets you set up a cloud call center solution for your business. You can quickly provide customer support from anywhere in the world and at any time.
It offers an omnichannel solution where you can define rules to route calls based on capacity, availability, and more. This way, you can speed up your customer support and easily have customer interactions on multiple channels at once.
With RingCentral, you can also boost your support agent’s productivity. The software offers gamification options that can be used to provide incentives to agents. Besides that, it’s a complete workforce management software that makes it super easy to handle your team’s schedule and plan inbound calls based on traffic volumes.
Another advantage of using RingCentral is that it provides detailed analytics about your customer support performance. You can monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time, track agent performance, set up call monitoring, self-service resources, and more.
Plus, there are data visualization and root cause analysis tools that help you build custom stats dashboards for reporting. Other than that, you get an automated IVR system, seamless integrations, a predictive dialer, and more with RingCentral.
Expert Review: RingCentral offers tailored solutions based on your audience or industry. Whether you’re in the financial, healthcare, education, government, or have an eCommerce store, RingCentral is a great call center software to have.
3. Ooma
Ooma is an all-in-one virtual phone solution for businesses of all sizes. Whether you have a startup, small business, or running an enterprise, Ooma offers lots of features to keep your remote teams and customers connected.
Ooma makes it very easy for you to set up a cloud call center and provide exceptional customer support. It provides intelligent call routing functionality and lowers long call queues by helping customers find the right agent without going through repetitive or redundant steps.
You can also create customized call flows for your support team. The service offers a drag and drop call flow designer that helps you build a call sequence in a few minutes.
Other than that, Ooma also offers features like multi-level IVR, skill-based routing, and automatic call distribution based on caller data, business hours, and agent skills. You can even match callers to the right agent with intelligent reconnect, where the customer is automatically connected with the person they were speaking to before the call dropped.
Ooma also lets you monitor your customer support performance. However, it doesn’t match the 45 different reporting features and reports that Nextiva has to offer for measuring your VoIP call center efficiency.
Expert Review: Ooma is a great solution for small to medium-sized businesses looking to add a call center solution.
4. FreshDesk
FreshDesk is a famous software that offers a complete contact center solution for businesses. Over 50,000 companies use FreshDesk to provide customer support.
FreshDesk Contact Center software, previously known as Freshcaller, is easy to use and helps you set up the software in just a few clicks. It also offers many features like setting up automated voice responses using artificial intelligence.
With FreshDesk, there’s an option to create a global contact center. You can use bring your own phone (BYOC) or purchase phone numbers from over 90 countries. Plus, it offers affordable pricing plans that you can scale as your business grows.
Other than that, it’s a complete omnichannel solution for your customer support. You can convert a call to a ticket and offer support to users from multiple channels in a single place while lowering wait time.
More features offered by FreshDesk include call recordings, call transcripts, call lifecycle information, voice bots, speech-enabled IVR, reporting tools to monitor agent performance and improve customer support, and more.
Expert Review: FreshDesk is a beginner-friendly call center solution. However, if you’re looking for more advanced features, then we recommend checking out Nextiva.
5. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is the next call center software on our list, and it offers a lot of features like other services we’ve covered. However, what makes this service different is that you get a 14-day free trial to try the software before committing to a premium plan.
With LiveAgent, you get a cloud-based call center solution. The VoIP phone system helps your support agents to connect with customers from anywhere.
Plus, you get features like IVR, call back requests, call transfers, unlimited call recording, smart call routing, video conference calling functionality, power dialer, in-app push notifications, chatbot, and automatic call distribution (ACD).
This cloud-based solution also integrates with popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot. It also works seamlessly with email marketing tools like AWeber and Mailchimp. You can even integrate it with your WordPress website and add a live chat button.
Expert Review: If you’re looking for affordable pricing plans along with a free trial to test the software, then LiveAgent is the perfect tool for you.
6. 8×8
8×8 is a cloud communication platform that offers a secure call center solution. The service is loaded with features and offers 99.99% uptime across UCaaS and CCaaS.
What this means is that the service is reliable and guarantees faster performance without any delays or downtime. Besides, it has 35 data centers located globally to provide great quality of service.
It has an intuitive user interface and offers a detailed knowledge base, expert connect, and a complete communication hub to help you get started.
8×8 call center also provides both outbound and inbound call center features. For instance, you get easy call routing, call recording, speed and text analytics, omnichannel support, IVR, agent workspace management tools, click to call option, auto dialing, call scripting support, and more. However, you’ll find more features in other software we’ve covered, like Nextiva and RingCentral.
The service also easily integrates with CRMs such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure, and Zendesk. You can also improve your customer support through contact center analytics and even conduct surveys to get customer feedback.
8×8 call center pricing plans are on the expensive side, as they start from $85 per user per month. If you want a more affordable solution, then you’ll get more value for money using Nextiva.
Expert Review: 8×8 is a powerful virtual phone platform that offers a robust call center solution. It is great for SaaS enterprises and large organizations.
7. CloudTalk
CloudTalk is the last call center solution on our list. It’s a popular virtual call center platform and powers over 2,500 call centers, including companies like DHL, Mercedes Benz, Fujitsu, and GoStudent.
The service offers 140 national phone numbers that you can use for your business or select a toll-free number. CloudTalk has also partnered with multiple telcos across the globe to provide a strong network and ensure crystal clear calls and reliable performance.
Other features offered by CloudTalk include call queuing, call recording, voicemail, adding extensions, fax to email, business hours, conference calls, call masking, 3-way calling, smart outbound auto dialer, and more.
You also get intelligent routing features like a complete call flow designer to create automated workflows, IVR, ACD, skill-based call routing, set a preferred agent for clients, call forwarding, VIP queues, auto-answer functionality, and more.
Expert Review: CloudTalk is a dedicated call center software. You can use it to provide inbound support, make outbound calls, and easily collaborate with internal teams.
Which is the Best Call Center Software?
If you’re looking for a complete cloud-based call center, then we highly recommend Nextiva. The software ticks all the boxes for what you should look for in a call center solution.
It offers powerful features to help you create the ultimate call center operations. Nextiva is a complete virtual phone solution for businesses that want to take their customer support to the next level.
You get IVR, call recording, video conferencing, mobile and desktop apps, detailed reports and metrics to track performance, and so much more with Nextiva. Plus, it easily integrates with different CRMs and marketing tools.
Call Center Software FAQs
At WPBeginner, we’ve helped thousands of small business owners find the right call center software for their needs. Based on our experience, here are some of the answers to the most frequently asked questions about call center software:
How do I set up call center software?
Many of the call center solutions on this list are super simple to set up. For example, with call center software like Nextiva, you can log into the admin dashboard to set business hours, configure team extensions, set up voicemail, design call flows, and more, all in one place.
Then, you can simply install the Nextiva app on any mobile device or desktop to start making and receiving calls.
How do I automate my call center?
You can easily automate your call center with any of the call center software we’ve mentioned in this list. They each come with their own built-in automation features to help you increase efficiency and lower costs.
Some of these automation features include interactive voice responses, auto-attendants, voicemail transcription, auto dialing, intelligent call routing, and more.
Which type of call center is best?
Both inbound and outbound call centers can be beneficial for business, but which is best depends on your specific needs.
Inbound call centers mainly receive calls from customers or potential customers. These calls are used to answer questions and solve customers’ problems, which improves customer service.
On the other hand, outbound call centers typically make calls to leads and prospects in order to promote the company and increase sales.
If you want to cover both sales and customer support, you can create a blended call center, which is a combination of both options.
We hope this article helped you find the best call center software. You may also want to read our guide on how to choose the best blogging platform and see our picks of the best WordPress plugins.
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Disclaimer: We could have included other call center software in this list, like Dialpad, Talkdesk, Twilio, Five9 and others. But, we decided only to include the very best call center software to help you avoid choice paralysis.
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