For many businesses, contact centers and call centers form the core of the customer experience. Businesses, therefore, need the best cloud call center solution to ensure the best possible customer experience and high customer satisfaction. The best call center software options need to facilitate personalized customer communication, increase customer engagement, simplify the agent experience, and support an array of key features and standard features in order to truly achieve customer service operation optimization in the call center. Here is the definitive guide to contact center software to help ensure that your contact centers provide the best possible customer service and help your business build strong customer relationships.
Call center software is software that businesses use to allow customer support agents, customer service teams and sales and marketing teams to manage interactions with customers over a variety of different communication channels, such as voice, email, text messaging, web chat, messengers, chat bots, and more. Call center software supports CX operations and helps businesses build strong customer relationships, and helps agents deliver fast, personalized customer service to callers.
Traditionally, this software utilizes computer telephony integration, or CTI, which allows agents to take phone calls from their computer by utilizing VOIP technology, simplifying the CX process and improving efficiency. In recent years, however, call center software has evolved to become contact center software that supports more than just phone interactions. Contact centers support more digital channels, including web chat, email, text messaging, video chat, and more. Modern call center software that supports a variety of different communication channels delivers a more modern user experience, and is meant to improve the customer experience.
Call center software makes it more efficient for businesses to communicate with customers both through incoming and outgoing calls. Depending on the platform, call center software can do more than just place and receive customer calls. The right call center platforms can also help businesses interact on more channels and increase customer engagement through a variety of advanced technologies and integrations. Platforms that have customizable features and robust features, along with native integrations, can really boost CSAT within the call center, and lead to higher ROI for businesses as well as better workforce optimization. Connect with customers on channels like email, text messaging, video chat, web chat, and more, and connect these channels together for a single customer journey. Add in more technology as well, like AI integrations and CRM integrations, to personalize CX.
When searching for the right platform and searching through different vendors, you may have seen words like cloud-based call center software, on-premise software, and others relating to how the call center software is accessed.
An on-premise software is a call center that is hosted on the premise of a business. This means that the hardware and software needed to operate the call center solution is hosted on site, and it is managed by the business. An on-premise call center is typically expensive to manage, hard to upgrade, and needs a professional service team to manage.
A cloud call center software means that call center functionality and advanced features are based on the cloud and hosted in data centers, which are managed by the vendors. A cloud-based solution gives your call center access to powerful contact center functionality without the need for maintenance of professional IT service teams, all for reasonable pricing that is based on user per month. This is often called software as a service, or SaaS, which gives businesses access to software through the cloud with subscription-based pricing. This means that businesses of all sizes, from small businesses all the way to large enterprises, can easily access powerful CX technology for reasonable pricing options. Bright Pattern, for example, is one of the best call center software that is a cloud contact center. Bright Pattern supports a number of key features, like CRM integrations, IVR, efficient dialers, and task automation. All of this for reasonable pricing that is based on user per month with no maintenance fees or expensive hardware and software.
While many cloud-based call center solutions today support multichannel communications, not all of them are equal. CX platforms in the modern digital age needs to be able to support a variety of channels, including calls, chatbots, email, video chat, live chats, text messaging, messenger apps, social media, and more. However, your customer service software also needs to be able to support these channels efficiently, effortlessly, and seamlessly as part of one customer journey.
Omnichannel call center software is a solution that allows your contact center to provide seamless customer support on any digital communication channel, and seamlessly switch between these channels without losing the context of the conversation. An omnichannel platform allows agents to connect with customers on channels like:
The terms call center software and contact center software are often used interchangeably and are used to mean the same thing, software that is utilized for communicating with customers and delivering CX across multiple different channels. But there is a very distinct difference between the two terms, and it has to do with “call” and “contact”.
A call center is one that traditionally took only phone calls and utilized only the business phone system. Voice calls were the bread-and-butter for businesses conducting CX interactions in the past, and so technology used to communicate was named appropriately.
A contact center expands the term by including channels that go beyond just voice channels. This means channels like web chat, text messaging, mobile messaging, and more. By replacing “call” with “contact” in the term, it means that the software is able to support interactions on a wide variety of modern, digital channels that go beyond just traditional voice.
Most call centers, depending on their purpose, either support inbound or outbound interactions. For example, a sales team or marketing team would need outbound interaction software while a support team or help desk would need inbound interaction software or a help desk software integration to optimize call center operations. Many businesses operate a blended call center too, which supports both inbound and outbound interactions. As a result, call center systems need the right call center software features to optimize these different types of calls. Here are the features that your call center platform needs to support both inbound and outbound interactions efficiently while delivering the best possible customer experience.
In today’s digital world, the remote workforce has become an important centerpiece for businesses. This is especially true for businesses with a presence internationally, which may rely on different teams across the globe. The call center has felt the effects of the rise of the remote workforce, with many call centers operating as either a hybrid model or a remote work model that allows agents to work remotely. A business’s CX can function just as effectively as a remote workforce as it can on-premise, but there are some features needed to ensure that your CX operations are just as effective.
IVR self-service allows customer calls to be routed to the right agent or team quickly and effectively. IVR systems help lower call queues and give callers the chance to perform self-service with knowledge bases to resolve their own issues rather than queuing. Furthermore, IVRs can be transformed into conversational IVRs through integration with natural language processing and AI capabilities to allow customers to utilize their own natural language to interact with a self-service menu. AI like IBM Watson, Google, and Microsoft allows customers to utilize their natural speech to navigate the phone system, leading to a more personalized experience and higher customer satisfaction. Interactive voice response systems provide many benefits to a call center, including:
A crucial feature your communication software should have is that it is based on the cloud. Being based on the cloud provides many benefits over their on-premise counterparts. Being on the cloud lowers the costs of having a CX operation by reducing costs like maintenance costs, hardware and software upgrade costs, and IT personnel costs. Software providers that are based on the cloud have reasonable, pay-per-use pricing plans that require users to only pay for the number of agents that they need to support.. This means with just an internet connection, agents from anywhere around the world can connect to customers with advanced communication technology.
Being based on the cloud also means there is added flexibility to support hybrid workforce or remote workforce setups. With the rise of the remote worker, many businesses are also turning to remote workers to help staff their call centers. A cloud-based platform is crucial in allowing businesses to connect agents to the CX experience, even if they are thousands of miles away. With a powerful and properly-built platform, voice connectivity and connectivity on other channels should be just as good as if it were hosted on-premise with agents right in the office.
Many customers find it difficult to communicate their issue to multiple support representatives. Additionally, they must give a brief summary of previous interactions.
Agents are able to provide more efficient assistance if they know more about the person calling. Agents are able to quickly reference previous interactions with customers, which can help avoid repeat calls. Agents can look at patterns in the use of products to ensure that customers don’t have to call them back again.
CTI pop-ups are an effective method for call center tools to give information. They identify users by their phone number and display previous interactions via the browser. It is essential to know the way in which the program you are analysing logs calls and connects to different software (like CRM) and, to give your employees enough information.
Utilizing an automatic call distribution system for intelligent routing is crucial for performing effective call routing. It helps route calls efficiently and is necessary to optimize call flow in your contact center. ACDs with advanced algorithms can perform skills-based routing and smart routing to further personalize CX in your contact center and help your customer service teams become more efficient. Utilizing advanced automatic call distribution ACD can help customers interact with agents faster and improve the performance of inbound call centers by performing more efficient call transfers.
Bright Pattern’s ACD software, for example, utilizes advanced algorithms to route inbound calls to the best suited agent for an interaction. For example, Bright Pattern’s software can have agents be divided by level, language capabilities, specialized services, and specialized tasks, and these agents can receive incoming calls that have specific needs. This means business CX centers operate with max efficiency and can vastly improve critical call center metrics.
CRM integration into your call center software is crucial for providing the best possible service to your customers. Allowing your call center agents to easily access customer data with integrations with CRMs during an interaction is crucial to providing personalized CX. Customer relationship management software holds customer information such as call recordings, call logs, phone numbers, voicemails, activity history, and even sentiment of interaction depending on the call center platform that it is integrated with.
Bright Pattern’s platform, for example, integrates with all major third-party management tools. Bright Pattern’s software is very plug-and-play in its design, utilizing APIs to accommodate integrations with complicated technology. Some of the tools Bright Pattern integrates with include:
Integrating artificial intelligence into your CX can streamline and make more efficient the customer service your call center delivers to customers. AI has a wide range of uses within the contact center and is crucial in streamlining CX operations for both the customer and the agent.
AI can be utilized to implement automation in the call center, improving agent productivity by eliminating routine mundane tasks. This is especially helpful for a support team or help desk, which has to handle a high volume of relatively simple, yet repetitive tasks. This is time that can be spent performing other, higher priority tasks. AI can also be used for speech recognition and speech analytics. AI and natural language processing can be utilized to personalize the customer journey, implement self-service capabilities, and improve quality management capabilities for supervisors.
Call recording is a critical task as part of a CX operation’s quality management. Call recordings are critical because these interactions can be reviewed by supervisors, who in turn can find ways to improve customer service and agent performance during interactions. With the right interaction platform that is able to integrate AI, natural language processing can be utilized for its transcription capabilities to transcribe interactions, allowing supervisors to be able to read the call recordings and gain a greater understanding of the context of the conversation.
Intuitive reporting and analytics can help your CX operations by allowing your supervisors and administrators to get a birds-eye view of your call center operations. Your business needs call center platforms that can track the quality and status of all customer interactions in your call center, meaning that supervisors and administrators can get a birds-eye view of the call center and immediately spot areas for improvement and gauge customer satisfaction.
Effective real-time reporting and real-time monitoring is not useful without the means to display meaningful information in a way that is easy to interpret and utilize. This means that call centers need a platform that can not only effectively monitor interactions and analyze them accurately, but also present this data in a real-time dashboard that is easy to understand and can be analyzed quickly by supervisors to be implemented into changes in how the call center operates. This means that the dashboard needs to be customizable and tailored to specific use cases for the call center, leading to more meaningful data for the call center to utilize for improvement.
One of the most recent developments within the call center industry is the development of the contact center mobile app. Bright Pattern’s platform, for example, supports Bright Pattern Mobile. A contact center mobile app is being able to use a vendor’s software on an agent’s smartphone. This means an agent can
Quality management, monitoring agent performance, and performance management are important aspects of running a CX operation. Quality management is crucial for gaining insights into team productivity and ensuring that the modern user experience is seamless and personalized.
Depending on the platform, quality management can extend beyond sampling only voice channels. Traditionally, quality management was done by sampling a small portion of interactions on certain channels, leaving businesses in the dark about the vast majority of their customer interactions. Bright Pattern’s platform is natively-built to be omnichannel, meaning that the built-in quality management system is also omnichannel. This allows companies to review 100% of all interactions on all channels, leaving no interaction unreviewed. Furthermore, with AI integrations, reporting and analytics for interactions can be further streamlined to data that is useful for your specific use cases and workflows. Improve key call center metrics, KPIs, and improve CSAT in your business with intuitive reporting and analytics from omnichannel quality management.
Auto dialers are crucial for outbound call centers looking to perform outbound calls in a streamlined and efficient manner. Dialers utilize advanced algorithms and AI to automatically call numbers for agents quickly, saving a lot of time and effort as well as money for businesses. They also give customers the option of a callback if they miss a call through the use of voicemails. There are many benefits to having automatic dialing capabilities and using smart dialers. Benefits include:
Having a good dialer doesn’t just mean a good algorithm. It also means supporting different dialing modes that can be switched depending on the use case that your outbound campaign needs to fulfill. Some different dialing modes your call center needs to be able to support include:
PCI DSS stands for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. It is a set of security standards designed to ensure that all merchants and businesses that process, store, and transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment and keep user data secure. PCI Data Security Standard is a requirement for both call center software providers and businesses that utilize this software that accept credit card payments. This is especially important for retailers and ecommerce businesses.
For PCI Compliance, your call center technology needs to be able to support:
HIPAA compliance refers to keeping protected health information (PHI) secure and safe. The healthcare industry revolves around providing good patient care, keeping staff efficient, and ensuring the security of their patients. This means keeping patient health information secure is crucial for software being utilized by the healthcare industry.
To qualify for HIPAA compliance, your call center technology needs to have a some features including:
SOC 2 compliance refers to keeping protected health information (PHI) secure and safe. The healthcare industry revolves around providing good patient care, keeping staff efficient, and ensuring the security of their patients. This means keeping patient health information secure is crucial for software being utilized by the healthcare industry.
To qualify for HIPAA compliance, your call center technology needs to have a some features including:
HIPAA compliance refers to keeping protected health information (PHI) secure and safe. The healthcare industry revolves around providing good patient care, keeping staff efficient, and ensuring the security of their patients. This means keeping patient health information secure is crucial for software being utilized by the healthcare industry.
To qualify for HIPAA compliance, your call center technology needs to have a some features including:
GDPR compliance is a European Union-specific regulation regarding data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area. GDPR sets rules on how businesses and companies manage and share user data. It also dictates the rules around exporting personal data outside the EU, and is also applicable to businesses outside of the EU that manage EU citizen’s private information.
Some features you need in your platform for GDPR compliance include:
An important part of running a CX operation that delivers exceptional customer service is having a quality management system in place to ensure that all interactions between agents and customers are rated highly
Software for call centers provides important information and streamlines your communication, including call routing and omnichannel communications support. Software for call centers will help you monitor the duration of calls, evaluate negative and positive interactions with customers, and determine agents that are performing well or require more training. They are among the best software for call center firms.
Bright Pattern’s software is one of the only ones on the market today that is natively-built from the start to be fully capable of communication across all channels seamlessly. Based on the cloud and being full omnichannel, Bright Pattern is one of the easiest-to-implement, yet most advanced solutions on the market for businesses that want to connect with customers on a variety of different channels, including voice, email, chat, bots, SMS, text messaging, mobile messengers, and more. Bright Pattern is a great solution for businesses of all sizes, ranging from small businesses to the largest enterprises because of its scalability and flexibility.
Bright Pattern utilizes plug-and-play APIs that allow the platform to integrate with any call center technology easily. This means Bright Pattern can integrate with CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle ServiceCloud, and your own native record management system. Bright Pattern can also integrate AI for agent assistance and natural language processing capabilities. Finally, Bright Pattern provides a mobile application called Bright Pattern Mobile that puts the Bright Pattern’s software into an employee’s smartphone, connecting any employee in the company to the customer journey as part of Bright Pattern’s new Omni-Enterprise CX™ technology. | Best for: | Pricing: |
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NICE CXone is a solution designed for larger enterprises with large professional IT teams, and supports omnichannel capabilities. NICE CXone supports many features that help businesses deliver good customer experiences, including a good interface, quality management options, and workforce management tools. It is a good solution for larger enterprises. hance customer service. Service Hub comes with an email address shared with other users as well as live chat software, and self-service features. All of these work seamlessly with Aircall to provide support via phone. Aircall plans start at $30 per month for users.
HubSpot as well as Aircall’s cloud-based phone system can be integrated to give companies of all sizes an amazing customer experience that is seamless and seamless via various channels.
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| Vendor | Contact Center Type | Best Fit |
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Bright Pattern |
True Omnichannel – Voice and Digital Channels like Messengers, Chat, SMS, and Bots. |
Mid-size companies and larger enterprises looking for a true omnichannel solution that can be deployed quickly and easily |
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Nice CXone |
Omnichannel contact center solution. |
Large enterprises with capable professional IT teams looking for omnichannel. |
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Talkdesk |
Multichannel contact center. |
Good for multichannel mid-size companies. |
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Five9 |
Multichannel contact center. |
Larger companies needing a all-in-one contact center for multichannel interactions. |
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RingCentral |
Multichannel call center software with focus on voice. |
A UC company with a contact center solution with basic functionality. |
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Genesys Cloud CX |
Omnichannel contact center solution. |
Very large enterprises with IT teams looking for a true omnichannel solution. |
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Dialpad |
Unified communications provider with basic contact center functionality. |
Mid-size companies looking for a combined UC and basic call center functionality. |
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Twilio Flex |
Voice SDK and open API to create a call center solution. |
Large enterprises with professional services team to implement and build the solution. |
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Aircall |
Voice-only call center solution. |
Companies focused on voice interactions. |
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8×8 |
Unified communications provider with basic multichannel call center solution capabilities. |
Existing customer in need of basic call center solution. |
Talkdesk provides features that support hybrid call centers as well as remote workers with a fully cloud-based platform. Talkdesk is built for companies looking for a multichannel solution that can support traditional and modern, digital channels. Because it is based on the cloud, Talkdesk gives call center technology access to mid-size companies with flexible software, allowing companies to perform cloud-based calling and cloud-based digital interactions.
Talkdesk is a very modern solution with useful features like a voice-only mobile applicaiton for agents to use, and workforce engagement management options.
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Five9 is a great multichannel contact center option for larger companies needing an all-in-on call center platform that can allow agents to connect with customers on both traditional and digital channels. Five9 offers a range of solutions as part of their packages and their platform can be integrated with existing equipment that already exists within your call center.
Five9 offers a range of telephony options including a fully capable VoIP call center, communication on many different channels, integration with CRMs and other technology, and more.
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RingCentral contact center is a multichannel software with a focus on voice. RingCentral is traditionally a UC company and its multichannel offering is added on-top of the UC offering to boost a company’s communication capabilities. RingCentral’s call center software is great for companies that are looking for a combined UC and CX platform, with a focus on voice interactions.
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Genesys Cloud CX is an omnichannel-capable, fully-fledged contact center solution that is hosted on the cloud. Genesys Cloud CX features a lot of capabilities that are useful for businesses looking for a fully-fledged contact center and have the professional teams needed to implement it. The software includes omnichannel communication capabilities, integration with major CRMs, great reporting options, and analytics to track the customer journey. Genesys Cloud CX is a great choice for large enterprises with IT teams that are looking for an omnichannel solution that supports many digital channels.
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Dialpad is a UC provider that sells software for business conferencing and internal knowledge sharing. However, they also offer call center functionality that goes with their UC offering. This means Dialpad offers a solution that combines internal communication with external customer communication to make it a more seamless experience for the agent. modern call center solution that is mainly designed for inbound and outbound voice interactions.
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Twilio Flex is a unique platform that offers a DIY solution for companies with the time and resources to hire developers, or for companies that have staff on hand to do developmental work. Twilio Flex offers a voice package and open API that developers can utilize to build out their own fully-capable solution.
Twilio Flex provides customers with the chance to build all the features they want in their own enterprise-level call center solution.
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Aircall is a modern call center solution that is mainly designed for inbound voice and outbound voice interactions. Focused solely on voice interactions means Aircall’s features revolve around voice interactions, including call sentiment analytics, text transcription during voice interactions, and built-in AI that assists agents during interactions. Aircall is a great choice for companies that are focused on providing voice interactions to their customers.
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8×8 is mainly a UC provider delivering internal business communication software for conferencing and knowledge sharing. However, 8×8 also sells a call center platform that works in tandem with their unified communications offering. 8×8’s call center offering offers basic call center solution capabilities, and it’s best for customers that need a combined internal communication platform that can also perform basic external communication for customers.
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