Call center software can assist optimize business processes while delivering useful insights, from omnichannel communications support and call routing to interactive voice response (IVR), analytics, and more.
You may monitor average call lengths, assess positive and negative client interactions, and determine which agents are performing well and which require additional training.
Here are the top call center software options on the market today. We chose these systems based on a variety of criteria, including essential features, uptime, cost, and more.
The Best Call Center Platforms of 2023
- Zendesk Talk: Best overall
- RingCentral Contact Center: Best for growing businesses
- Freshdesk: Best for established businesses
- LiveAgent: Best for providing text-based support
- Aircall: Best for traditional call centers
- Twilio Flex: Best for customizing a call center
- Channels: Best for outbound calling
- Five9: Best for automatic call routing
- Dialpad: Best for strictly phone support and sales
- Convoso: Best for telemarketing companies
Zendesk Talk
Zendesk Talk is a cloud-based tool for managing customer interactions. The platform allows you to make and receive customer calls over the web or phone, while also integrating with your online customer experience. You can track your phone support performance using Zendesk’s statistics.
Zendesk is utilized by over 169,000 businesses in over 160 countries.
There are four subscription tiers available, the most expensive of which includes interactive voice response (IVR), a function that automates responds over the phone based on what a consumer says.
RingCentral Contact Center
RingCentral Contact Center combines a number of useful features to enable you to run a call center for any expanding organization. Inbound and outbound calls, omnichannel support, and ticket management are all part of it.
RingCentral is a fantastic solution for practically any small business, whether you provide support for a software, retail, or services organization.
There are four plans to choose from: Essentials, Standard, Premium, and Ultimate. The low-tier package does not include omnichannel support, but it does include skills-based routing, a click-to-call option for rapid calling, real-time reporting, and connectors.
The higher tiers include extensive voice recording features, workforce management, and performance management, all of which can assist your staff in improving the customer experience.
RingCentral’s website does not publicize pricing; you must contact sales for a quote. We received a pricing proposal ranging from $150 to $170 per seat for a company with one to 19 employees, but the setup fee was not disclosed.
Furthermore, even with the Ultimate plan, not all features are covered. Add-ons include analytics, predictive dialers, and connections with Salesforce, Zendesk, and SAP.
Freshdesk Contact Center
Freshdesk’s Contact Center (previously known as Freshcaller) is designed specifically for small enterprises, which is reflected in both its cost structure and its limits.
To be fair, Freshdesk provides a plethora of features even in its entry-level subscriptions. We concentrated on Freshdesk Omnichannel plans, and the lowest tier includes all of the capabilities found in the basic Growth plan, including voice mail with transcription, call recording, and 2,000 inbound call minutes per month. You can also reach us via email, social media, or texting.
Other capabilities include chatbot plus analytics, ticket management, call reporting, multilingual support, customer knowledge bases, call routing automations, and AI-assisted customer solutions.
If paid annually, the omnichannel plans range in price from $29 to $99 per user, per month.
Freshdesk has several capabilities to help you manage a call center effectively, however your inbound call minutes and bot sessions are limited to 2,000, 3,000, or 5,000 minutes per month.
Bot sessions occur whenever a consumer interacts with your AI-assisted bot named Freddy, such as for an email response or an interactive voice response (IVR).
LiveAgent
LiveAgent has a free forever plan, making it an excellent solution for solopreneurs looking to provide help on a budget. LiveAgent’s free plan is restricted, as are most free plans, however you do get most omnichannel assistance for your call center, including voice, email, live chat, contact forms, and a customer portal.
Choose one of LiveAgent’s paid plans for complete support, which cost $9 per agent per month, $29 per agent per month, $49 per agent per month, and $69 per agent per month when paid annually.
All paid subscriptions include an unlimited number of email addresses and ticketing. The free plan deletes ticket history after seven days, but paid plans save it for as long as you need it. Social media channel assistance costs $39 per account, per month, unless you choose the top-tier plan, in which case it’s free.
LiveAgent provides a call center platform but does not provide VoIP service. You must select the most expensive plan and then select one of the top inexpensive VoIP services that works with LiveAgent. Only the $49 package includes call queuing, routing, transfers, and recording.
Twilio Flex
Twilio Flex provides a configurable contact center for businesses of any size. Twilio Flex’s flexibility manifests itself in the form of features and pricing. Twilio Flex is essentially a call center that specializes in voice or text support.
Agents will have access to a wealth of client information via their contact list and the ability to click to call. APIs, integrations, and programming routing rules, workflows, and dashboards allow for customisation.
Twilio Flex pricing is flexible but a little perplexing. Unlimited call volume is available for $150 per user per month.
You can also pay $1 per hour, per active user, which is an excellent option for organizations that need to add more support agents during busiest times of the year, soon after a product launch, or whenever you expect an influx of calls or plan to reach out to more clients than usual.
See also: Contact Center Software Overview
Regardless of the pricing level you select, Twilio Flex’s APIs and connectors allow you to create your ideal call center solution. Rather than attempting to work around pre-built solutions, you may also tailor your data reports.
Because Twilio Flex is not a full-fledged help desk platform, there is no standard ticket management system with email or contact form submissions. However, integrations can be used to do this. If all you need is a voice and text contact center, Twilio Flex could be a useful addition to your support team.
Aircall
Aircall is a call center that offers a practically comprehensive solution for managing inbound and outbound calls for a typical call-based customer care center.
The cloud-based platform is compatible with both desktop and mobile devices, making it suitable for both in-house and remote staff. It has the typical call center software capabilities, such as inbound and outbound calls, intelligent routing, a power dialer, queuing, and warm transfers.
Aircall appears to be reasonably priced at $30 or $50 per user each month (paid annually), however both plans demand a minimum of three users. To utilize Aircall, you must pay at least $90 or $150 each month.
A custom plan is also available, but you must contact Aircall for a price. Every package comes with a single local or toll-free business phone line. Each additional phone number costs $6 per month.
The most basic plan offers the most of capabilities, however it lacks queue callback, monitoring, and whispering. It also has limited analytics options and no power dialer at this level.
You can keep data records for up to a year, but the midtier plan allows for limitless storage. If you require Salesforce connection, you must select one of the more expensive subscriptions.
Overall, Aircall is more of a call management system than an omnichannel solution, which most organizations are likely to want. There is no support for social media or live chat channels, nor is there a ticket system.
There are dozens of connections available, allowing you to build your own solution by including sales automation, live chat, e-commerce, and social apps into your Aircall system.
Who should make advantage of it:
Aircall is most likely to benefit a company that provides a more traditional call center. Aircall allows you to provide voice and SMS message support to your clients, however integrations are required to make this a more comprehensive service.
Channels
Channels (previously CrazyCall) is a call center platform that concentrates on outbound online calls while also allowing inbound phone calls. It has a unique function that allows you to conduct outbound calls with local phone numbers from more than 60 countries, making you appear to customers as a local company—this can help create trust in whomever you’re calling.
Channels can be used for customer support, but it appears to be designed to be most useful for teams conducting outbound sales calls. The feature set includes a web call widget that allows customers to call you directly from your website, call history and storage, IVR, text message help, and interfaces with companies like Shopify, HubSpot, and Zendesk.
The Plus plan allows for three users, while the Advanced plan allows for up to five. More users will cost $8 per seat on the Plus plan and $16 per seat on the Advanced plan.
To access unlimited calls and outbound calling, you must select the Advanced plan, which costs $62 per month. There is also no ticket system or omnichannel support for communication channels like social media or chat applications, but you can interface with Zendesk to allow your team to send SMS messages and build up a ticket system.
Five9
Five9’s call center platform has four different options, each with a growing feature set, but they all include inbound and outbound calls, call recording, and 24/7 support. Furthermore, the user-friendly dashboard functions as a lightweight CRM for your support team to view calls, emails, and notes for each client.
The higher tiers include omnichannel email and chat assistance. The highest tiers include analytics and workflow automation.
There is no free trial, however the Five9 sales team can provide a demo. You might as well receive the demo because you’ll have to contact sales to acquire a pricing quote—no public pricing is accessible.
What Five9 excels at is creating AI and machine learning-powered tools. Standard IVR capabilities are available, but machine learning improves customer outcomes. So, you may configure your support channels to handle inquiries with knowledge base answers, and the AI-assisted agent will divert a call to a live agent if it cannot find an answer for a customer.
Dialpad
Dialpad is a call center platform that concentrates on inbound and outgoing calls, making it an excellent call center platform for firms that solely want to provide phone support.
Dialpad’s contact center program, like most call center software, enables call recording, monitoring, and transcriptions. Although there is no ticketing system or omnichannel support, Dialpad interfaces nicely with Salesforce and Zendesk, allowing you to put up a more comprehensive call center solution.
Dialpad also has an in-queue callback capability, which saves clients from having to wait on the phone.
The Dialpad Pro plan includes a free trial period in which you may try out all of the features. The only changes between the Pro and Enterprise versions are the number of agents you can have, the number of callers in queue, automatic and custom recording and analytics capabilities, and support for establishing the system for your company.
There is no pricing information available, therefore you must contact Dialpad for an estimate. It’s also worth mentioning that each plan has a user/license minimum. At least three licenses are required for Pro, and at least 50 for Enterprise.
Dialpad-like alternatives include RingCentral and LiveAgent. If you’re deciding between call center solutions, compare Dialpad vs RingCentral to learn how they differ.
Convoso
Convoso is a call center platform that can handle both inbound and outbound calls, but primarily focuses on the latter. According to the business, Convoso’s algorithm can recognize an answering machine or voicemail with up to 97% accuracy.
This means that agents will not waste time on ineffective calls. Call routing, recording, workflow automation, and real-time reporting are other basic call center features. One of Convoso’s distinguishing features is a tracking tool for reducing “spam-likely” and blocked calls.
Pricing is not publicly available; you must contact Convoso directly for a quote based on the number of agents you have. There will very certainly be a per-minute charge.
Convoso’s functionality can be enhanced by interfaces with e-commerce, marketing, and support desk applications. Custom connections can also be created using Convoso’s open API.
