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
Top 10 Contact Center Software sorted by Wheelhouse Score.
Zoho Desk is a cloud-based customer support platform, furnishing an extensive toolkit to manage customer inquiries and support tickets adeptly. The platform's user-friendly interface and robust features position it as an optimal solution for businesses of diverse sizes aiming to streamline their cus...
Centrical is a comprehensive employee engagement and performance management software that helps companies increase productivity, improve employee engagement, and drive business results. With Centrical, you can streamline performance evaluations, goal setting, and development planning all in one plac...
PanTerra Streams is an all-in-one phone, text/SMS, fax, team messaging, business analytics and file sync/share solution - all within one customizable app. Key PanTerra Streams features include:
Crexendo is an end-to-end, cloud-based voice and data technology and infrastructure service provider. Its solutions are ideally suited for small and medium enterprises and startups. Crexendo solutions are known for their reliability and security, which are essential in the voice and data servi...
VanillaSoft brings together the very best of CRM, Lead Management and Sales-by-Phone tools into one powerful, queue-based lead management solution for inside sales teams, call centers, and other sales-by-phone professionals. VanillaSoft’s intuitive and easy-to-use queue-based lead management softwar...
Vonage Business Communications unifies calling, messaging, video, and an ecosystem of 3rd party integrations. By adopting a full suite of communication tools with 50+ enterprise-grade calling features from a single provider, a business will benefit from all-in-one voice, messaging, video, and ...
RingCentral is a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions. More flexible and cost-effective than legacy on-premises systems, RingCentral empowers today’s mobile and distributed workforce to communicate, collaborate, and connect from anywhere, on an...
Accelerate your business to attain round-the-clock performance with Salesforce Service Cloud. The modern consumer expects access to customer service when it is convenient to them and their hours rather than the operating times of the call center–Salesforce helps clients meet this need by equip...
Livevox is powerful contact center platform that centralizes all of your customer support tools and features into one system that is powered by a purpose-built CRM. This enables your teams to provide great customer service while also streamlining your internal operations through time-savings and pro...
VirtualPBX is a leader in small business hosted phone services. The company was created in 1997: it has been placed on multiple top provider lists and won various service awards for their pioneering innovations and their consistently reliable service and network. VirtualPBX's offering is tailored to...
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.
