20 Best Call Center Software of 2023: Reviewed & Compared

Talkdesk puts vital customer information in front of your customer service reps to help them answer any question. Their contact center software is a suitable option for businesses that need a system to handle a small number of calls.

Why I picked Talkdesk: Many platforms put a customer’s information at your team’s fingertips, but Talkdesk sets itself apart because it does the same thing without your agents having to answer the call. It does this by using an interactive voice response function that allows your customer who calls in to complete tasks and get the information they need. Talkdesk’s interactive voice response tool is easy to configure, thanks to its visual customer journey builder.

Talkdesk Standout Features and Integrations

Talkdesk's advanced routing features ensure your customers connect with the right representative, team, or department based on their needs. If you have multiple reps that are right for the customer, Talkdesk’s ring groups feature will distribute calls to various agents simultaneously.

Other advanced features include omnichannel engagement, management tools, employee collaborations, customer experience analytics, enterprise-level uptime service level agreement, artificial intelligence applications, and low-code, no-code, and custom-code tools.

Integrations include Freshdesk, Pipedrive, Userlike, OnePageCRM, Zendesk, Salesforce, Slack, Zoho CRM, Nimble, LiveChat, Shift, Keap, and Gong.io.

Nextiva helps businesses communicate with customers from anywhere possible with its virtual call center capabilities.

Why I picked Nextiva: The platform uses its VoIP solution, Nextiva One, to provide voice, video, fax, text, and team chat features. It’s 100% cloud-based, which makes it perfect for remote teams. Your support representatives can simply log in to Nextiva’s desktop or mobile app and start handling incoming calls. If your call center experiences a large call volume, you can automate routine tasks in the platform, allowing your support agents to focus on crucial calls.

Nextiva is excellent for companies of any size - from small-to-medium businesses to large organizations. You can use the platform to get real-time insights into your team’s data, and your reps can get essential customer details to make them feel like they’re your only customer. Also, Nextiva can provide you with an integrated solution for all customer support channels and business applications.

Nextiva Standout Features and Integrations

Features that make Nextiva stand out include its workforce management and optimization tools such as multi-channel staffing forecasts, multi-skill forecasting, and agent scheduling tools. They also offer integrated quality monitoring and coaching tools to help you improve your agent performance.

Other features worth noting include team chat, free local and toll-free phone numbers, extension dialing number change, an auto attendant, call management, voicemail forwarding, call analytics, advanced call routing, call recording and rating, call queuing, and three-way calling.

Integrations include Salesforce, Zendesk, Hubspot, Zoho CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, Workbooks, Bullhorn, SugarCRM, ServiceNow, ConnectWise, GoldMine, Google Workspace, and Microsoft Teams.

Dialpad is a sophisticated multichannel call center platform that uses AI to improve agent workflows and help them answer customer queries faster.

Why I picked Dialpad: The platform’s AI provides a significant enhancement to the software’s contact center capabilities. For example, Dialpad can automatically transcribe your reps’ phone calls and identify specific keywords in the conversation, such as “refund.” Then the AI will display helpful references on the rep’s screen to help with the call. The AI can also alert your managers to potential issues in real-time by detecting your reps’ conversation sentiments - each conversation will have a label of “positive,” neutral,” or “negative.”

Dialpad is excellent for small businesses wanting smarter, more effective conversations in a fully functional virtual call center. It provides deep, real-time call center metrics across voice, social media, and digital communication channels. Also, the software can generate scripts for your reps facing difficulty answering customer questions.

Dialpad Standout Features and Integrations

Dialpad's multichannel customer engagement capabilities empower your customer service agents to engage with customers across popular social media channels like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Apple Business Chat within one workspace. This helps platform users provide a better end-to-end customer journey, no matter which communication method they prefer.

Their platform also includes several noteworthy features that make it easier for managers to monitor their agents' performance, including manager alerts for service level agreement issues, call monitoring tools (Listen In, Barge, and Take Over), and a screen capture tool that takes a snapshot of an agent's computer interface.

Other notable features include flexible call routing, automated voicemail and callback, interactive voice response, real-time speech analysis, live caller sentiment, real-time coaching, and quality management tools.

Integrations include Hubspot, Zapier, Clio, Domo, Wingman, Intercom, HappyFox, Helpwise, Kizen, Salesforce, DataGrail, Recruitly, AutoReach, Microsoft Teams, and Gong.

Aircall is a popular choice for modern organizations thanks to its ability to provide deep insights via real-time analytics.

Why I picked Aircall: The platform’s dashboard will give you and your sales managers instant access to your call center’s metrics to ensure everyone meets their goals. Aircall enables you to monitor your agent’s missed call rate in a straightforward, all-in-one tool. You can use the software to monitor your entire call center or narrow your focus on an individual representative on the same screen.

Aircall helps businesses in any industry that need call center software and also offers customer service tools. You’ll get the same features and capabilities of the more heavy-weight tools, such as call routing and performance reports, but for an affordable price.

Aircall Standout Features and Integrations

One feature that stood out in Aircall's system is that it enables you to claim local and international phone numbers for your business in 100+ countries, even if you aren't based there. Plus, you can use their platform’s phone system to manage customer inquiries worldwide and eliminate spam or bot callers by blocklisting numbers easily.

Their interactive voice response (IVR) feature also helps to streamline your call center operations by classifying callers according to their needs and automatically routing them to the best-suited agent (i.e., skills-based call routing), improving your customer experience greatly.

Other advanced features include call whispering (the ability to speak to teammates secretly while they're on a live call), insight cards (a tool that proactively loads your agent up with customer details as soon as their phone rings), automatic call recording, a live dashboard, third-party application data syncing, and in-depth analytics.

Integrations include monday.com, Freshdesk, Quaeris, Pipedrive, Cyclr, Wingman, Desktop.com, BetterCloud, Salesforce, Zendesk, Slack, Mailchimp, Zoho CRM, Hubspot CRM, and Constant Contact.

Zendesk allows your reps to unify all forms of customer conversations in one central location.

Why I picked Zendesk: The cloud-based platform enables your business to provide personalized phone support to your customers. The Zendesk Talk solution is a part of the Zendesk for Service software, a multichannel support system that allows users to provide phone support capabilities in the same platform you can use for other customer conversations. Your reps will be able to see all real-time customer information by syncing the voice tools with your other communication channels.

Zendesk is an excellent solution for small and medium-sized businesses searching for methods to enhance their voice capabilities with tools such as call transcriptions or redactions. Current Zendesk users will also enjoy the platform because they’ll be able to add call center functionality to their helpdesk services. Its basic plan includes the call center functionality a small or medium-sized business would want, such as omnichannel support, ticketing, and basic analytics dashboards and reports.

Zendesk Standout Features and Integrations

One stand-out feature with Zendesk is their Advanced AI add-on. This enterprise-grade AI addition can help you speed up your customer service by using advanced AI bots to provide insights and suggestions to your agents while they're on a live call. In addition, Zendesk's intelligent triage feature automatically categorizes tickets based on customer intent, sentiment, and language, and can feed into additional workflows, triggers, and call routing rules.

Zendesk also makes it possible to set a maximum queue size and wait time to help you avoid having customers sitting on hold for too long. Once your calls have exceeded your maximum, additional calls will be automatically directed to voicemail instead of leaving your customers dwindling on the phone for frustratingly long wait times.

Other features include an agent workspace with lots of customer-specific context, collaboration tools, a knowledge management hub, call scripting, and a whisper mode that allows multiple agents to silently collaborate with each other during a live call.

Integrations include Slack, Mailchimp, Zapier, Campaign Monitor, Okta, Mindsay, Geckoboard, Rivery, Daisee, Airbyte, Data Virtuality, Sunshine Conversations, and IntraManager.

Freshdesk Contact Center is a complete, affordable, and all-in-one contact center solution for businesses.

Why I picked Freshdesk Contact Center: I included Freshdesk Contact Center in this list because their virtual setup reduces many of the costs of traditional phone systems, making them an affordable option for small businesses. With this platform, your telephony costs will be lower than normal thanks to their pay-as-you-go call charges and reduced hardware requirements. Instead of investing in lots of phone equipment, you can use a laptop, tablet, or mobile device to make outgoing calls or receive incoming calls. They also support a variety of phone number options, including local, toll-free, or vanity numbers.

Freshdesk Contact Center offers free plans for new licenses as well as affordable paid options. The free plan has limited features, but the lowest paid tier, the growth plan, has the features the free plan doesn’t and other basic capabilities. The software can also work with your business as you scale and need additional features to manage your support center.

Freshdesk Contact Center Standout Features and Integrations

One feature I found interesting is the option to save Solution Articles into a folder that all agents can assess, functioning as an internal knowledge base. You can also convert your rep’s responses into solutions and help articles to grow your internal knowledge base easily.

Another nice feature is their multi-level IVR (interactive voice response) phone tree that uses AI to direct customer inquiries to the right agent, with the ability to configure up to 5 levels of support. In addition, I also like their call-masking option that makes it possible to display your official customer support number on your customer's call display, no matter what number you're actually calling from.

Other standard features include call routing, business hour settings, shared phone lines, spam call blocking, and live call monitoring.

Integrations include ResponseTap, FrontApp, Zoho CRM, Nimble CRM, Pipedrive, Copper CRM, PipelineDeals CRM, Zendesk Sell, Salesforce, Hubspot CRM, Zapier, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

Five9 is a call center solution that helps businesses that experience high call volumes engage with their customers. It's suitable for large businesses transitioning from an on-premise tool to a cloud-based solution.

Why I picked Five9: The platform offers multiple open-source call center functionalities for businesses with a high number of customer phone inquiries. Five9’s representative technology can take some of your calls, so you don’t have to hire more representatives to handle these calls.

With Five9, managers have full visibility into their entire team - it doesn’t matter if they’re working from home or on the go. Their software also includes several workforce optimization features to help you boost agent productivity, save money, and increase your ROI.

Five9 Standout Features and Integrations

Five9 uses practical AI to increase customer satisfaction rates for all users by prioritizing calls and interactions based on urgency and selecting the resource that will be most beneficial to the customer. If a customer visits your website and leaves their contact information to get information about your product, Five9’s AI will place the contact details in front of your call queue.

Another neat feature is their Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) which allows you to deploy a more conversational and engaging self-service feature across all your digital customer support channels.

Other features include an outbound dialer, omnichannel routing, natural language processing, dashboards and reports, call disposition, data import and export, lead management, and call tracking.

Integrations include Salesforce, Servicenow, Zendesk, Microsoft Teams, Zoom Phone, Ring Central, Freshdesk, Fuze, Gong, MarketSharp, Logicbox, Sugar Sell, Balto, and Chatdesk.

RingCentral is a cloud-based omnichannel contact center solution that provides businesses with robust features that support growing companies.

Why I picked RingCentral: In one convenient platform, RingCentral lets users set up and manage a call center as their business grows. Their workforce management tools make it simple to handle your reps’ schedules and schedule calls according to traffic volumes. You can also monitor KPIs in real-time, track performance, and get detailed customer support performance analytics.

RingCentral ensures the best possible service quality by continuously monitoring and enhancing the software for users. Also, the tool’s screen recording capabilities allow customer service managers to give reps feedback on how to navigate the platform and optimize agent performance.

RingCentral Standout Features and Integrations

RingCentral includes several features that allow you to provide proactive, outbound support to your customers. You can take advantage of their advanced call scripting features to empower your agents to deliver consistent experiences to your customers. RingCentral also includes a variety of outbound dialers, including predictive dialers. Their call blending feature also helps you maximize your agents' productivity by allowing them to work out outbound campaigns during slower traffic times, then switching them to inbound support when your call volume increases.

Other features include call recording, escalation management, voice recognition, campaign management, real-time chat, reporting and analytics, file transfer, and contact management.

Integrations include Jira, Freshdesk, Supportbench, Pipedrive, New Relic, Envoy, 1CRM, VipeCloud, Zendesk, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Slack, Hubspot CRM, and Zoho CRM.

Genesys provides small businesses with advanced call center features for inbound and outbound call management.

Why I picked Genesys: If you’re running a small business, Genesys can help keep your reps engaged and productive thanks to its built-in unified communication and collaboration tools. You can also use its AI capabilities to understand your customer data from the insights it distills. Your teams will get advanced call center features such as automation and workforce management to help your business provide excellent customer service.

Genesys helps small businesses take their customer experience efforts worldwide. Whether you’re operating in 2 countries or 80, the platform will help you simplify customer experiences. The platform’s predictive routing and automatic call distribution (ACD) capabilities will analyze your customers’ behavior patterns and identify the best outcome and representative to ensure all customers get the best experience every time.

Genesys Standout Features and Integrations

Standout features for Genesys, in my opinion, are their employee engagement capabilities. Genesys uses gamification features like internal scorecards and leaderboards to drive team performance. In addition, their platform also helps with employee development through embedded learning and training, coaching tools, a personalized development hub, and rewards and recognition tools. The depth of these features also provides good value for small businesses wanting more out of their call center software.

Other features include quality assurance and monitoring, predictive engagement, knowledge management, co-browse and screen share, voice bots, and predictive routing.

Integrations include Zoom Phone, Microsoft Azure, Video RTC, Daisee, Sapling AI Writing Assistant, LumenVox, Topbox, Airkit, Eleveo, Call Journey, Replicant, and Ultimate.ai.

LiveAgent is a combined helpdesk and call center solution that streamlines all communication channels into one inbox.

Why I picked LiveAgent: Where many other options require businesses to integrate another solution to get a customer ticketing system, LiveAgent is a helpdesk solution that has call center functionality. The platform offers call management features that allow you to answer phone calls and other communication forms in one place. Users can connect unlimited local numbers and route and record calls.

LiveAgent offers an array of contact center features and options, along with other customer support methods, that would be a better fit for larger organizations. These organizations will appreciate that LiveAgent provides integrations with over 200 tools, so they’ll most likely be able to integrate all their systems with the platform. Some integrations are plugin and native-based, whereas others use an API that might require using Zapier.

LiveAgent Standout Features and Integrations

One standout feature for LiveAgent is its dedicated customer portal which also includes a knowledge base. This allows customers to access answers to common questions on a self-service basis, reducing your overall call volume for your agents.

Other features include automatic callback, an embeddable call button, call detail records, call routing, internal calls, call transfers, interactive voice response, and unlimited call recordings.

Integrations include TeleCube, Avoxi, Twilio, Zapier, TimeCamp, Haraka, Sendmail, Webflow, Zentap, Zoho Mail, vCita, Intercom, and Asana.