Best Call Center Software

A call center sounds cold and sterile. However, that doesn’t have to be the case. We’ve used numerous call center tools over the years and narrowed things down to our top recommendations. From our experiences and extensive research, Nextiva is our top pick because it packs all the essentials in a full VoIP solution with appealing, transparent pricing.

The Best Call Center Software for Most

Nextiva is the gold standard for business communication, from internal collaboration to call center software. Get Nextiva One for unlimited voice and video calling in both directions, plus conferencing, team chat, faxing, and more. Then, add on Nextiva’s call center solution to really boost your operations and ability to field calls.

It’s true VoIP so your call center reps can be remote, distributed, in-house, or any combination of the prior. Your team can handle more inbound calls with ease because of the built-in smart routing, auto attendant, and premium features like call pop and CRM integration.

The 6 Best Call Center Software Options to Consider:

1. Nextiva – Best for most (For a limited time get 25% off, plus a free phone, when you sign up!)
2. RingCentral – Best call center software for most
3. Twilio Flex – Best for customer support teams
4. Five9 – Best end-to-end option for enterprises
5. TalkDesk – Best for teams using Salesforce
6. Freshdesk Contact Center – Best for 250 calls or fewer per month

When It Makes Sense to Invest into Call Center Software

Call center software is an excellent solution if your team spends most of the day on the phone because they come with numerous features that make dialing and answering calls easier than ever before.

Whether you’re a customer support team, an outbound telemarketing firm, or something else entirely, it’s a smart idea if you find your current systems stunting the number of calls you can make (or receive) on any given day. However, it goes beyond those features as well.

It also makes multi-channel communications a breeze. From SMS and social media to live chat, email, and phone, the best call center software helps consolidate conversations into a centralized location.

Doing so makes it easy for your team to share information about clients, customers, and potential clients with ease.

They can even help customers and incoming callers help themselves to reduce the number of calls, allowing your agents and reps to focus on delivering high-quality interactions.

The bottom line: Call center software is a smart choice if you have a fully-staffed team of agents, get or make countless phone calls throughout the day, or your current system no longer works for you.

#1 – Nextiva — The Best Call Center Software for Most

Whether you’re on the verge of spinning up a call center or you have an established one that needs to get with the modern times, Nextiva is the best solution for success in either situation.

You get all the features you need at a predictable and palatable price, all with the power of VoIP allowing your call center to be as centralized or distributed as you like.

If you already use Nextiva for your voice, video, fax, and text communications, you’re one step ahead. You have an easier route to adding Nextiva’s call center software.

Even if you don’t already use Nextiva for your telephony, you don’t have to stretch for a premium plan to get your call center going.

Nextiva’s base plan includes unlimited voice and video calling, as well as an auto attendant for caller self-routing and the ability to use toll-free and local virtual numbers.

That Essential plan is $18.95 per user per month. If you want your call center reps to be able to access your company CRM, get call pop, and more, you can take one step up to the Professional plan. That plan is just $20.95 per user per month.

Either way, you get a solid foundation for all your company’s communication needs. Then, just add Nextiva’s call center solution as an add-on to your Nextiva plan.

The base pricing is an extra $50 per user per month. You get unlimited call queues, so that means no matter how many people are flooding your center’s phone lines, no one gets kicked to voicemail. There are also tools for smarter call routing, as well, if your call center has subdepartments or specialties.

Nextiva also offers an enterprise-tier call center option. For $100 per user per month, you add deeper call and queue management, such as admins being able to manually route calls.

All in all, you get the total package from Nextiva. Inexpensive enough to work for simple call center needs—you can get Nextiva plus call center software for as little as $68.95 per user per month—but adaptable enough to handle almost any different way you can assemble yours.

Get started with Nextiva today to outfit your call center for future success.

#2 – RingCentral — The Best for Handling Inbound and Outbound Simultaneously

RingCentral is a global leader in the business communication space. However, one of RingCentral’s lesser-known solutions is its call center software. 

It’s versatile enough to accommodate startups, enterprises, and everything in between because of its custom pricing and packages tailored to your business. As a small team, custom pricing may not seem like the way to go, but it ensures you get exactly what you need without having to pay for a bunch of stuff you’ll never use. It’s an extra step that’s well worth it.

Whether you’re a support team receiving numerous calls throughout the day or a midsize enterprise taking calls plus performing marketing or sales outreach activities, RingCentral delivers all the features you need for inbound and outbound calls. 

The best part is that you only have to pay for the functionality you need. Only need an inbound solution? No problem. Want to boost your sales and marketing activities with outbound features? Done.

If you get incoming support inquiries from various channels, you can also use RingCentral’s call center software to centralize interactions into one dashboard.

The system can also help automatically route incoming calls to the right agent with the help of the software’s AI and machine learning capabilities. As a result, customers and leads save time and your team does as well—there’s no switching a caller from one rep to the next until you finally get them to the right person.

But one of the most powerful features is the ability to create a self-service environment that reduces the number of support inquiries you get in the first place. 

With RingCentral’s interactive voice response (IVR) feature, you can build a series of automated phone menus to help segment customers and give them answers to common questions without ever needing to speak to a human. 

You can help more people while doing less work. It’s a win-win for everyone.

If you want to do outbound sales and marketing activities, RingCentral also delivers everything you need to manage outreach campaigns, manage leads, make more calls, and connect with the people on the other end of the line.

Your team can leverage predictive, proactive, and progressive dialers to save time and reduce errors while reaching more prospects. 

Regardless of the plan and features you choose, you get internal collaboration functionality, including team messaging and video conferencing. Keeping all of your agents on the same page is easier than ever, whether they work in the same office or remotely. 

When you’re ready to roll out your new software, there are dozens of training videos and how-to guides to walk you through the entire process from start to finish. 

Another option is the community forum that’s packed full of Q&As for the most common problems. 

Or you can contact support any time 24/7/365 via live chat or phone if you ever run into any issues along the way.

With RingCentral, there are four contact center plans to choose from, including:

• Essentials — Voice-only CX with advanced routing capabilities
• Standard — Advanced Omnichannel CX with voice and digital
• Premium — Advanced Omnichannel CX with basic Workforce Engagement
• Ultimate — Advanced Omnichannel CX with advanced Workforce Engagement

While custom pricing may feel like it’s reserved for larger teams, RingCentral prefers this method (even for small companies) because it helps them deliver a tailored solution that’s perfect for your business. 

Plus, you don’t have to pay for features you won’t use, and you can easily make changes to your solution as your needs change over time. 

If you don’t currently have a phone and internal communication system set up for your team, RingCentral also offers an all-in-one solution for phone, video, and messaging. It starts at $20 per user. 

Contact the RingCentral sales team to get a custom quote today!

#3 – Twilio Flex — The Best for Customer Support Teams

As a customer support team, your representatives likely spend a lot of time answering inbound calls. However, inquiries often come from various channels, including social media, SMS, WhatsApp, email, live chat, and more. 

So, your team’s constantly jumping from platform to platform (and probably from software to software) to keep your response times up to par.

If that sounds all too familiar, Twilio is your new best friend. It offers a wide range of products to accommodate customer support teams in various industries with features for retailers, ecommerce shops, healthcare organizations, financial service businesses, real estate agents, marketers, and more.

Twilio Flex is Twilio’s omnichannel contact center software—as an all-in-one solution, it helps enhance the support experience for both your customers and your agents.

It integrates with virtually every CRM on the market, including Salesforce, Microsoft, and Zendesk. With these integrations, you can embed Twilio Flex into your CRM software (or the other way around) to create a customized and streamlined workflow specific to how your team works.

Alternatively, the system can automatically pull relevant customer data using Twilio API if you’d like to further customize your workflows.

When set up correctly, Twilio Flex can pull purchase history, information about previous interactions, and your inventory levels to give agents all of the data they need without leaving the platform. That’s just one example of how it helps retailers and ecommerce businesses.

Regardless of where support requests come from, you can leverage intelligent routing and automatic engagement workflows to ensure each customer connects with the right agent the first time. 

However, one of Twilio Flex’s standout features is automated AI-driven self-service options that allow customers to help themselves without speaking to an agent. 

You can set up completely custom interactive voice response (IVR) systems that deliver a contextual and personalized support experience on autopilot. With IVR, the system prompts callers with various options designed to segment inquiries. 

As a result, you know enough about the caller to connect them with the right agent or answer their question with a pre-recorded message. 

The best part is that all of that happens seamlessly behind the scenes and creates a personalized experience for the end-user while saving your team time. 

Another standout feature is that Twilio Flex supports outbound calling for proactive customer engagement as well. Other customer service tools don’t include outbound functionality, so this is an excellent feature. 

Twilio Flex offers two different pricing structures, including:

• Per-hour – $1 per active user hour
• Per-user – $150 per user per month

Hourly pricing is better for teams with dynamic or seasonal demand. With this model, you only pay for what you use, and you can quickly scale the software up or down depending on what you need at any given time. 

Per-user pricing is better for teams that regularly handle high volumes. 

This way, you don’t have to guess how much you’re spending, and the price stays the same, regardless of volume or activity. 

Most full Twilio deployments take less than a week, which is much faster than other options on the market. Plus, you can get a jumpstart using one of the most robust free trials we’ve seen. It comes with $5,000 active user hours at no cost to try it out and get started. 

Sign up for your free trial to see if Twilio’s suitable for you and your team today!

#4 – Five9 — The Best End-to-End Option for Enterprises

Five9 is a top-rated end-to-end call center solution for large businesses and enterprises looking to consolidate outbound sales and inbound customer support into one platform. 

More than 2,000 businesses across the globe rely on Five9. Plus, it’s trusted by industry leaders like Expedia, Carfax, Lululemon, Doordash, and FitBit, and it’s easy to see why. 

The abundance of advanced administration features paired with robust inbound and outbound capabilities eliminates the need for large companies to use (and pay for) multiple communication tools.

Whether you’re a collections agency, in the healthcare industry, a retailer, a customer support team, or focusing on outbound marketing and sales, Five9 has everything you need. 

It also makes managing communication at scale a breeze without over-automating your processes or removing the human element behind your business. 

The platform is completely customizable to match the way each team works, even if customer support handles communication differently from your sales department. As such, it’s flexible and adaptable enough to meet the needs of everyone in your organization. 

For inbound calls, you can set up customized engagement workflows that automatically route callers to the right agent while giving the agent everything they need to know before the call. 

You can even let callers know their estimated wait times and what queue position they’re in

On top of that, you can create robust voice or visual IVR systems designed to help customers help themselves. As a result, you get fewer calls and happier customers who don’t have to wait to talk to an agent. 

For outbound calling, users don’t have to spend time dialing or making mistakes only to be met with an unanswered call. 

With Five9, you get four dialing options and an advanced dialing algorithm that estimates when new agents become available. In doing so, agents transition seamlessly from one call to the next with no downtime in between. 

Plus, the system automatically screens unanswered calls, voicemails, and hangups giving users more time to actively engage with the human on the other end of the line. 

You can also rest easy knowing you’re compliant with TCPA guidelines for automated dialing.

However, Five9’s most significant feature is the ability to combine inbound and outbound call queues into one platform. Users never have to worry about logging out of one queue to get in the other. On top of that, the system intelligently handles inbound call spikes by ramping down outbound dialing until the high-demand period is over. 

The software also seamlessly integrates with dozens of CRM platforms, including Salesforce, Oracle, Zendesk, ServiceNow, and Microsoft, just to name a few. 

Another beneficial enterprise-grade feature is the ability to have a hands-off deployment. If that’s something you’re interested in, Five9 will handle designing, managing, monitoring, integrating, and deploying your call center solution, allowing your IT department to focus on other things. 

When you’re ready to roll it out across your business, the Five9 team also offers various on-demand and dedicated training sessions to get everyone up to speed. 

And if you ever need help along the way, you can contact the support team 24/7/365 via phone, email, and online help desk. 

Alternatively, you can reference Five9’s comprehensive product documentation and knowledge base. Both are packed full of hundreds of articles covering various topics. 

You can also opt for priority support, including a dedicated account manager if you need it.

All of Five9’s packages are completely custom-built to match your needs. As such, pricing isn’t available online, but you can request a free quote to learn more and see if it’s right for your business today!

#5 – TalkDesk — The Best for Teams Using Salesforce

If you use Salesforce as your CRM, TalkDesk is our top recommendation. 

Most call center tools only scratch the surface when it comes to CRM integrations and compatibility. However, TalkDesk goes above and beyond by delivering the deepest Salesforce integration in the industry. 

Most of the other options on our list require advanced APIs and customization to achieve two-way data sync, but things are different with TalkDesk. 

Two-way data synching comes pre-built into the integration. Hence, you never have to worry about entering information twice or experiencing data synchronization delays, regardless of which software housed the data first. 

Beyond that, TalkDesk offers numerous pre-built automated workflows designed to eliminate repetitive and redundant tasks between the two platforms. 

For example, you can automatically create a new case in Salesforce when your team misses a call, and the user leaves a voicemail. As such, your agents don’t have to create a new case manually, and they get immediate notification of the missed call. 

With such a deep integration, you can configure it to trigger automation sequences in Salesforce after specific actions occur in TalkDesk. It also works the other way around as well. 

On top of that, agents can leverage screen pops directly in Salesforce that pull all relevant caller information from both platforms to get up to speed before answering the call. You can also use this information to route callers to the right agent behind the scenes. 

As a result, customers get a personalized experience with faster resolution times. 

If you offer SMS and email support, the integration allows you to manage those inquiries in Salesforce without switching to another platform. 

You can also embed analytic dashboards and custom reports within Salesforce, giving users a clear picture in one glance right when they log in. Your subscription includes 20+ pre-built historical reports you can customize to match your needs or use as is. 

But the best part is that it’s straightforward to set up and implement. Administrators can add new licenses and configure user access in less than 30 seconds within Salesforce. 

So, they don’t have to learn a new platform and can continue using an interface they’re familiar with. 

With that said, TalkDesk offers various add-on services for customized onboarding, strategy building, user enablement, and success to ensure you’re getting the most of your new software. 

There are also hundreds of videos, webinars, ebooks, datasheets, how-to guides, and a complete TalkDesk Academy with certification programs for various roles. All of that paired with award-winning customer support means you never have to worry about navigating the platform alone. 

TalkDesk only offers custom pricing, but there are three tiers to choose from, including:

• Professional – For small and medium-sized contact centers
• Professional Plus – For large contact centers or those with mobile agents
• Enterprise – For enterprises and those needing advanced customization

All three tiers include the Salesforce integration plus numerous inbound calling features designed to enhance the customer experience. 

Request a live demo or a free quote by getting in touch with the TalkDesk team today!

#6 – Freshdesk Contact Center — The Best for 250 Calls or Fewer Per Month

If you and your team only handle a few calls a day, you don’t need the advanced features that high-volume call centers require. And you also don’t need to pay as much money for something you’re barely going to use. 

Freshdesk Contact Center offers the perfect solution. There are no monthly fees with its free option, and you only pay based on the number of minutes you use. 

You don’t need any new equipment and you don’t even need an existing phone system since your team can make and receive calls directly from their web browser. As such, it’s quick to set up with no hardware requirements and perfect for occasional use. 

It supports both inbound and outbound calling, so it’s a great option whether you’re performing sales and marketing outreach or customer support. 

With the free plan, you can onboard an unlimited number of users, but you have to buy your phone numbers through Freshdesk Contact Center. 

Local numbers are $1 per month and toll-free numbers are $2 per month. So, the free plan isn’t actually free. You just don’t have to pay a high monthly fee to use it. 

The free plan comes with all of the essential features you need, like custom desktop notifications for incoming calls, custom greetings, call blocking so you’re not stuck paying for junk calls, and mobile apps for iOS and Android. 

However, the best part is that you can configure a custom incoming caller ID to display previous interactions and crucial information about the caller before answering. 

This helps agents understand why the person’s calling before ever picking up the phone. As such, they can make sure they’re the right person to handle the call and gather additional information about the caller as they go through the greeting. 

Agents can also take notes directly on the platform during calls so everyone’s always on the same page, even if a different agent answers next time. 

Per-minute usage fees on the free plan include:

• Inbound – $0.016 per minute for browser calls
• Inbound voicemail – $0.014 per minute
• Outgoing – starts at $0.022 per minute

These are all for local numbers. The rates are significantly higher for toll-free numbers, so we don’t recommend going that route unless you have to. 

If you’re looking for something a bit more advanced or are using more than 1,000 minutes per user, you can upgrade to Freshdesk Contact Center’s Blossom plan. Rather than charging per-minute, you’re charged $15 per user per month with 1,000 free incoming minutes included for each user. 

Once you exceed 1,000 minutes, you have to pay $0.013 per additional minute. 

If you regularly hit 1,000 monthly minutes per user, this plan is more economical than the free option. Plus, you can port your existing phone numbers and system into the platform. As such, you can avoid paying extra for phone numbers if you already have them. 

You can also leverage team routing to ensure callers connect with the right agent, business hours, wait queues, call recording, voicemail, and click-to-call via Chrome. 

While these features are less advanced than the other options on our list, they’re more than enough for occasional inbound and outbound calls. 

We only recommend Freshdesk Contact Center for small volume and occasional use, so if you’re looking at tiers above the Blossom plan, we recommend going with a different option on our list unless you already use FreshDesk or FreshWorks CRM. 

Sign up for a free forever plan or take Freshdesk Contact Center for a test drive with a 21-day free trial today!

Methodology for Choosing the Best Call Center Software

Call center software and the features that come with it vary based on a wide range of factors. As such, it’s not always easy to figure out which one’s best for you and your team. 

There are a lot of things to consider, from feature sets and implementation to automation capabilities, agent performance monitoring tools, and integration with the tools you’re already using. 

To help simplify things, we put together a methodology you can use to eliminate any confusion or concerns you may have as you sort through choosing the best call center software.

Outbound vs. Inbound Calls

This is the biggest factor to consider when making your final decision because the types of calls you’re dealing with affect the features you need to actually improve your business processes. 

Some businesses may only handle one type or the other, but some of you may regularly deal with both. 

Outbound Calling – Sales, Marketing, and Outreach

If you need to make outbound calls for your sales, marketing, or outreach, you should choose call center software that delivers outbound-specific features. 

Useful items like predictive dialing, automatic dialing, and click-to-call exist to help improve agent productivity specifically for outbound calling. 

With these features, your team can reach more people and close more deals, generate more leads, or develop better relationships in less time. 

For outbound calling, our top recommendation is Five9. 

Inbound Calls – Customer and Internal Support

If you’re a support team looking for a better way to automate your processes, improve response times, and boost agent productivity, there are tons of features to help you out as long as you choose inbound-specific call center software. 

First, you need to decide if you want callers to use their touchpad or voice to automatically route themselves to the right agent without the need for an operator to do it for you. 

In some cases, you can set this type of system up to answer common questions without callers ever speaking to an agent at all. For example, you can have an option to set your hours of operation and services offered so callers know when you’re open and what you do without having to talk to anyone. 

This capability is known as interactive voice response (IVR). 

Alternatively, you can opt for automatic call distribution (ACD) that automatically routes callers based on specific rules and triggers you set up on the back end. 

Most inbound-specific options listed here offer both in some form or another, but we highly recommend talking to a sales rep to ensure the software does everything you need it to. 

You should also carefully consider other features you may need, like:

• Call-back services in case you get disconnected
• Chatbots to help answer common questions
• Self-service tools to decrease the number of unnecessary calls
• Voicemail for when no one is able to answer
• Collaboration tools so agents can work together
• Automation workflows to eliminate repetitive tasks

Our top inbound-specific recommendations are Five9, RingCentral’s Basic or Advanced plan, Twilio Flex, Avaya, or Dixa.

Need Both Inbound and Outbound Capabilities?

Whether your business is growing or you’re looking to consolidate your contact center tech stack, there are several options on our list that support both use cases. 

Our top recommendations for this are Five9 and RingCentral’s Ultimate plan.

CRM Integrations

Integrating your call center software with your CRM platform massively extends the capabilities of both tools. The best integrations let your team make and receive phone calls directly from your CRM rather than switching between various tools countless times a day. 

But the benefits of connecting these two systems go way beyond that, including:

• Centralized contact data and historic communication logs
• Automatic inbound call notifications with contact information
• Autodialing the right contacts at the right time
• Streamlining communication channels into one place
• Allowing agents to use a familiar interface
• Intelligent inbound call routing
• Automatic interaction logging

With that said, not all call center tools integrate with CRM software at the same level. Some may automatically transfer data from one to the other but agents won’t be able to make calls directly from your CRM. 

On top of that, some call center solutions only integrate with specific CRMs. 

Five9, for example, has a built-in integration with Salesforce. However, you’ll need an IT professional or tech support to build out custom integrations via APIs and SDKs for other CRM platforms. 

So, it’s crucial to choose software that plays well with your CRM, but you also need to understand how they work together before making your final decision. 

Number of Users and Call Volume

There are two major pricing structures available—per-minute or per-user. The right one for your team depends on the number of calls you deal with every day. 

For lower volume call centers, per-minute pricing is the more economical choice. 

For higher volumes, per-user pricing with unlimited minutes included makes more sense. If you’re not sure which option to go with, we recommend estimating your monthly costs. Alternatively, you can speak with a sales representative for a more accurate quote. 

Most of the options on this list offer both pricing models. However, Twilio Flex only offers usage-based pricing. 

Some providers also have minimum user and usage requirements. 

Dixa, for example, requires a minimum of eight agents, so it’s not a viable solution if you only have one or two agents. Instead, you should choose software that accommodates your business size today and in the future.  

Implementation and Onboarding

Implementing new software is usually not an easy process, especially if you have a large team or seasoned employees who aren’t as tech-savvy as others. 

This is particularly true for cloud-based phone systems since they may not feel as natural. 

Going from traditional phones to using a computer can cause quite the disruption without the right guidance and proper onboarding on a personalized level. 

To make matters worse, administrators, supervisors, or your IT department have to set up new reports, develop workflows, and configure the software to match your needs before you can start using it across your business. 

So, it’s crucial to choose call center software with robust training materials and onboarding support while you’re getting everything up and running. 

You should carefully look through the provider’s website to see what types of training they offer and if it’s included with your subscription. 

Another thing to consider is reaching out to their customer support team through various support channels to ask questions about implementation and gauge their responsiveness before you invest. 

While initial implementation and onboarding are massive steps, onboarding new hires is equally important when you add someone new to your team. 

Are you responsible for doing it on your own, or will a support rep be available to help you out? Some software providers offer onboarding support as long as you’re a paying customer, so you can rely on them to help with new employees. 

However, not every provider offers this, so it’s an important consideration. 

Ongoing Support

After your initial implementation, what level of support will you get? What happens when you can’t figure something out or the system goes down? Furthermore, will you get guidance for new features or more advanced capabilities as you need them?

As your business grows and you add more agents, you’ll need training materials and ongoing support to ensure you continue getting the most out of your new software. 

Five9, for example, repeatedly goes above and beyond for their customers. Aside from an incredibly robust online support center packed full of manuals, videos, and tutorials, they also deliver custom services at no extra cost to all of their customers. 

Some providers even offer a dedicated account manager to assist you whenever you need help with anything. However, not all providers do this. 

From creating custom reports and real-time troubleshooting, ongoing support should play a crucial role in your final decision. 

Despite that, you may have trouble finding anything about this without doing some digging.

It may help to reach out and ask specific questions about ongoing support and how well you’ll be taken care of in the future. From there, you can see how long it takes to get help and get a feel for what you can expect in the future. 

Alternatively, you can also look at customer reviews and ask existing customers about their experiences if you know anyone currently using the software. 

Summary

What’s the best call center software? Nextiva is our top pick.

But we encourage you to use the methodology and recommendations in this guide to find the best call center solution for your business. For teams both large and small, our list contains something for everyone.