From email forms to chatbots and live chat, modern contact centers offer a wide range of digital channels where customers can contact businesses. However, traditional call centers with legacy premise systems are expensive and time-consuming to run, and their data is harder to track.

Fortunately, with the right software in your toolbelt, you can dispense with clunky hardware and become part of the digital revolution seamlessly, providing a great customer experience at an affordable price while freeing up your service team to work where they’re most needed.

Read our buyers’ guide to swapping your expensive and limited physical call center for an advanced, data-driven contact center.

Contact center software is comprised of an advanced suite of tools designed to support a contact center at every level, from the workforce manager to the agents operating the phones. Its purpose is to streamline customer support so that callers hang up satisfied, allowing your organization to reap the benefits.Contact center solutions go beyond phone calls, integrating omnichannel support across multiple communication channels onto a single platform.

You will often see the two terms used interchangeably. However, historically a call center is a system that communicates via phone calls only. In contrast, a contact center refers to a system that deals with multichannel communications such as email, SMS messaging, social media, and live chat.

Small businesses receive fewer customer interactions and may benefit from a single-channel approach. Therefore a cloud-based call center will be ideal for their needs.

A larger organization that deal with a higher volume of interactions from multiple communication platforms will benefit more from an omnichannel cloud-based contact center.

A cloud-based platform

Of all software categories, a cloud contact center solution will fit around your business model best, removing the need for on-site space and complex hardware and allowing your team to provide advice and support as long as they’re connected to a stable internet connection.

Increased productivity

When an automated system takes time-consuming tasks off employees’ hands, they are free to complete other tasks that require more judgment and skill. Your software system will take care of logging and analyzing data from incoming calls and other queries, allowing your agents to invest their time in actions that add value, such as providing personalized support to concerned customers.

Reduced cost

Until recently, the cost of a call center has been prohibitive for smaller businesses. The need to hire multiple agents,, set up hardware devices, and store data on a physical server all add up to a crippling cost.

With a cloud contact center software, all the expensive infrastructure will be handled by your provider, so you won’t have to spend a dime installing and maintaining the equipment.

Better customer experiences

Through automation, a contact center software can significantly reduce hold times and transfers, ensuring that customers get the answers to their queries in a fraction of the time.

You can also have your customers interact with chatbots or IVR to solve simple questions, allowing them to quickly resolve issues without the need for live support. Your live agents will instead be focused on more complex issues, allowing them to provide higher levels of service.

Before choosing a contact center software solution, it’s important to assess the needs of your business. Are you running outbound or inbound campaigns? Do you have a remote or on-premise workforce?

Contact center software providers offer different tools and features, so you need to choose a solution that aligns with your business needs.

Let’s look at some key considerations below.

Outbound and inbound contact centers

An outbound call center or contact center is used to reach out to customers. As such, it should prioritize features like auto dialers and predictive dialing tools. On the other hand, inbound call centers focus receiving incoming customer queries so it is important to prioritize call routing and distribution systems.

See the table below for a comparison between outbound and inbound calls and what tools you need to optimize your contact center.

On-premise and remote contact centers

Likewise, the type of features you’ll be looking for in your software will vary between an on-premise contact center, an entirely remote operation, or something in between.

See the table below for a brief comparison between the three:

There are five crucial things to look for when choosing a call center or contact center phone system:

1. Reliability
2. Security
3. Scalability
4. Integrations
5. Pricing plans

Let’s look at each of these in more detail below:

Reliability

Consistency is key to your customers. Choose a “software as a service” (SaaS) provider that can boast a 99.999% uptime across its cloud platform, and inquire about downtime compensation and recovery protocols. This will keep business flowing smoothly and reduce the chance of the line going dead on an already frustrated customer.

Security

When handling inbound, outbound and blended calls, your contact center is likely to deal with a lot of sensitive customer data. From names and addresses to payment information, it’s essential to reassure your customers that their data is secure. If you work in the healthcare, financial, or legal industries, customer information security must be a particular priority.

Ask providers about their security protocols, compliance, and security standards before signing a service agreement.

Scalability

A startup might rely on a customer service team of two or three experts, but as the company grows, the team will need to scale with it. Make sure your software provider allows you to add extra agent accounts easily and inquire about package upgrade options for your changing business needs.

Integrations

Computer telephony integration is key, as your software must work well alongside the other tools you use. These apps will need to share data in real-time to create an optimized customer journey.

Ask providers how their software integrates with customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, the Microsoft Office Suite, and your team collaboration apps so staff can access the tools they need wherever they are.

For example, the 8x8 Work for Zendesk integration allows agents to use Zendesk’s customer support and sales software alongside 8x8’s cloud-based business communications platform seamlessly.

Pricing Plans

A good call center software solution is a worthy investment, but make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

Make sure you confirm what’s included in each pricing band and crunch the numbers before settling on a solution. A package that allows unlimited voice and video calling is likely to pay for itself over time, allowing agents to provide longer and better-quality interactions. Be very carefull of hidden charges, particularly on the subject of phone call fees if there are any.

Omnichannel

Customers may prefer to reach out via social media, live chat, email, mobile apps, or phone calls. Some queries may even be passed across multiple channels before they’re resolved. For example, a customer who complains on Twitter may be given the number for the relevant help desk. Omnichannel routing can make it easy for you to manage interactions across various communications channels.

A successful omnichannel approach allows you to manage information from across your channels in one place, showing you a full history of each query and allowing you to personalize interactions accordingly. Customers will feel heard, and agents will have faster access to crucial information.

Call routing

Customer satisfaction goes down when callers are passed around between multiple departments - especially if nobody has the right answer. Automatic call distribution (ACD) and intelligent routing get customers closer to the expert advice they need by recognizing phone numbers or triaging queries with a few automated questions.

Based on these factors, callers can be transferred automatically to specific and high-tier support. This skills-based routing frees up the ground-level agents to quickly resolve simpler queries, creating a streamlined flow.

CRM integration

CRM software is the backbone of most support teams, helping companies build customer relationships and improve sales, customer service, and profitability. Smooth integration of your existing CRM system via APIs is a must-have feature of any contact or call center solution, allowing for the automatic transfer of data between the two.

From here, you can keep an eye on tickets in real-time, maintain detailed case files on regular callers with specific needs, and ensure remote teams are all on the same page when customers call.

Automation

Artificial intelligence is fast becoming the new standard for contact centers. This can streamline agent workflows by automating basic administrative tasks, freeing up your team to focus on their customer-facing roles.

8x8’s Contact Center takes this a step further, employing complex algorithms to forecast the volume of interactions, allowing staff to plan their tasks ahead of time and reducing idle time.

Call scripting

Call scripting goes a step further by using sophisticated AI to generate scripts with correct responses. A speech analytics software picks up on particular keywords and provides pre-recorded or automatically generated instructions.

If an appropriate response isn’t available, callers can then be added to the queue for the next available agent. This cuts time spent queuing, ensuring that callers who have simple questions are dealt with quickly rather than being kept on hold, and callers with more complex issues can reach the reassurance they need faster.

Another advantage is the business intelligence generated from the machine learning process - by reviewing script history, your team can continue to tweak the responses to personalize responses to the customers’ needs more effectively, offering a consistent experience across human and automated calls.

IVR

Interactive voice response (IVR) is the automated response that callers are first greeted with when they call your helpline.

For example, the message could give an estimated wait time and redirect callers to alternative channels such as a self-service help page on the website. This can reduce wait time and increase customer satisfaction.

They can also help customers get to the right agent via an automated prompt menu. By asking a series of yes or no questions or employing voice recognition technology, the system can narrow down the right department and extension with which to connect the caller. It can even arrange a callback from an appropriate agent.

Reporting and analytics

One of the most crucial aspects of cloud contact center software is its ability to record and analyze key metrics, storing and sifting through complex data to create reports which are easy to read and to understand.

These reports can help your team optimize their processes continually, anticipate trends, and push toward greater productivity and customer satisfaction.

Key metrics that contact and call center systems report on include:

• Average call length
• Average call abandonment rate
• Average time in call queue
• Average handle time
• Average call resolution rate
• Agent idle time
• Agent utilization rate
• Average after-call work time
• Most common queries
• Customer satisfaction levels

Call recording

Speaking of rich data, you may choose to record calls to provide a consistently excellent service. Keeping call records mean you can review cases in which KPIs weren’t met and check the details of these interactions.

This can help you perform quality management checks and create effective training programs for new recruits. Note that if you use this feature, you’ll need to offer a disclaimer to callers, ensuring they consent to their call being recorded.

Workforce management tools

Quality control is key to customer experience and will help you build a reputation for excellent customer service. Your call center team will benefit from a bevy of workforce optimization tools that come with call center software packages.

Using advanced calling analytics, managers can track agent performance in real-time via an easy-to-follow dashboard that raises alerts if any issues arrive. They can combine data from call recording with automated customer surveys to gain a boots-on-the-ground sense of what’s working and what needs optimizing.

Combine this with team messaging and call monitoring to promote transparency within the team. Call barging lets supervisors listen in on calls, and allows them to provide on-the-spot reminders and training, keeping interactions uniform across the team.

What is the best software for your call center or contact center?

There’s no doubt that cloud-based contact and call center software is the future for customer interactions. The only question is, which software package is right for you? It’s crucial to choose a product that fits all your needs.

Ask yourself what key features you most need. This depends on whether your calls will be mostly incoming or outgoing, how big your team is, what your customer service software budget is, and what your most common customer interactions involve.

8x8’s Contact Center allows you to customize your contact center experience to your business needs, designing a superior customer experience via a single platform. It can be integrated as part of a complete communication suite, which includes social media, chat, email, and SMS.

There’s no doubt that cloud-based contact and call center software is the future for customer interactions. The only question is, which software package is right for you? It’s crucial to choose a product that fits all your needs.

Ask yourself what key features you most need. This depends on whether your calls will be mostly incoming or outgoing, how big your team is, what your customer service software budget is, and what your most common customer interactions involve.

8x8’s Contact Center allows you to customize your contact center experience to your business needs, designing a superior customer experience via a single platform. It can be integrated as part of a complete communication suite, which includes social media, chat, email, and SMS.

How much does call center software or contact center software cost?

The cost of call center technology depends on the size of your customer support team. While some packages are priced per minute, 8x8’s Call Center offers unlimited video and VoIP voice calls per user per month.

It may be more helpful to consider the comparative cost between a cloud-based contact center and an on-premise support team. The latter would call for up-front fees, including data centers, servers, a business phone system, and office furniture on top of the office space itself. Add in ongoing maintenance and personnel costs, and the investment adds up.

Comparatively, a cloud contact center platform only requires a single subscription fee and a few equipment. 8x8 offers a range of pricing plans covering all manner of business sizes and types, ensuring an appropriate cost-saving model for your needs.

How do I install my contact center software?

Your contact center as a service (CCAAS) provider will help you with the installation process, offering instructions and support throughout the process. By using the correct technical support, you can start off on the right foot and avoid any issues with contact center platforms later down the line.

The cloud is key for unified communications going forward. With a range of options available, each with its own functionalities, you must understand your business needs and find a package that meets them head-on.

With the ever-increasing trend for remote and hybrid work, contact and call center software is a forward-thinking investment, allowing your team to employ global talent while saving money on on-site space.

Elevate your customer engagement strategy with data-driven results, providing a better service for customers and boosting productivity and workforce engagement. With a combination of intelligent automation, flexible integrations, and workforce performance management tools, you’ll gain and maintain a reputation for customer service that goes above and beyond.

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