Call Center Software is a solution that help businesses to handle several communication channels like phone, email, live chat, instant messaging, SMS text, and social media simultaneously. The software can be used as an important part of a customer support solution or a help desk software with a ticketing feature which would help agents reply to customer enquiries and address issues. Call center software come in numerous forms and functions such as auto diallers, call center monitors, call accounting solutions, call analytics, predictive dialler, computer telephony integration (CTI), interactive voice response (IVR), and automatic call distributor (ACD). Furthermore, it is significant for the buyers to understand the exclusive features each one offers before investing in a particular software.

Market Overview

Call Center Software is a telephony system that is used by enterprises/customers to communicate with each other. Call center software empowers organizations to build and enhance relationship with their customers and prospects by providing effective communication across various channels, such as voice, video, web, chat, mobile applications, and social media. Call center software helps organizations increase their overall productivity by optimizing inbound and outbound operations. Furthermore, it enables organizations with various capabilities, including call monitoring, analysis, and reporting from a centralized platform.

Advancements in mobile, social media, and internet technology have brought the global marketplace just a click away from customers, which has led to an increase in customer churn. Moreover, the launch of mobile app stores in 2008 has further intensified competition with new age digital start-ups making their impact through disruptive innovation. Evolution of the call center technology has changed the way enterprises deal with potential customers. The rapid advancement in technology and growing competition among enterprises across the globe have led organizations to focus on increasing overall customer lifetime value by providing enhanced customer service. Intelligent communication that offers a ubiquitous working environment to interact with customers has become the basic requirement for customer-centric enterprises.

Drivers

Growth in Omnichannel communication

Customers communicate and collaborate with organizations via a number of channels, such as email, text, voice, mobile, or social media. Omnichannel call center solutions enable organizations to offer a personal touch to customer interactions, while offering their support and services. Enterprises need a solution that offers centralized control of service delivery over all the different channels; thereby, enterprises have started using omnichannel platforms that integrate all channels and offer a consistent customer experience.

Dynamic customer requirements

A growing number of organizations around the world have started shifting their focus toward providing a holistic experience to customers. In today’s highly competitive market, customer needs are ever changing. Customer experience is one of the important factors that affect customer retention. Every organization has a call center to deal with customer issues. A well-maintained call center can help organizations in gaining new customers and retaining the existing ones. Customers interact directly with call centers, which play a vital role in creating the brand image. A negative experience can lead to loss of customers or clients. Hence, the growing need to cater to dynamic customer needs and provide a positive customer experience is driving the adoption of call center systems among organizations.

Opportunities

Growth in social media usage

The last few years have seen exponential growth in internet and mobile device usage. This has led to significant rise in the number of customers using social media. Social media has a larger outreach than any other channel. Therefore, customers prefer voicing out their views and grievances about the services they are being offered over social media, as compared to other channels such as email or voice. Quick response over social media by enterprises to customer grievances has a positive impact on brand image and customer experience. Enterprises have realized that social media is a very important customer support tool and have started integrating it into their daily operations.

Rise in AI and analytics

Adoption of artificial intelligence and analytics in the call center market has opened new realms of opportunities for the vendors to provide seamless customer experience. By making proper use of these technologies, enterprises have access to information and insights that can drive business decisions. Artificial intelligence is being used to develop bots and automated messaging, and this has had a positive impact on the operational efficiency of call centers. Analytics provides both customer and employee insights to enterprises and they can use this information to address issues related to customer experience or employee performance. Call centers have realized the benefits and potential of adopting these technologies and have started implementing them into their systems.

The competitive leadership mapping showcased provides information for Call Center Software. Vendor evaluations are based on two broad categories: product offering and business strategy. Each category carries various criteria, based on which vendors have been evaluated. The evaluation criteria considered under product offerings include the breadth of offering, delivery (based on industries that the vendors cater to, deployment models, and subscriptions), features/functionality, delivery, product quality and reliability, and product differentiation. The evaluation criteria considered under business strategy include geographic footprint (on the basis of geographic presence), channel strategy and fit, vision alignment, and effectiveness of growth (on the basis of innovations, partnerships, collaborations, and acquisitions).

Calldesk, LiveVox, Anywhere365, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, Kiamo, Dialer360, Connex One, Infobip, Cloud Contact Center, and Infinity Software have been identified as Visionary Leaders in the Call Center Software market.

Diabolocom, Fondesk, CallHippo, Easymeeting and Talkie have been identified as Dynamic Differentiators in the Call Center Software market.

OXON, Zingtree, Harmony , Voxtron, Pulsar, Noojee, and Bitrix24  have been recognized as Innovators in the Call Center Software market.

ConVox, JustGoCloud, ZaiLab, CloudTalk, Contact Center Solution, i800, and Imagicle have been positioned as Emerging Leaders in the Call Center Software market.

What does a Call Center Software do?

Best call center software basically helps a business or an organization to manage a call center with the goal of outspreading support to customers for their inquiries, and to aid as a help desk for customer queries. It paves the way for customer communication with the company, letting them the means to interact and involve with the company concerning matters involving the business, products, and services. Nowadays communication via the call center system is generally two-way – customer to the business, and the business to the customer (marketing, promotions, feedback, deals, offers, etc).

To do everything mentioned above and more than that, call center solutions are built with functionalities that facilitate and ease out two-way communication. Businesses can use features for voicemails, emails, support ticket, chat, and conferencing, among others. In order to get complete information about callers, call center software provide integration competences with CRMs, helpdesks, ecommerce platforms, marketing systems, and chat systems. A comprehensive call center system can show the caller’s earlier purchase history, voicemails, notes, cases, phone calls with the business, chat records, support tickets, and others. All the functionalities help agents to provide better service, rationalize workflows, and get rid of incoming redundant info into multiple systems.

What are the types of Call Center Software?

On-premise call center software

With the help of its on premise call center systems, the call center solution software, hardware and related infrastructure is fixed at the office and is usually preserved by the IT staff or an external service provider. One of the benefits of on premise call center solutions is that the businesses maintain control over all the united systems and the data as they are all onsite. Therefore, on premise call center solutions can be perfect for centralized teams that need their data to be local and have a committed IT staff that can manage and update their hardware, software and infrastructure.

Hosted call center software

Hosted call center solution is basically a software that is hosted off-site and can be retrieved through a network connection that may or may not run through the internet. With hosted solutions, call centers can actually choose to have their whole call center arrangement, except for agent stations, on a hosted platform offsite. Instead, they can opt for a more hybrid method and have some of their structure on premise and some off site. One of the key benefits of hosted call center solutions is that they are frequently cheaper as compared to on premise solutions and are upheld by a service provider, thus application and upkeep are less of a hassle than on premise solutions. But, they still need an upfront investment so are frequently more expensive than their cloud-based and browser-based counterparts.

Cloud-based call center software

Cloud-based call center solutions are typically hosted online and can be retrieved through an app (which is connected on a computer or a mobile device) through the internet. With cloud based call center systems all data is kept in the cloud and can be cashed so users can access it whenever they are offline. Some of the drawbacks of using cloud-based call center solutions are that they are hosted online, so, for the teams that need their call center system to remain on-site, this would not be a perfect solution. Furthermore, executing and scaling these solutions are more unwieldly as compared to the browser-based solutions but less than the hosted and on premise solutions. Lastly, users have to update their product with each application update, which can be a time-intense and a tiresome process, particularly for larger teams.

Browser-based call center software

The most advanced, call center solution is a browser-based call center solution. Browser-based call center solutions offer the best call center software, telephony and all the related call center functionalities in the computer’s browser and can be retrieved through the internet. One of the key drawbacks of using browser-based call center solution is that the whole call center functions in the browser. Thus for the teams that need their call center infrastructure to be on-site and teams who do not have a dependable internet connection this is not a very good solution.

Browser-based call center system do have a lot of benefits. With this software, teams can access their call center system from any location where there is internet which also means that detached teams can cooperate with ease, agents can work remotely and managers can stay associated while they are away from the office.

What are the key features of a Call Center System?

ACD

With the help of a good Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) should be a top priority for any demanding inbound call center. An ACD helps teams to efficiently route callers to the most suitable agent or section based on pre-defined info. ACD’s also act as a basis for many other call center solution features and procedures such as skills-based directing, call monitoring, gaining of call metrics, etc. – making them the highest must-have call center solution feature for inbound call centers.

Multi-Level IVR

Another must-have call center solution feature is a Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR) capability. A multi-level IVR helps callers to effortlessly choose where they would like to be directed to based on a series of prompts. Call center managers can modify the greetings, menus, levels and prompts so that the callers can listen to recordings with useful information, chose to be directed to a particular agent or drop a voicemail for a department. It’s simple to see that an ideally configured multi-level IVR can be a rescuer for busy inbound call centers.

Skills-Based Routing

The ultimate tool in an incoming call center call routing tool collection has to be skills-based routing. This call center solution capability transfers callers to the most correct agent based on the caller’s IVR choices, the phone number, the caller dialled and the caller’s communication history with the company as well as the mediator’s skill set, area of proficiency and any other construct that is significant to the call center such as the languages their agents’ speak, their geographic location, etc. As such, skills-based routing is vital for busy inbound call centers that would prefer to transfer callers to the best agent based on a number of significant constructs.

Tailored Call Queues

Any administrator of a busy inbound call center knows that queues happen often. In order to enhance the customer experience, they must be ready for this and arrange their queues in view of that. At the very minimum, inbound call centers should have distinct queues for each department, a predefined bigger queue size, waiting restrictions in each queue and features like Callback from Queue and Queue to Voicemail to help decrease caller headache as much as likely. End caller prevention from waiting in long queues by enhancing their configuration.

Call Center System With a Built-in CRM

Transferring callers to the most suitable agent is only fifty percent the task of delivering top-notch service in a busy inbound call center. Once the agent accepts the call, the real task starts. In order to effectively resolve customer problems, cross-sell and up-sell, or just interact with callers, call center agents must have access to precise data about the caller. Call center software with a built-in CRM is the best tool to help agents get the job done right. With a built-in CRM and an improved Caller ID, agents can have thorough info about the caller (i.e., name, phone number, image, company and position), no matter if it is the initial time they called the firm or the 10th. If the caller has communicated with the company earlier, the agent will also see their whole call history, call recordings, voicemails and more in real-time. With complete data about the caller accessible in real-time, agents will always be aware of who is calling and can alter their approach in view of that to provide a top-notch customer experience.

Business Tools Integrations

Best call center software typically offers a built-in CRM that is great for helping agents with an overview of the customer, but call center solutions that offer business tools integrations take this to the next level. Call center solutions that integrate with Salesforce, SugarCRM, Zendesk etc. and others improve the information presented to agents so they can have an all-round view of the caller. Furthermore in order to see rich contact info and call logs, the agent will have access to earlier tickets, cases, events, notes, chat transcripts and more so they will know the caller’s whole contact past with the company. This data will help hectic inbound call center agents be more prearranged, well-organized and effective.

Dedicated Phone Numbers

For inbound call centers that employ agents who field particular call types, dedicated phone numbers is a necessity. These agents must be able to provide a straight line to their callers, so that they don’t have to direct a complex IVR system, search for their agent delay, or wait in a queue. Helping agents to pass out their committed phone number is better for VIP customers, vendors, high-value business contacts or callers who need to connect with an agent in a specific department. It will not only help to decrease caller frustration, but also increase competence and expertise.

Agent and Team Voicemail

Inbound call centers that make use of dedicated phone contacts must also organize these phone number settings optimally. This takes into account making sure that they have their private voicemail so that callers don’t get jumbled when they call that number post of business hours. Agent and team voicemails will make it easier for whole teams to keep a track of their callers – no matter what time they call.

Real-Time Metrics

Real-time metrics are necessary for inbound call centers. A live agent dashboard usually offers data like service level, regular wait time, longest wait time, normal handle time, number of existing agents and much more so that representatives can make more educated decisions with the company’s best interest in mind. Managers should be able to access this data so they can make tactical in-the-moment choices to help enhance call center competence and the customer’s experience.

Historical Reporting

Lastly, managers must have access to complete historical metrics so they can make more informed decisions that will have a quantifiable influence on the call center as a whole. In order to be most operative, managers must have the capability to precisely assess the performance of each agent, subdivision, phone number, campaign, team and the whole company based on past data. Armed with this info, they will be more operative managers and leaders – and will be proficient of helping their call center excel.

What are the benefits of using a Call Center Software?

Lower costs

On premise call center solutions will need users to come up with totally capable constituents, hardware, and applications which, obviously, translates to an investment that may take some more time to recoup. Though, the more prevalent and economical SaaS and hosted solutions can provide users a call center system without the concern of setting up, hardware, upgrades, and upkeep while keeping the system protected and up all the time. The certainly associates to lower cost.

Small remote teams

Unless the user runs a bigger BPO operation, having small devoted teams would do most of the customer support necessities. Adding to the expense savings is having remote agents for the virtual call centers. They can be at any geographical place and as long as they have internet linked devices, they form part of the team.

Enhanced security

Best call center software, particularly cloud or hosted platforms, offer security capabilities that help keep the user’s call center operation protected and running all the time. It is thus vital that the businesses get a dependable provider that has strong security procedures, compliance, and upkeep of the system.

Operational flexibility

Best call center software is an all-in-one solution that is capable of doing more than just managing calls and info. They are simple to use even if the agents are new and are built to adapt to manifold types of operations concurrently. The software can be combined with the existing apps for CRM, CEM, e-commerce, marketing solutions, and others, giving the users a powerful platform. It is also extremely configurable to meet all types of administrative needs.

Productivity booster

Best call center software is equipped with instinctive and automated capabilities such as auto-diallers, monitoring tools, time routing, ordering, and call route matrices. Each call center system works on KPIs in order to measure the efficiency of each agent, and to disclose real-time response on how the customer support is essentially doing.

Improved customer relationships

Enhancing customer relations starts with providing the best customer support. A recent survey found that more than 70% of businesses claim that they deliver excellent customer service but only 7% of customers think likewise. Best call center software provides businesses with the means to provide the best, dependable and prompt customer service.

Better Data Access

Best call center software provide agents with better access to a client’s data. Call center systems organize clients’ data centrally, having data about everything ranging from private data to the clients’ buying and service records. This helps agents to communicate with clients in a more appropriate, complete and tailored manner.

Multi-channel Support

Today, companies need to provide customers with a faultless cross-channel experience as and when they need assistance. With the arrival of latest channels, customer these days anticipates to alter channels as per their choice and suitability. Call center solution helps users meet this goal by offering support across numerous levels so that your call center administrators can deliver unified help to the customers, irrespective of how the clients contact their customer support center. An effective call center system helps businesses to connect with their clients through SMS, email, chat, voice calls, video, messaging apps, as well as social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. The software also helps users to switch between the channels in the development of an interaction, thus, helping the clients to choose the channel that is more suitable to them. Multi-channel support goes a long way in decreasing customers’ frustrations, besides allowing businesses to offer improved customer service.

Hierarchy and Routing

Various teams escalate or forward calls basis to their individual company hierarchy. Best call center software always allows management to host conference calls, handle leads, and transfer callers to the right team with slight to no trouble. When combined with a high qauality CRM tool, employees can set default values for customers and interpret sales leads to make sure that everybody in the team has current and precise information.

How does a Call Center Software function?

The functioning of call center system generally determines the level of superiority of the support service and help businesses provide to their customers. Best call center software is first and foremost a solution that is used by businesses to manage the incoming calls and communication associated to product support or informational enquiries. Similarly, it is also used to make outbound calls to specific group for product marketing and sales. Call center system normally eases the following steps:

• The system classifies the customer by checking the exclusive record in the database (DB), and if the caller is not present in the records then the software typically adds the new caller’s entry for future reference
• If the caller’s entry is available in the database, the records are retrieved and presented to the agent when they get a call, preparing the agent with adequate info about the customer including the problem history prior to handling the call
• When the caller offered a response to the automated IVR or by spoken acknowledgment, the call is correctly queued basis to the mapping in the database
• As the call is transferred to the line, all agents that are aligned to that queue can receive the call physically or take it as an automatic assignment according to a scheduling system
• Upon receiving the call, the agent can help the customer by providing guidelines over the call or via email, having administrators or senior agents in on the call for supervision and faster resolve, or even by gaining remote access to the caller’s system
• If the problem is not addresses at that time, the system helps the agents to keep of the communications with the client, and can do consistent follow-up to keep a track on the status and development
• Based on the customer’s reply, an agent can specify the standing of the ticket as open, closed, resolved, or needs follow-up
• When the status of the ticket is marked as “closed”, an automatic survey call or email is delivered to the customer for response, the consequences of which can be used by the company for its marketing strategies or other objectives

What is the difference between a hosted and a local Call Center solution?

There are two ways of setting up a call center solution. Businesses can choose to have an in-house setup, where they can run the software in their own data center. Also, the software provider can run the software for the businesses in their data center and link to their representatives through a broadband Internet connection. This remote delivery is known as an on-demand, application service provider (ASP), or hosted call center solution. Hosted call center solutions have been making consistent technological progresses in recent years, and so the ASP model has become very prevalent for several enterprise applications.

Local solutions

Most business software used nowadays is locally hosted where the application runs on a server in the office that the IT staff manages. This conversant setup, sometimes referred to as a client-server solution, provides users with the greatest control over each facet of the system. Having this total control can be a disadvantage, though. It needs a substantial investment in servers and staff – the users will need quite a bit of IT know-how to maintain and update the system. If they pick this route, they will have to pay a huge lump sum up front in order to buy and set up the system, with software and servers, and typically a small annual charge for access to upgrades and customer support.

Hosted solutions

In hosted call center solutions, the application exists on the ASP vendors’ servers and most of the processing is done there. Calls are transferred over the Internet to the agents’ desktops with the help of VoIP. The main benefit of hosted call center solutions is how simple it is to get started. With a hosted service users can get entry to enterprise-level capabilities even if the businesses have just a few agents. Businesses can add representatives any time with only a phone call, and as an alternative to a huge capital investment, the business will pay a much more manageable monthly bill. Furthermore, hosted software providers offer very dynamic systems.

Numerous layers of firewalls and security, non-stop power supplies, fail-over, and dependable backups are all standard operating processes. Collected they virtually promise that their call center will always be up and running – without taxing their internal IT workforce.

How to properly evaluate a Call Center solution providers prior to selecting one?

In addition to cautiously associating features and prices, users should take further care to assess possible call center providers on their complete business, not just their product. Call centers are justly similar across industries, so most call center system providers don’t focus in one particular type of call center. It is important for users to look for a software vendor that has plenty of experience dealing with customers of their size: to get the best service, users will never want to be the minimum or largest customer in the vendor’s portfolio.

They should look for a provider that is steady and successful. It is important to ask how long they’ve been in the business, what are their long term strategies, and how they will endure to update the purchase. Good training helps the reps get the most out of the call center system right away, so businesses should ask what training options are accessible. Having a trainer come to the call center is better, off-site classes are decent but can be troublesome, and pre-recorded demos or online courses are simple to access but less effective.

Integration of the call center system with the existing hardware and software is vital. Most call center system providers will rapidly assure that they can integrate with the businesses’ current systems, and that’s commonly true, but the amount of effort can vary. Businesses ask these types of questions:

• Generally, how glad are you with your call center solution?
• How long did the vendor tell it would take to implement the system? How long did it really take?
• Did the vendor deliver sufficient training?
• Does the software do the whole thing that they mentioned it would do?
• How receptive is the vendor when you have issues?
• How much interruption have you come across in the last year?
• If you were starting again, would you choose the same vendor again?
• What do you like the least about this call center system?

If the business is dealing with a reseller or value-added reseller, it has to make sure that it assesses the software companies they are suggesting for the system. Businesses normally want to pick a solution that will be constantly updated and enhanced, which is why they should look for companies that have revealed a commitment to their call center product.

Call Center Trends to Watch Out in 2021

Cloud-based call center service to lessen the expenditures

Having a call center office to operate businesses can be costly as compared to other cost-saving choices such as the Cloud platform with progressive project administration suites. When the business is developed on a remote platform, they will have the nimbleness and flexibility to cater to a bigger audience pool without assigning a chunk of their marketing budget on IT and infrastructure.

Omni channel approach for higher client retention

The Omni channel communication is perfect for clients who don't choose brands that operate with a silo approach. It keeps the communication reliable and combined across touchpoints and channels for effective follow-up. Thus, their reps can retrieve the client's data from their earlier interactions instead of compelling them to repeat their anxieties over and over again.

AI powered interactive voice response

Over the last few years, interactive voice response (IVR) has been the most used technology amongst call centers and it will continue to make advances in the cumin future, driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Intelligent IVR is one of the main call center technology trends for 2021. It can understand pronunciations and tones with more correctness as compared to the traditional speech recognition software. Clients who are unwilling to wait longer in the queue are showing a preference towards AI-powered IVR solutions that allocates the caller to worried agents or departments on a case-by-case basis.

Advanced self-assist tools to free agents

Self-assist solutions have proven their worth in managing most primary concerns where agent support live is not obsessive. Consumer surveys have proven customer's strong tendency towards self-service tools over agent support. The self-service tools comprise FAQs and lessons that educate customers to troubleshoot general problems on their own. Self-assist alternatives have gathered support from consumers because it quickly resolves most anxieties before a live agent gets involved.

In 2021, self-assist solutions will see a rise in its acceptance since most businesses believe it will free up their agents to emphasis on more resource-intensive tasks. Smart companies of tomorrow are already creating a user-friendly resource library that comprises a virtual agent and now is their chance to do the same.

Analytics-driven business to improve services

Analytics is the most enabling part of any data-driven company and it will continue to be a core part of business strategy in 2021. Analytics can allow companies to make more informed decisions and grow in the correct direction. To understand the epicentre of an issue, it is vital to inspect the agent performance.

In doing so, it can disclose what the customers desire and how they can provide improved service levels, but then why should the businesses guess when their clients can be asked what they require and how they can do better? Follow-up with the customers through email or phone call to gauge their fulfilment with service levels. A quality assurance system will assess numerous criteria such as resolution time, number of calls, etc. Businesses can use these insights to comprehend whether their clients prefer self-service or live agent support.

Implement call recall to increase annual savings

With the huge growth happening in technology, it's likely to filter undesirable or mistaken communications without ignoring the service levels. In 2021, more call centers will leverage high-end message filtering technology that will keep a tab on error messages without impacting the customer service experience or communication flow. Message errors and misrepresentation (if any) can be resolved without continuing losses, time and cost wise.