There are few things more fundamental to your performance than the call service center software you use.
The very best options will:
- Enable you to create better customer experiences
- Improve the efficiency of your customer service
Better customer experiences mean you’ll have happier customers who spend more and are more likely to recommend your service to their friends.
More efficient services mean you’ll serve more customers with the same resources – or the same customers at lower cost.
But which tools should you choose? In this article, we’ll look at several top customer service center options including cloud Helpdesk software, CRMs and platforms for specialized use cases like telephony and business messaging.
In this article:
- babelforce: Enterprise-level telephony
- Zendesk: Ticketing and helpdesk
- Freshdesk: Omnichannel service and ticketing
- Intercom: Business messaging and chat widgets
- Live Agent: Ticketing with powerful chat widget
- Zoho Desk: Powerful ticketing and routing
- Help Scout: Perfect for small teams
The best software for call centers: 7 great choices
#1 babelforce: Enterprise-level telephony
babelforce is an enterprise-level telephony and integration platform for contact centers. It offers everything contact centers need to handle calls, including:
- Integrated IVR with conversational AI
- Skill-based routing
- Inbound and outbound SMS
- Automated dialing
- Inbound call handling
- Outbound call handling and automation
The software stands out due to its integration and automation capabilities.
Businesses can connect virtually any tool they use to the platform – including legacy software that lacks an open API.
This allows you to share data and create processes across your entire system. And because the platform is No-Code, anyone can build the services they need by choosing relevant triggers and actions.
For example, by connecting your call center CRM to babelforce, you can match the phone number of an incoming call to a number in your CRM.
Then you can push customer profiles along with incoming calls, giving agents instant access to data about the customer’s problem.
That puts babelforce among the most useful and diverse pieces of call center software on the market.
#2 Zendesk: The best call center software for ticketing and helpdesk?
Zendesk is an extremely popular customer service ticketing platform. It takes contact from multiple platforms and organizes it into a single inbox.
You can connect channels including:
- Social media sites
- Messaging apps
- Website messaging
- Telephony platforms
- Chatbots
Once set up, agents can answer tickets from all channels within a single tool.
The software also offers skills-based routing to make managing contacts a breeze. You can even use AI-powered bots to gather context before routing the call to an agent.
Zendesk stands out due to its self-service features, which allow customers to get help without contacting your team.
You can build a searchable knowledge base that customers use to find answers to their questions. Or, you can create a community forum that lets customers get help from others in a similar situation.
#3 Freshdesk: Omnichannel service and ticket handling
Freshdesk is a customer service ticketing and Helpdesk platform used by over 50,000 businesses.
It allows you to connect all your customer service channels and then answer queries from within a single inbox.
You also get:
- Ticket routing
- Live chat
- Self-service
- Tracking and reporting
The tool has useful features that help teams and agents collaborate. Agents can invite collaborators into chats to work on issues together.
This is useful if one agent doesn’t have the skills required to solve a particular problem. And it’s a far better solution than transferring queries to another agent.
Another cool feature is the ability to link tickets.
Here’s an example of when this could be useful:
Imagine your server goes down, and you receive an influx of tickets about this issue.
Linking tickets lets you provide updates to all customers at once, without having to respond to every issue one by one.
#4 Intercom: Business messaging and chat widgets
Intercom is business messaging software. It’s essentially a chat widget you add to your website or app that makes it easy for customers to find answers.
But it’s widget customization options make it a powerful tool.
For example, you can:
- Add chatbot functionality to gather context about a customer query
- Add support articles related to the page the customer is on
- Add a knowledge base search bar to help customers find help independently
You can also use Intercom to offer personalized support. When a customer is logged in to your website while browsing, they will see information related to their account in the chat box.
This could be information about their latest order status or access to their most recent support queries.
You can use Intercom on its own. Or, you can connect it to popular ticketing platforms so agents use it alongside other pieces of call center software.
#5 Live Agent: Ticketing with powerful chat widget
LiveAgent is help desk and ticketing software with all you need to provide omnichannel support.
As you’d expect from this type of solution, you can connect all your support channels and answer queries from a universal inbox.
The LiveAgent chat widget stands out as an excellent feature. Add the widget to your website or app to allow customers to contact support while browsing your site.
You can even customize the widget to fit in with your site’s branding.
You can also set up proactive messaging whereby you automatically ask a question via the widget whenever a customer lands on your page.
You can tailor this greeting to the customer’s needs, for example, by using different languages or by creating messages relevant to the page.
Another useful feature is the ability for agents to see what the customer is typing before they hit the send button. Your agents can prepare answers in advance for the fastest possible solution making it some of the best software for call centers struggling with their contact volume.
#6 Zoho Desk: Powerful ticket routing
Zoho Desk is ticketing and Helpdesk software. You can use it to:
- Connect all channels to a single inbox
- Manage tickets
- Offer self-service features like knowledge base and community
Zoho Desk also has great features for lightening your agents’ workloads.
Self-service tools like the knowledge base and community reduce the number of tickets agents have to deal with by helping customers find answers independently.
Meanwhile, automated ticket routing ensures customers speak to the right agents. This can reduce the need to transfer customers between departments and agents, reducing handle time in the process.
Agents also get insightful context into each ticket. They can access a customer’s entire support history, which provides context about the issue they are currently facing.
#7 Help Scout: Perfect for small teams
Help Scout is call center software with all the core features you need to provide great experiences.
It focuses on small or growing businesses and aims to make it easy for teams to set up ticketing and help desk software.
The shared inbox software is central to the Help Scout experience.
It helps you answer emails, live chat, and phone queries. And it’s possible to collaborate on tasks by sending private notes to other agents.
It also has a simple automation builder that lets you choose triggers and actions.
For example, you can create a process whereby you sort messages based on the keywords they contain. Every email containing the target words or phrases are sent to an agent specializing in this area.
The knowledge base is also useful. It makes it easy for anyone on your team to create and publish help articles.
You can even embed articles within the Help Scout chat widget so customers can access relevant help when they need it.
How to choose the best call center software
These are seven of the best call center platforms in 2022. There’s value in each of them, but as you research the features you’ll find that some that suit your needs better than others.
These tools all offer free trials or demos, so you can at least get an idea of what each product is like before committing.
