Whether addressing audience needs, introducing fresh customer service channels, navigating launch-driven demand spikes, or breaking into new regions, a robust CCaaS platform keeps you ahead in a fluid marketplace.
Customer behavior is evolving, leaving little to no tolerance for friction in customer support; 60% of customer experience leaders invest in digital tools like CCaaS software to engage customers quickly, at the right time, and in the right places.
But with so many CCaaS platforms, how can you make an informed choice that can guarantee long-term ROI?
In this blog, we’ll examine the defining features of CCaaS software, the top platforms in the market, and an evaluation checklist to help you avoid costly errors during implementation.
What is contact center as a service (CCaaS) software?
Contact Center as a Service software is a cloud-based solution that centralizes customer engagement tools, from multi-channel communication to reporting and customer journey management, into a single platform.
Companies use CCaaS software to design high-intent and high-touch interactions throughout the customer lifecycle, making it a very scalable solution for companies with large, fluctuating customer volumes.
Also Read: Conquer Customer Chaos: Optimize Your Contact Center Workflow
Features to look for in a CCaaS
It’s true — businesses can engage with customers without a CCaaS platform by managing different communication channels independently. So, what’s so important about using these platforms anyway?
Centralization.
Customer engagement is more than just answering customer questions and feeding them training resources. It’s purpose-driven, allowing companies to accurately map out customer journeys and engage customers at the right time to inspire action. Customer journeys don’t look the same across industries, business models, and service types, so you must choose a CCaaS platform to help you reach your specific KPIs.
Here are the most common CCaaS features to look out for when researching vendors:
- Multi-channel support: Companies use this feature to implement and manage customer support across various communication channels, including email, phone calls, text messaging, web forms, chatbots, mobile apps, and more.
- Automatic call distribution (ACD): ACD helps teams automate call routing based on specific criteria, which means customers spend less time waiting, resources are properly allocated, and fewer mistakes slip through the cracks.
- Interactive voice response (IVR): With IVR, companies can nudge customers toward the right representatives on their team with voice prompts and keypad selections. You can also record answers to simple FAQs and use IVR to direct customers to these self-service options.
- Skill-based routing: Skill-based routing is a feature that lets companies distribute calls according to an agent’s or representative’s specific expertise so callers don’t waste their time waiting for additional expert opinions or having to be reconnected with another agent.
- Call queue management: This feature helps companies monitor call queues and track metrics like the number of callers on the line, average waiting times, and call abandonment rates.
- Call recording: Call recordings help customer support teams document customer communication for reasons such as training support agents, helping businesses ensure the quality of support, verifying customer requests, and as records to prove regulatory compliance.
- Real-time reporting and analytics: Companies use CCaaS software to track average handle time, agent occupancy rates, chat durations, and customer satisfaction scores.
- CRM integration: Robust integrations with CRMs help companies streamline data on customer interactions with existing account records and history to build complete customer profiles.
- Predictive dialing: This feature uses an algorithm to dial up multiple contacts, monitor call progress and the availability of support representatives, and use these metrics to auto-populate the next call in the queue at the right time.
- Workforce management (WFM): Workforce management features help businesses view available support resources and manage team bandwidth and schedules appropriately.
- Chatbots and AI assistance: AI-powered assistance, such as chatbots and automated workflows, helps resolve administrative support tickets and call center management tasks, gathers customer pre-call information, and delivers 24/7 self-service resources.
- Cloud security and compliance: CCaaS platforms provide cloud security features to help companies comply with compliance standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. These include data encryption and retention tools, compliance reporting, and training resources.
- APIs and customization: APIs and integration customization features give teams the flexibility to build an integrated customer support experience revolving around a single CCaaS platform.
- Omni-channel customer journey analytics: Companies want CCaaS platforms that provide end-to-end visibility across the customer journey to flag issues, report metrics, and quickly implement changes.
- Unified agent desktop: This feature is a centralized portal for support agents to access customer information, interaction history, and the resources they need to resolve tickets and incidents.
Also Read: 8 Top Contact Center Metrics You Need to Track for Exceptional CX
So many platforms are out there combining traditional call center features with unique capabilities influenced by different areas of the customer experience. We made it easy for you by cutting through the noise and creating a list of the top platforms:
Talkdesk
The Talkdesk platform is designed to support enterprise customer engagement, leveraging AI to enhance features with customer personalization and automated workflows. Talkdesk’s CX Cloud gives businesses access to AI applications that they can plug and play into their customer journey for different use cases. These apps can accelerate agent assistance, simplify knowledge sharing, manage remote call centers and workforces, and authenticate customers with voice biometrics.
This cloud-based platform is easy to implement, with many users saying there is little to no learning curve to get started. You can use the platform conveniently as you scale your organization because it doesn’t require any on-premise infrastructure or complex maintenance.
Core Features:
- Multi-channel customer communication channels
- Workforce management
- Self-service resources
- Internal collaboration tools
- Reporting and analytics
- CRM integrations
Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center
Five9 is used by companies of all sizes, giving teams capabilities that strengthen the agent experience. With a centralized agent desktop and collaboration tools that streamline communication across your organization, you can use Five9 to support your agents with features like skill-based routing, speech-based self-service options, and easy-to-access support resources.
Five9 helps businesses automate calls and digital communication at scale. The platform has a range of conversational AI solutions that help agents leverage automation to assist them live on calls, free up bandwidth using virtual agents, and collect real-time data for customer journey mapping.
Core Features:
- Digital communication channels
- Workforce management and optimization
- Self-service customer support tools
- Agent portal
- Virtual agents
- CRM integration
NICE CXone
Nice CXone is a robust customer experience platform with features covering everything from customer self-service to customer experience analytics, robotic process automation, customer journeys, and workforce engagement. The platform focuses on helping customers elevate the quality of customer experience interactions. Their capabilities include helping companies design personalized customer engagement, optimize agent productivity, and leverage conversational AI to power self-service options for customers.
Its call center software gives agents access to advanced routing features. Teams can easily tie in call distribution, ticket prioritization, in-app messaging, and predictive outbound dialing to your reporting efforts. You can also use customer feedback tools to iterate on customer journeys consistently.
Core Features:
- Digital self-service channels
- Automatic call distribution
- Predictive dialer
- Workforce management
- Call and screen recording
- CRM integrations
Also Read: Demystifying Contact Center Metrics: A Guide to Boosting Customer Satisfaction
Genesys Cloud CX
Genesys Cloud CX calls itself an Experience as a Service platform that merges traditional inbound and outbound campaigns with AI-powered personalization and resource management. The flexible platform has native components that can create a cohesive solution. This gives businesses the agility to design their own unique customer experience by combining pre-built customer contact center solutions with additional features from third-party integrations.
Businesses of all sizes benefit from using this platform as a one-stop-shop for all contact center needs. Its architecture makes it easy to scale up or down with business needs. With tools for reporting, customer self-service, and voice services also included, teams can easily toggle features on and off to deliver the most impact.
Core Features:
- Inbound and outbound outreach tools
- Phone and online communication channels
- Automatic call distribution
- Agent portal
- Workforce management
- CRM integrations
Amazon Connect
Amazon Connect is a popular cloud-based CCaaS software powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Founded to help retail companies scale customer support and personalized engagement, the platform has features tailored toward customer profile-building and accelerated issue resolution. Its omnichannel experience helps small and large companies focus on supporting calls worldwide and online chat.
The platform is known for its flexibility in handling large volumes of customer interactions across voice calls and chat. Intelligent features like skills-based call routing, natural language chatbots, and proactive outreach messages powered by Machine Learning help agents quickly design their ideal customer experience.
You can build a contact center that works for your specific use case in minutes and leverage its pay-as-you-go pricing to optimize services as your company grows.
Core Features:
- Agent workspace
- Case management
- Reporting and analytics
- Customer profiles
- Outbound campaigns
- Authentication and fraud detectors
8×8 Contact Center
8×8 Contact Center’s customer engagement platform is a unified solution that gives companies omnichannel communication for customer-facing and internal communication. It has many of the popular functionalities of call centers, communication routing, analytics, a centralized desktop workspace for agents, and tools for both workforce management and supervisor monitoring,
The platform is easy to set up and allows customers to customize capabilities with integration. 8×8 Contact Center has communication APIs that help teams build on top of the core platform with apps for text messaging, voice, chat, and video interactions. With its customer engagement analytics and post-call surveys, you can also iterate quickly on customer journeys.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- Routing
- Agent portal
- Reporting and analytics
- Supervisor portal
- Workforce management
- API and native integrations
CloudTalk
CloudTalk is a comprehensive platform for businesses that want to efficiently manage voice calls. The platform has an extensive list of voice support and enhancement features. Teams can create customized call queues, filter communications with personalized numbers and extensions, toll-free and international numbers, and use existing phone numbers to handle support calls.
Businesses can accelerate call operations with a suite of AI-powered tools for routing and call prioritization. Use pre-defined criteria to design inbound call flows and set up preferred agents to manage specific types of calls. With call productivity features, you can empower agents with more control over their service experience with capabilities like call notes, call tagging, call transcriptions, and supply call scripts to agents for high-intent campaigns.
Core Features:
- Call routing
- Workforce productivity and automation tools
- Reporting and analytics
- Call monitoring
- Integrations
- Security and compliance
RingCentral Contact Center
RingCentral’s Contact Center platform helps companies of all sizes, from enterprises to emerging startups, to centralize the deployment and management of multi-channel communication. Teams use their customer experience platform to tie traditional call center features with tools built to quickly empower agents with resources that reduce call drop-offs and idle time. You can use the platform to identify customer needs and route them to agents based on their skills or languages. AI-powered assistance also allows teams to coach agents before calls or guide them in real-time.
Their AI-powered assistance also extends to workforce management, allowing supervisors and managers to use gamification and incentives to boost team morale. Their workforce productivity capabilities include schedule optimizers that surface analytics on team hours, traffic volumes, and call center training progress.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- AI-powered routing
- Unified agent portal
- Self-service customer support
- AI-powered agent assistance
- Workforce management
Also Read: The Evolution of the Contact Center to Knowledge Center
Sprinklr Service
Large enterprises use Sprinklr Service to enhance digital communication at scale, on top of traditional voice and text communication. You can use the platform to engage customers online with data-driven personalization. The platform helps agents unify public and internal communications data to build customer profiles with in-depth context to support requests quickly. Teams can also use automated workflows to deploy proactive support strategies. You can track brand mentions across 30+ digital channels and identify customer friction early. Teams can also use AI to detect intent from customer communication channels to summarize why customers are reaching out quickly.
Sprinklr Service’s knowledge base is SEO-optimized, making support articles easy to find, even without the help of agents. The platform’s chatbots and automated voice messages handle routine cases and point customers to the right resources. The knowledge base also includes a community forum that customers can rely on for peer-to-peer advice.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- Conversational AI
- AI-powered agent assistance
- Knowledge base
- Automated workflows
- Case management
Aircall
Aircall is a digital-first call management platform that offers call teams a robust list of phone system features. In addition to traditional capabilities like IVR and call routing, you can boost support efficiency with collaborative conference calls, time-based routing, and virtual call centers that centralize all numbers and agents worldwide.
The platform’s phone collaboration features simplify internal communication and assignments. Teams can create shared contacts so multiple agents have complete visibility of an ongoing communication thread. Shared inboxes make it easy for agents to get historical context for current requests, even if other agents managed that request. You can also use their call whispering feature to speak to agents during calls and assist them live.
Core Features:
- Interactive voice response
- Call routing
- Shared inbox
- Call recordings
- Call transcription
- Reporting, monitoring, and whispering software
- Integrations
Gladly
Gladly’s customer service platform helps teams scale customer support and interaction management across all channels, including messaging on social media apps like Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can integrate their platform with social listening tools to track brand mentions or keywords before quickly routing the right support agents to respond.
The platform gives teams a centralized view of customer data and historical interactions to increase personalization and shorten ticket resolution times. This information is pulled from support channels and populates a single thread updated throughout the customer lifecycle. You can view online activity, like the terms customers search for and the pages they view on their website or application. As you communicate with customers, use notes and assign topics to conversations so you can pull them up later and add more context to future interactions.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- Interactive voice support
- Self-service customer resources
- Social media engagement
- In-chat payments
- Call routing
Vonage Contact Center
Vonage Contact Center has features that teams can use to support their end-to-end customer support processes, from employee engagement to remote work management, collaboration, and customer analytics. They have all the features of a traditional call center, like automatic call distribution systems, call recordings, IVR, routing, and reporting. On top of that, they have intelligent features to give agents more in-depth support and resources, like a speech analyzer, virtual assistance, and conversational AI that you can customize for different needs — like voice-assisted self-service, natural language understanding, help creating call center scripts, and real-time knowledge base recommendations.
The platform has a comprehensive integration with Salesforce, which is especially beneficial for businesses that house most customer data in the Salesforce CRM. The integration lets teams track activity and progress for gamification. Quantitative metrics, post-call surveys, call recordings, and notes are easily synced into Salesforce. Teams can use Vonage’s Einstein AI dashboard to segment customer conversations and set up alerts that flag specific activities or patterns.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- Coaching and assistance features
- Call routing
- Gamification
- Interactive voice support
- Workforce management
Dialpad AI Contact Center
Dialpad’s AI contact center is a centralized platform with rich inbound and outbound features. The platform gives teams popular call center features like IVR, routing, and quality management. Agent activity heatmaps can also inform your workforce schedules with a quick overview of call volumes and fluctuations. The tool uses AI to power automated workflows that can be built without developer intervention. AI-powered feedback analyzes real-time conversations and gives agents recommendations based on live caller sentiment.
The platform also has outbound features that help businesses leverage their call center as a relationship-building tool. Built with remote teams in mind, you can use automated workflows to assist sellers during conversations with live recommendations, scripts, and modes for listening in or taking over calls.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- Outbound campaigns and sales assistance
- Self-service customer resources
- Workforce management
- Conversational AI
- No-code workflow builder
- Integrations
Also Read: All You Need To Know: Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)
GoTo Contact Center
GoTo Contact Center helps agents and supervisors manage and report calls across support and customer engagement channels. The cloud-based platform is easy to set up for both in-person and remote workforces. You can deploy the platform in a single day, onboard agents immediately, and use an admin portal to manage IT requests and configurations without interrupting the agent experience.
Their contact center allows agents to manage chats with a unified view of chat history, tagging systems, and pre-saved text to help agents save time handling specific questions. Agents also fully see performance metrics like total talk time and hold time. Supervisors also have rich capabilities to manage customer call queues and optimize real-time interactions with statistics showing minute-to-minute trends.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- Pre-recorded calls and messages
- Agent dashboards
- Call routing and skill assignment
- Admin portal
- Reporting and analytics
Alvaria Cloud
Alvaria Cloud is a contact center solution best suited for organizations with more than 100 agents. The platform helps businesses maximize agent resources and productivity to build better customer experiences. Deploy agent support across voice calls, email, in-app chats, and social media. The platform emphasizes features for live voice support, including skills-based routing, routing, call queues, and wait-time notifications to optimize the inbound calling experience.
This platform also helps enterprises meet their strict security needs. It keeps inbound and outbound campaigns compliant with industry standards and protects agents and consumers from callers intercepting customer calls. Agents can identify the location of call devices, use multichannel two-factor authentication, and leverage automated triggers to detect and divert fraudulent activity.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- Self-service customer resources
- Fraud detection
- Contact center compliance
- Workforce management
- Gamification
- Reporting and analytics
Webex Contact Center
Cisco’s Webex Contact Center is an enterprise-grade platform that helps organizations craft data-driven and highly personalized interactions across digital and live support channels. Agents can work quickly by accessing all the information they need in a streamlined desktop experience with task lists, customer information, customer journeys, and call management features. Teams can get all your inbound communication and historical data in one place to drive more contextual conversation.
The Webex Contact Center is designed to help enterprises implement call centers quickly and scale seamlessly as customer call volumes grow. Teams can use a single administration portal to manage all Webex services, including those for meetings, events, whiteboarding, and more. Enterprises use this system to connect agents to subject matter experts within the organization to access information and insights for customer support quickly.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- 24/7 self-service customer support
- Customer surveys
- AI-powered agent assistance
- Unified agent portal
- Customer journey mapping
- Security and compliance
Odigo
Odigo is an enterprise call center that gives organizations access to popular features like multichannel support, intelligent routing, automated workflows, and reporting. The platform uses AI to help agents and supervisors enhance operations with Google and IBM integrations. Connect Odigo to Google Dialogflow and IBM Watson to deploy chatbots and run intelligent data analysis.
The platform gives agents features like IVR and conversational AI to qualify conversations and prioritize agent availability. It also supports agents with action recommendations and real-time transcriptions they can use on calls. Supervisors also have advanced features like customer behavior and language detection, which help them identify reasons for intervention faster.
Core Features:
- Omnichannel communication
- Automated call management
- Call routing
- Agent portal
- AI-powered apps
- Reporting and analytics
- Integrations
