A Graphic of the Top-Performing Call Center Products
FrontRunners quadrants highlight the top software products for North American small businesses. All products in the quadrant are top performers. Small businesses can use FrontRunners to make more informed decisions about what software is right for them.
To create this quadrant, we evaluated over 230 Call Center products. Those with the top scores for their capability and value made the quadrant.
Scores are based largely on reviews from real software users, along with other product performance details (e.g., what features they offer, how many customers they have).
Nope, Products in Any Quadrant May Fit Your Needs
Every product in this quadrant offers a balance of capability (how much the products can do) and value (whether they’re worth their price/cost) that makes them stand out in the race for small business software success.
FrontRunners has four sub-quadrants:
Depending on the specific needs of a software buyer, a product in any of these sub-quadrants could be a good fit.
Why? To even be considered for this FrontRunners, a product had to meet a minimum user rating score of 3.5 for capability and 3.5 for value. This means that all products that qualify as FrontRunners are top-performing products in their market. They appear in the quadrant in relation to how their peers performed.
For some buyers, a specific FrontRunners sub-quadrant might be best. For example, if your call center is strictly inbound or strictly outbound, then products in the Masters quadrant might best fit your needs. If you know you want a tried-and-true, scalable solution, then you might begin your search in the Leaders quadrant. Looking for cutting-edge or uncommon call center features? See if any of the products in the Contenders quadrant fit the bill.
You can download the full FrontRunners for Call Center report here. It contains individual scorecards for each product on the Frontrunners quadrant.
Products Are Scored Based on User Reviews and Other Data
You can find the full FrontRunners methodology here, but the gist is that products are scored in two areas, Capability and Value.
To be considered at all, products must have at least 10 reviews and meet minimum user rating scores. They also have to offer a core set of functionality—for example, they need some degree of computer-telephone integration (CTI) and need some basic ACD (automatic call distribution) functionality.
From there, user reviews and other product performance details, such as the product's customer base and the features it offers, dictate the Capability and Value scores. Capability is plotted on the x-axis, and Value is plotted on the y-axis.
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FrontRunners scores and graphics are derived from individual end-user reviews based on their own experiences, vendor-supplied information and publicly available product information; they do not represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.
Providers listed as Runners Up were considered for inclusion in the quadrant, but were ultimately not included for one or more reasons: they did not have enough reviews; they did not meet the reviews score minimum; they did not meet the ultimate Value and Capability minimum scores; or they did not meet our functionality requirements for the market.
Call center systems share characteristics with both standard business phone systems (also known as PBX systems) and customer service/help desk solutions. At the same time, call center software offers a number of dedicated features for both agents and supervisors that can’t be found in other types of business communications solutions.
This buyer’s guide will cover the major differences and points of overlap between these software categories to help you understand which best fits your needs. We’ll also highlight the specific functionality that can only be found in a true call center solution.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
What Is Call Center Software?
Standard Features and Applications
How Call Center Software Differs From PBX and Customer Service Software
What Type of Buyer Are You?
Market Trends to Understand
Recent Events You Should Know About
Simply put, this is an umbrella term for applications dedicated for use in either a formal or informal call center. The closely related term “contact center software” is in many cases a synonym, but also refers to features used in call centers that handle a number of communication channels in addition to voice (e.g., email, instant messaging, SMS text, social media and live chat).
Call center software supports the agents whose job it is to assist customers over the phone, or via one of those other channels. It also supports the supervisors who oversee the call center's operations.
Here are some common functionalities you can expect to find in a typical call center software package:
Agent Desktop Interface in Five9
| Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) |
Parks incoming calls in a queue, where callers wait until an agent is available. Most call center systems are capable of a special mode of ACD known as skills-based routing, which distributes calls to agents based on rules that factor in agent skills and performance metrics. Simpler modes of ACD can be found in standard business phone systems. |
| Interactive Voice Response (IVR) |
The technology underlying the voice menus that allow callers to complete actions over the phone via voice or keypad input. IVR systems share similarities with auto attendants, but are much more flexible, enabling callers to do things like paying a bill or checking an account balance. IVR systems are defining components of inbound call center solutions. Businesses that only need to direct callers to the right extension don’t need IVR; a standard business phone system and an auto attendant will suffice. |
| Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) |
A jargon term for integrations between phone systems and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. CTI integrations add features both to CRM systems and call center systems. CRM systems gain click-to-dial functionality, where agents click on a customer’s phone number in a database of contacts to dial out. Contact center systems gain “screen pop” (screen population) functionality, or displays that instantly appear on contact center agents’ screens when they receive an inbound call. Screen pops pull data about the inbound caller from the CRM system to help the agent better manage the interaction. |
| Auto dialers |
Applications that automatically dial numbers from a list or at random. There are 3 major types:
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| Workforce scheduling |
Enables forecasting of staffing requirements based on historical data. |
| Performance analytics and reporting |
Captures and analyzes information about agent interactions (frequently via integration with a call recording application for easy retrieval of problem calls). This information is fed into agent scorecards and reports on team-wide statistics such as abandonment rate and average time in queue. |
| Call center scripting |
Enables supervisors to program agent scripts for sales calls and customer service calls. Also allows supervisors to control operational rules for calls and generates fields that feed data from calls into the CRM system. |
| Monitor/whisper/barge |
These are three standard call control features used by call center supervisors:
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Call center systems are built on the same technology as business phone systems, and offer many of the same features. Additionally, help desk and customer service solutions can be viewed as a specialized category of contact center software.
Here are the major differences:
We’ve already seen that there’s significant overlap between call center systems, business phone systems and customer service systems. Different categories of buyers will need different types of solutions:
Contact center software has evolved as customers’ expectations and needs have shifted with the rise of mobile devices and social media. The following trends are particularly important to consider when selecting a solution:
Multi-channel contact centers. As more customers seek to engage businesses through other channels than voice (e.g., SMS text, live chat and email), contact center software has evolved to enable agents to interact via these additional channels. Interactions across all channels in a multi-channel system feed into a unified agent queue.
Social media. Contact center software vendors are increasingly offering modules that allow agents to manage interactions via social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. New analytics tools also help businesses data-mine social media for signs of potential customer issues before phones start ringing.
Virtual queuing/Web callback. Traditionally, callers had to wait on hold to maintain their place in an ACD queue. Now, a new technology known as Web callback or virtual queueing allows callers to “virtually” hold their place in the queue after they hang up in order to receive a callback later.
While this technology has proven popular with consumers, it’s still not a standard offering in call center systems. If this is a must-have feature, you’ll need to shortlist vendors that offer it.
Speech/text analytics. Call center reporting traditionally focused on metrics such as call length and call abandonment. Now, systems are emerging that can analyze audio data to detect anger, frustration and other emotions in callers’ vocal tones. The results of this analysis can be used to identify trends in the performance of agents and the contact center as a whole.
Text analytics is used to scour textual interactions (e.g., emails, SMS text messages and instant messages) for certain keywords that indicate frustration or satisfaction on the part of the customer. While powerful, these tools are still relatively rare offerings compared to standard applications such as ACD and call recording.
Avaya Inc. Files for Chapter 11. Continuing in its struggle to shed the company’s hardware division, call center IT stalwart Avaya Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2016. The company was facing a mountainous debt reaching $6.3 billion.
Genesys acquires Interactive Intelligence. In a move to improve and expand its omnichannel communications and customer experience solutions portfolio, contact center company Genesys acquired Interactive Intelligence for $1.4 billion in December 2016.
BroadSoft Ranks as Visionary in Contact Center as a Service Magic Quadrant. For the second year in a row cloud contact center provider BroadSoft has been recognized as a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS).
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