Investing in a call center software is not an easy task, especially given the many options available in the market. A checklist to mark all the aspects that are required in your business can help you get the best one for your call center.

Call center trends to look out for in 2016

Understanding the latest trends in the call center industry will help you to select the best call center software for your call center, that will get you the maximum ROI (Return Of Investment).

• Partner management – This is one of the leading trends in the call center industry that came about with the practice of outsourcing call center solutions. Partner management in the form of strong reporting and coordination methods is important when you are partnering with other countries to deliver your customer support services. Real-time communication, visibility, and oversight are extremely important in these situations. Most of the call center businesses are partnering with countries like India and Philippines to deliver call center solutions. If your business too works in tandem with countries across the world, you might need to look for software with good partner management features.

• Self-service – Some companies go for customer self-service in the form of online portals, FAQs, and public knowledge bases. In a survey by Zendesk, 75% of customers admitted that they prefer self-service as an easy way to address their issues. 91% of customers said they would go to an online knowledge base to get help with their problems. These shifts will result in customer service desks with lesser number of helpdesk tickets. Also, they would need to start to go for more self-service friendly software.

• Multichannel support – With the dynamic changes in technology, more companies are seeing customers migrating and embracing newer forms of communication over direct email and phone calls. Social media has now become one of the leading ways of reaching out to clients and vice-versa. A call center support which has a strong multichannel support set in place can help you connect more easily with your customers.

Call center software reviews

Apart from the trends discussed above, we have to take into account some more practical factors that companies look into while investing in call center software, such as, price, rating, the level of recommendation, platforms, deployment and the business sizes they support.

Cloud-based software

Following are some of the cloud-based call center software you can consider for your call center.

#1. Talkdesk

Talkdesk is one of the most affordable and best call center software solutions available in the market. It does not require any additional hardware or downloads and easily integrates with multiple programs. The software uses IVR and ACD to route customer calls to the right agents and displays the customer information on the agent’s browser on a real-time basis. Talkdesk can be hosted on all major platforms.

#2. VanillaSoft Pro

If you would like to install software which improves efficiency and productivity of your sales team then this is the one for you. With a 4.4/5 rating, VanillaSoft includes features such as lead management, CRM, and telemarketing to assist your sales functions. Its queue-based sorting system is its USP which provides nurturing and lead generation tools, as well. The software runs on all three platforms.
#3. Five9
Five9 can be used to to manage outbound, inbound, blended or multichannel contact centers. Some of its features include IVR with speech recognition, predictive dialer, multi-channel ACD, integrated workforce optimization capabilities, quality monitoring components, and agent scripting.
#4. Ameyo Engage
Ameyo Engage is a cloud-based call center software that provides a complete solution for your inbound and outbound customer interactions. It can be integrated with your existing, and new business tools. It can be used to provide support to customers over a wide range of channels, including e-mail, chat, social media, and phone. The software displays customer information, and priority tickets to the agents. This will help the agents to resolve customer issues efficiently and in a timely manner. Some of the software features include Preferred Agent Router, Real-time Assessment, Reporting and Analytics, VQ-Pass (helps to reduce abandoned call ratio), and Multimedia Integration.

Hybrid software

Following are some of the hybrid software you can consider for your call center.

#1. Genesys

It has powerful integrated tools that can be customized to optimize the performance of your call center. The software features include skills-based routing, workforce management, reporting & analytics, customer interaction portal, and speech recognition.

#2. Avaya Aura Call Center Elite

It is one of the most widely used call center solutions in the world. It has intelligent routing and resource selection features. It helps to reduce call volume and improve call center efficiency by moving interactions to lower cost channels such as email, chat, SMS, and social media. You can also use it to analyze historical and real-time reporting data.

#3. Ameyo

Ameyo can be used to deliver exceptional customer service, consistently. It is a powerful and highly flexible Internet Protocol (IP) based all center software that lets you have a personalized interaction with every customer across multiple channels. Some of its features include live chat, predictive dialer, preview dialer, parallel predictive dialer, call scripting, and IVR / Voice Recognition.
You can try most of these software for free, on a trial basis. It is recommended that you try them first, and take into consideration the above call center software reviews, before selecting one for your call center.