| Vendor | Features | Products, Plans & Promos | Ratings & Reviews | Price |
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|   "Excellent and scalable solution for contact centers." |  View promos » |
 Five9 |
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| "We are extremely pleased with Five9 and the way it operates…" | View promos » |
 3CLogic |
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| "Agent productivity is up by 462%" | View promos » |
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| "With iContact, it's never a 'no.'" | View promos » |
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| "Great service!" | View promos » |
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| "We are extremely pleased with Five9 and the way it operates…" | View promos » |
Call center software can increase the productivity of your company's customer service operations. Automation allows you to control many aspects of your customer service workflow. You can record conversations between employees and customers for training purposes, track the time it takes for employees to handle calls, and present your customers with options that direct them to the exact department or person they are trying to reach. Ultimately, call center software can decrease the number of employees that you have to dedicate to the customer service process, minimizing costs and improving efficiency. Although call center software has many benefits, the use of this type of system must be peppered with enough employee interaction to ensure that your customers don't become frustrated with the technology.
Benefits
Call center software can help you better manage your business and increase profits. A study conducted by Loudhouse Research found that 69 percent of large businesses that directly serve customers think call centers are critical for generating revenue.
Increased Efficiency
Call center software can be programmed to offer an automated menu to direct customers to the appropriate department. This allows your customer service representatives to spend less time directing calls and more time solving customer complaints. A good automated system can also decrease labor costs by reducing the number of employees you will need to answer phones.
Improved Employee Training
Call center software can record conversations, the amount of time an agent spends talking to a client, and other important information. By carefully reviewing the information the software recorded, training managers can help call center employees improve personal weaknesses. Call center software can also help managers identify good workers, allowing managers to reward their best employees.
Recorded Call Data
If you have ever wondered about daily call volume or traffic during key times during the day, your call center software can easily offer, and in some cases analyze, this data. By knowing these basic statistics, you can better schedule employees to meet the demand.
Software can also tell clients how long they may wait before speaking to a representative. This information allows clients to decide if they want to wait or if they would like to call back at another time. Call center software should be able to compare long waits with the amount of hang-up calls. This information can help you decide if you should hire more workers during these times.
Combine Call Data With Customer Service
The ability to integrate customer service with call data is an important consideration for decision-makers. Directly integrating these two systems allows your business to direct customers to specific representatives who are experts at solving the customer's problem.
Pitfalls
Compatibility Issues
When choosing what type of call center software to use, pay attention to any potential compatibility issues. Whenever you purchase new software, you need to make sure that it will run on the computers that your business uses. Find out if the software will be compatible with the operating system on your computers. If you purchase software that is incompatible, it might run inefficiently, or it might not work at all.
Technical Support Costs
As you determine your budget for new call center software, don’t forget to factor in the potential cost of technical support. If you ever have issues with the software, you will need to be able to contact someone who can help you solve the problem. Some software companies offer free phone support, but others charge a fee for this service. Some companies may not even provide technical support at all, in which case you would have to find a third party to assist you. Take these costs into consideration before making your purchase.
Training and Implementation Costs
When you introduce new call center software into the workplace, it will take some time for your employees to learn how to use it. You will need to figure out how they will be trained and who will train them. Until employees become familiar with the new software, you might see productivity slow a bit. All of this will cost money, so remember to factor these additional costs into your bottom line.
Customers Might Not Like Automation Features
If you decide to switch to call center software that automates any part of the process, you risk alienating your customers. For example, if the new software will handle incoming calls with an automated message or menu, customers might feel like your service is becoming impersonal. Automated options can be frustrating for people to navigate. You might even see a rise in call abandonment rates.
Pricing
Call center software is a tool that can benefit your business with a higher profitability and lower costs, but you need to pick the right software at the right price.
Range of Pricing
According to CallCenterSoftwareWorld.com, software can be bought on a per license basis, which costs between $800 and $1,500 per agent. If you have many agents, you may be able to get volume discounts. If you have a fixed number of agents, software may be available for the group. Group software can cost between $2,000 and $25,000 depending on its quality and features. Maintenance plans can also add 10 to 20 percent of the cost to the purchase.
Conclusion
Call center software has significantly improved the options businesses have to control the customer service process. This type of software enables you to monitor the interaction between customers and employees and improve the process in functional increments. It also enables you to distinguish between employees that are doing a good job and those who require further training. There are certain issues you should consider before you adopt call center software, however. Any new software platform comes with costs that go beyond acquisition and installation. You have to train employees on the new system and invest time to synchronize your business processes and historical data. Complicated software systems often require ongoing technical support and periodic upgrades that generate new expenses every year. After you have implemented the call center software, you may find that your customers have a negative reaction to the technology, and you have to absorb some negative public sentiment until your customers acclimate to the new system.
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Ever since the telephone has become a common business tool, call centers have been in place to receive customer's orders, complaints, and to manage the company's operations as efficiently and productively as possible. With the advent of the computer age, these businesses have been able to more completely streamline their procedures and add a multitude of functions as well. None of that would be possible without the help of call center software. These computer programs have revolutionized the way business is done. Most of these programs can be modified to support call center businesses whether they are based on or off shore or to support home-based workers.
When you choose to order and use the right call center software, you can expect a multitude of benefits. Most programs include easy to use, interoffice email features as well as features to support inbound and outbound calls easily and effectively. List management, data import options, and agent scripting features are available as well. Once you choose a software program to meet your needs, the company can usually have the system ready to roll in a short amount of time. Staff training and technical support is often included in the price as well.
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