Call center software provides small businesses with the channels, workflows, and features to compete with larger companies. Routing tools and self-service capabilities enhance agent efficiency and promote customer service, even if your team works remotely.
This article will outline how call center software can help your small business, plus our top picks for CCaaS products.
Best Call Center Software for Small Business
We tested most popular call center software platforms, examining their UI and features to determine the best options for small businesses. While evaluating these products, we made calls, sent messages, and built routing menus. In this article, we prioritized tools that improve call center efficiency–like AI support, virtual agents, self-service, and workflow automations.
Here are our top picks for small businesses:
- Nextiva: Best for self-service and customer journey orchestration
- RingCentral: Most cost-effective option
- Dialpad: Best live-agent support and AI
- 8x8: Best for team collaboration
- Vonage: Best for call routing and queueing
Nextiva Customer Experience Suite
Nextiva’s call center software is an AI-first platform with intelligent bots, workflow automations, and built-in CRM functionality for better customer support. Tools like auto-dialers and workflow automations make agents more efficient, while custom routing styles optimize your inbound call flow.
Each plan includes workflow automations and agent scripting, helping small staff sizes accomplish more.
Why Nextiva is a Good Fit for Small Businesses
- Workflow customization: Each plan includes custom workflows, linked with multiple routing options like round robin, skills-based, time-based, or AI-based routing. Automatically create and assign tickets based on customer information.
- Customer insights: Nextiva has a built-in CRM system that tracks customer journeys, preferences, and data. Live CX speech analytics and automated post-call surveys gather deeper insights, helping agents and supervisors understand customers better.
- Feature-rich basic plan: Nextiva’s Essential plan includes more features than most alternatives’ low-tier plans. It includes audio dialers, campaign management, live-agent scripting, and voice bots for IVR.
Where it Falls Short
- High price floor: With plans starting at $99, Nextiva can’t match the low costs that some alternatives have, such as RingCentral
- No Native CRM integrations: While Nextiva offers built-in CRM tools, it doesn’t come with any out-of-the-box CRM interactions as most competitors do
Pricing
Nextiva offers three call center plans, ranging from $99 to $139 monthly per user. Choose from voice-only, digital-only, or omnichannel contact center software.
To learn more, see our Nextiva pricing guide.
Best For
- Those seeking to provide rich services via chat: Nextiva’s live chat and chatbot tools enable rich services like appointment booking, secure payments, and more
- Customer service teams: With customizable routing and customer journey orchestration, Nextiva provides a high degree of control over how you handle and serve customers
RingCentral Contact Center
RingCentral offers cost-effective call center software with over 20 communication channels, AI-based sales and service features, and advanced analytics. All plans include IVR menus, an outbound auto dialer, analytics, surveys, and call recordings. Integrate RingCentral software with CRM systems out of the box.
While plans start with the core features mentioned above, you can customize your call center with advanced add-ons: AI tools like automated call transcriptions, summaries, and real-time agent assistance. Add advanced speech analytics, interactive multichannel surveys, and more.
Why RingCentral is a Good Fit for Small Businesses
- Cost-effective: Starting at $65 monthly per user, RingCentral’s omnichannel software offers the most affordable basic plan of all the providers we tested
- Customizable features: You can choose which particular add-ons you want, ensuring you don’t spend money on unwanted features
- Unique ways to gain customer insights: Advanced surveys, speech analytics, and keyword detection provide deeper insights about what issues your customers face
- AI service tools for efficiency: AI-based features like call summaries, automated scoring, and keyword tracking help small companies track trends in customer experience
Where it Falls Short
- No voice-only options: Teams seeking a true call center, with voice-only, may feel overwhelmed by the fact that RingCentral’s plans all include at least 20 channels
- Best features are add-ons: While RingCentral’s plans start at $65 monthly, our favorite features–and the ones that promote efficiency for small teams–quickly hike the price
Pricing
RingCentral’s contact center offerings begin at $65 for a basic omnichannel plan, with add-ons for advanced features like AI and high-level surveys.
For more information, read our RingCentral pricing guide.
Best For
- Call centers prioritizing low cost: No competitors can beat RingCentral’s $65 starting price for a call center platform
- Those seeking to gain customer insights: With advanced surveys, CX analytics, and keyword detection, RingCentral offers excellent tools to uncover details and trends about your customers’ experience with your company
Dialpad AI Contact Center
Dialpad’s contact center software uses AI uniquely to support agents and supervisors. All plans include IVR, automatic call distribution, video meetings, call monitoring, and key AI features like call transcription and key-moment detection. Higher-tier plans add live-agent assistance and advanced AI features like scorecards and customer satisfaction scores.
Why Dialpad is a Good Fit For Small Businesses
- Intricate queueing: Dialpad’s IVR system is easy to set up, and automated queue callbacks help reduce wait times. If your queue gets overwhelmed, automated callbacks let customers do other things while waiting to receive a call.
- AI Supervisor support: AI scorecards and AI moments use call transcriptions to provide feedback for agents, helping agents improve even when supervisors aren’t able to listen in on calls
- Tools for efficient agents: Dialpad’s proprietary AI, DialpadGPT, informs intelligent and conversational virtual agents and IVR systems for self-service. Live-agent support makes agents more effective, helping small teams handle more queries.
Where it Falls Short
- Lacks workforce management: Dialpad’s call center software does not have WFM tools like automated forecasting and shift scheduling, which most alternatives have
- No call center analytics: While Dialpad does track customer satisfaction score and agent scorecards, the software doesn’t provide insights about call volume, agent activity, and queue metrics
Pricing
Dialpad offers three call center plans, ranging from $80 to $150 monthly per user. All plans include voice and video, with higher tiers adding omnichannel options.
To learn more, see our Dialpad pricing review.
Best For
- Small companies with high call volumes: Dialpad’s IVR and queue callbacks help small call centers manage an overflow of inbound calls
- Those who want to provide more agent feedback: Dialpad uses AI to coach agents with scorecards, sentiment detection, and real-time assistance
8x8 Contact Center
8x8’s call center software focuses on team collaboration, as each plan includes video meetings and internal team chat. The X6 call center lets agents access CCaaS features from mobile, web, or desktop. Omnichannel plans add email, SMS, live chat, social media messaging, and messaging apps.
While plans include basic features like a multi-level IVR, call queueing, and call monitoring, they also stand out with some unique features. The 8x8 Frontdesk app is an interface designed for receptionists, and the video elevation feature lets agents view the customer’s screen for step-by-step instructions. 8x8 offers add-ons for auto dialers and speech analytics.
What We Like About 8x8
- Email features: Utilize prebuilt or custom workflows and CRM integrations with email, or design dynamic email queues with skills-based routing, for intricate service through email
- Video sharing: Customers can share their screens with agents, on mobile or desktop, by clicking a link. This helps agents take screenshots and provide more detailed service and troubleshooting.
- Callbacks: Customers can create callback tickets from IVR queues, or your website or mobile app
Where it Falls Short
- Lack of advanced features: 8x8 does not include quality management, workforce management, or AI tools like live-agent support
- Non-user-friendly analytics: I found the analytics portal relatively overwhelming, cluttered, and non-intuitive
Pricing
8x8 does not publicize pricing information for its contact center, but the provider offers three plans: the voice-only X6, digital-only X7, and omnichannel X8. Mix and match plans and choose from metered or unlimited calling options.
Check out our 8x8 pricing review for more information.
Best For
- Call centers that want a simple solution: 8x8 offers core CCaaS features and channels, without advanced features like AI, making a user-friendly option for those seeking something simple
- Overloaded contact centers: Small teams facing large queue volumes and large numbers of inbound messages can organize callbacks through voice and web messaging
Vonage Contact Center
Vonage’s omnichannel contact center bundles a well-rounded suite of features for customer self-service, intelligent routing, and AI support. Each plan includes voice, SMS, email, video, and social media messaging. Small teams can customize routing with a drag-and-drop IVR designer, call queues, and skills-based routing.
Vonage also makes agents more efficient with CRM-integrated features like screen pops. Auto dialers and voicemail dropping help sales agents accomplish more, and self-service tools like virtual agents use AI for intelligent conversations that resolve more customer queries.
Why Vonage is a Good Fit For Small Businesses
- Tools to make agents efficient: All Vonage plans include an auto dialer with voicemail dropping, streamlining outbound sales efforts. Contextualized notifications and screen pops help agents jump into action.
- Intricate call handling and queueing: With skills-based routing, queueing, and automated queue callbacks, a small number of agents can wear multiple hats and serve customers across departments and purposes
- AI self-service tools: Vonage offers add-ons for AI tools like virtual agents, which relieve some of the load on agents and provide 24/7 service
Where it Falls Short
- No live chat on core plans: Most alternative contact centers offer live chat on web and mobile apps, but Vonage reserves this channel as an add-on
- UI and features feel basic: The user dashboard, analytics, and lack of AI tools make the overall user experience feel restricted, without the easy channel-switching and unified experience that I got with other platforms
Pricing
Vonage offers two omnichannel contact center plans, without publicized pricing information. Customize with add-ons like live chat, virtual assistance, speech analytics, and more.
For more details, read our review of Vonage Business pricing.
Best For
- Companies that receive calls for a wide variety of reasons: The queueing, IVR, and skills-based routing allow your company to have more control over how you handle inbound calls
- Those who want better insights about customer experience: Automated tools like post-call quality ratings, post-call surveys, and the speech analytics add-on provide new insights about what’s on your customers’ minds
How Can Call Center Software Help Small Businesses?
Call center software provides small businesses with Enterprise-level features and communication channels, without forcing you to waste money on extensive hardware intended for a large staff. Small companies can easily add and remove software subscriptions, scaling to meet their needs. CCaaS tools make sales and service agents more efficient, helping you serve more customers with a lower staff count.
Here’s a further breakdown of the ways call center software can benefit your small business:
Enterprise-Level Features
Call center software bundles advanced digital features like automated workflows, intelligent virtual agents, customer experience analytics, and real-time agent assistance. With its subscription-based pricing model, call center software enables small businesses to serve customers with the same high-level tools as large companies.
These advanced features are part of why the omnichannel CCaaS market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 13.6% through 2030.
Scalability
Since CCaaS software is charged per user per month, it easily scales up or down to meet your staffing needs. As your small business adds new employees, add new users and assign them phone numbers. They’ll be up and running almost immediately, no matter where they live.
Flexible and Remote Access
While regular call center technology uses landlines and requires your agents to visit an office, cloud-based contact center software delivers service through a desktop app. Your small company’s staff can work anywhere and access the same phone number, communication channels, and features.
More Efficient Agents
Call center software features like IVR menus, call queues, CRM integrations, and real-time AI assistance give your agents more context about the customer’s needs, helping them provide quicker and more effective service. This way, small staff can serve large numbers of customers.
This efficiency is expected to lead 80% of customer service organizations to use AI in some fashion by 2026.
Customer Self-Service and Automations
IVR menus and chatbots handle simple customer queries around the clock, and workflow automations like surveys and welcome emails trigger proactive outreach. Outbound auto-dialers place sales calls and drop pre-recorded voicemails into customer inboxes.
These automated features handle customer queries without involving agents, helping small teams resolve more issues.
Cost-Effective
Call center software providers offer multiple pricing tiers, with increasing communication channels and features. You can choose the plan with just the features your small business will use, saving money by avoiding paying for unused features.
How to Choose a Call Center Software for Your Small Business
Look for a provider that offers the channels and features to meet your specific needs, while avoiding paying for unnecessary features you don’t want.
Here’s a quick breakdown to help you decide from the providers above:
- Low cost: RingCentral offers a cost-effective solution for small companies
- AI features for agent support: Dialpad and Nextiva enhance agent efficiency with AI tools, self-service, and workflows
- Routing: 8x8 and Vonage offer IVR workflows and strong queueing to customize your inbound routing system
