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Five9 and NICE CXone are two of today’s most popular contact center providers, both offering omnichannel CCaaS software with a VoIP phone system, call queuing, AI, automations, self-service chatbots, and analytics.

The two providers have a lot in common as they both cater to large contact centers and offer advanced omnichannel routing capabilities as well as AI-powered workflow automations and workforce management tools. However, they offer some distinct features and advantages as well. Five9 excels in outbound calling capabilities with 6 different types of auto dialer, and NICE CXone offers an intuitive drag and drop chatbot builder that enables companies to create nuanced self-service solutions.

This article will compare Five9 and CXone, outlining each CCaaS provider’s pricing, features, pros, and cons.

 

How We Compared Five9 and NICE CXone

  • Communication channels: We looked at the variety of communication channels that are offered by each provider as well as how easy it is to switch between channels and gain context from cross-channel interactions
  • Pricing and plans: We evaluated the features included in each pricing plan and what add-ons were available and compared with similar providers to determine overall value
  • Voice features: We researched and tested the voice features that are offered by each platform, especially automations and AI-powered features
  • Team collaboration features: We looked at what team communication and collaboration features are included with each solution such as video chat, team messaging, etc.
  • Customer support: We evaluated the availability, hours, self-support options, and efficacy of each providers’ customer service team
  • Ease of use: We determined the intuitiveness and usability of each platform's user interface including agent dashboards, mobile apps, and desktop apps
  • Integrations: We researched the variety and depth of available integrations for each provider as well as whether there was an option to create custom integrations

 

Five9 vs NICE CXone At a Glance

Five9’s omnichannel contact center offers video, live transcripts, and a comprehensive auto dialer–while NICE CXone shines with customizable self-service tools and advanced workflow automations.

Five9 NICE CXone
Pricing 4 plans from $149 to $229 monthly per user 6 plans from $71 to $209 monthly per user
Communication channels 6 main channels:

  • Voice
  • SMS
  • Email
  • Live chat and chatbots
  • Social messaging
  • Video chat
6 main channels:

  • Voice
  • SMS
  • Email
  • Live chat and chatbots
  • Social messaging
  • Social monitoring
Standout features
  • Live call transcription and agent guidance
  • Self-service across channels
  • Automated scheduling and forecasting
  • Skills-based routing
  • Drag-and-drop chatbot and automation designer
  • Virtual attendant that identifies workflow bottlenecks and suggests automations
  • Customer journey analytics
Auto dialer types
  • Power dialer
  • Preview dialer
  • Predictive dialer
  • Progressive dialer
  • Predictive dialer
Integrations CRM, collaboration, and UCaaS integrations, including:

  • Salesforce
  • ServiceNow
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Slack
  • RingCentral
CRM, collaboration, and UCaaS integrations, including:

  • Zendesk
  • Salesforce
  • Microsoft
  • Zoom Phone
  • RingCentral
Best for Small and medium-sized call centers prioritizing outbound sales campaigns, or those who want phone-only without other communication channels Large call centers with diverse needs for customer support and sales, including multichannel and self-service use cases

 

 

Five9 vs NICE CXone: Pricing and Plans

Five9 has a higher starting price than NICE CXone and offers 5 bundled plans. The Digital and Core plans are digital only and voice only respectively, and both cost $119 per user/month, while the Premium, Optimum, and Ultimate plans are custom, quote-based plans. Five9 also offers two AI-powered add-ons: IVA and Agent Assist.

For more information, check out our detailed Five9 pricing guide

 

NICE CXone offers 6 bundled plans ranging from a digital only plan at $71 per user, per month, to the Complete Suite plan for $209 per agent, per month. NICE offers several a la carte add-ons including AI-powered self-service, Agent Augmentation, and Automated Interaction Summarization.

For more information, check out our detailed NICE CXone pricing guide

 

Five9 vs NICE CXone: Feature Comparison

Below, we compare Five9 vs NICE CXone across 6 key contact center features:

 

Communication Channels

salesforce five9 dialer crm integration

Summary: Both Five9 and NICE allow agents to engage with customers via voice, chat, email, and SMS/text, but Five9 also includes video chat, while NICE does not. NICE does, however, offer self-service tools like chatbots as well as social media monitoring.

Agents can engage with customers from the agent dashboard using the following communication channels:

  • Voice: Both providers offer inbound and outbound voice capabilities–including IVR and queues, routing, softphone functionality and screen pops. CXone also offers auto dialers
  • Email: Both CXone and Five9 allow users to send and respond to emails directly within an omnichannel app while Five9 uniquely includes AI-powered email routing that mines email text, prioritizes emails and sends them to the best agent
  • Social media: Both platforms allow users to send social media messages and make posts on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Facebook, etc. Five9 includes automatic routing
  • SMS and text: Both platforms allow users to send automated, bulk, and conversational texts. Automate texts like appointment reminders and account updates, handle simple queries via SMS chatbot, and route customers to agents for live 1:1 texting
  • Video: Only Five9 includes a video channel where agents can instantly escalate a live call into a video meeting for more immediate customer service, with screen-sharing capabilities
  • Self-service: NICE CXone and Five9 agents can connect with customers via live chat, or build or import automated chatbots that provide customer self-service on most messaging channels
  • Social monitoring: NICE CXone allows agents to monitor their company’s presence across social media sites, blogs, and news

 

User Interface

agent supervisor view nice cxone wfm

Summary: Both Five9 and CXone offer a desktop app agent interface that enables agents to connect with customers across channels while retaining full context regarding customer information and journey history.

Five9’s app home screen displays an agent’s call distribution status–all active phone numbers, calls, and wait times for each–with one-click options to jump into any call while the CXone desktop app dashboard, called MAX (My Agent Experience), provides an easy-to-use omnichannel inbox where agents can balance dozens of customers, tasks, and queues at once.

Five9 agents can monitor multiple phone numbers at once, and multiple teammates can share responsibility for one phone number–enabling queue functionality. The left-hand menu displays key communication channels and tools, each popping up with notification pings when an agent receives a new inbound task.

NICE CXone’s live call queue is also displayed in the left-hand menu, organized distinctly from digital channels. Agents can see how many calls are in their queue, and how long each customer has been waiting. Alongside the queue, view your call history, voicemail, and daily schedule: upcoming scheduled breaks, meetings, and shifts.

Live-Interaction Dashboard Elements:

  • Calling: The Five9 call menu allows agents to dial any number with click-to-call, contact selection, or a phone number dial pad. All active calls are organized onscreen, and agents can monitor their queue and the communal call parking space, prioritizing and jumping between calls. Both Five9 and CXone include live one-click call control buttons–Record, Hold, Mute, Mask Caller ID, Transfer, Conference, Hang up, and Present IVR menu
  • Notes: Both platforms allow agents to view contact information, add notes to the customer’s profile, gather background information from the CRM or database, or add a resolution status
  • Chat: Five9 organizes all active chats in a left-hand menu inbox, where an agent can jump between them and instantly access each customer’s chat history, even chatbot conversations while CXone users are able to type and send messages through any channel–including posting on social media
  • To-do List: NICE allows agents to view all pending action items and tasks across channels
  • Customer card: Both platforms display the customer's contact information and multichannel conversation history, along with recent tasks, sentiment statuses, and notes left. For social media posts, the card displays a customer’s social media background, popularity, influencer status, and recent relevant posts.

 

Phone System

Five9 Omnichannel

Summary: Both Five9 and NICE offer HD-voice quality around the world. Five9 has points of presence across 5 continents for international calling no matter where your agents and supervisors are located, while NICE plans support unlimited calling within the US and Canada, plus affordable per-minute rates for international calls.

Both Five9 and CXone administrators can purchase local and toll-free DID numbers around the globe and manage them easily in the administrator portal, assigning numbers to agents and enabling multiple agents to share phone numbers and voicemails.

Phone System Features:

  • Call distribution algorithms: Five9’s phone system receives omnichannel inbound queries and routes them to the optimal agent based on skills, priority, time of day, or availability, while NICE CXone similarly compiles customer records and gathers customer data, integrating this information with your CRM to facilitate data-driven, skills-based routing
  • Dynamic IVR: Both platforms offer drag and drop multi-level IVR builders and AI routing and include a mobile and voice-based omnichannel IVR system, with scripts and menu options that customers can navigate with app-style buttons or DTMF audio selections. Five9 IVR can also handle tasks like appointment scheduling, payment acceptance, and survey administration, while CXone IVR handles only basic tasks like bill payments and providing basic account information.
  • Recording and transcription: Five9 records calls and transcribes the audio in real-time, analyzing this transcript to support AI coaching, while CXone does not offer this feature
  • Call monitoring: Five9 supervisors can monitor all call centers and agents in real-time from their own dashboard, examining call status and agent desktop activity, and receiving alerts related to failed SLAs while NICE enables authorized users to listen to an agent's calls, view an agent's desktop, or both, in near-real time
  • Screen pop: Both providers offer screen pop which is displayed on the user’s interface, for a quick answer and easy transition into the active-call display
  • Auto dialer: Five9’s contact center includes outbound auto dialer software–with a predictive dialer, progressive dialer, power dialer, and preview dialer. NICE includes an outbound no-pause dialer with built-in list management

 

Workforce Optimization

cxone wfm

Summary: Five9 and NICE CXone both include a variety of workforce optimization tools to help supervisors and administrators manage, organize and support call center processes while also easing stress on employees with tools like shift bidding and agent portals.

Five9 allows users to easily purchase and assign phone numbers, evaluate agents based on skills, and forecast staffing and scheduling needs with multiple built-in forecasting methods across channels and skills while NICE CXone uses AI and machine learning to power omnichannel forecasting and scheduling. Both providers also feature self-service scheduling for agents, with built-in shift bidding when multiple agents want the same time slot.

Both Five9 and NICE include the following workforce management (WFM) tools:

  • Forecasting: Use static or dynamic scheduling views that consider and display each agent’s FTEs to optimize schedules based on skills and weekly work hour requirements
  • Scheduling: View up-to-date schedules that take into account agent breaks, lunch, meetings, and training/coaching time. The NICE system also re-forecasts during the day as needed, providing up-to-date schedule reports
  • Agent portals: Within the app, agents can view their schedules, request time off, trade shifts, and message their supervisor
  • Adherence view: Supervisors can view an agent’s screen display and app usage–monitoring performance and efficiency
  • Scoring and evaluation: Supervisors can listen to call recordings and transcripts, or view digital messaging conversations, evaluating agents and providing feedback across channels. Supervisors can create custom evaluation forms and coaching packages, to tailor feedback for each agent.
  • Gamification: Live performance dashboards for agents, with game-style presentations for engagement
  • AI-based evaluation: NICE uses language processing to analyze interactions and evaluate agents across a range of sentiment and category types, for advanced feedback and scoring
  • Drag-and-drop form creator: Create form templates, combining KPIs and custom metrics to provide streamlined and consistent agent feedback

 

AI and Automations

enlighten actions nice cxone wfm

Summary: Five9 leverages AI to create automated workflows and facilitate agent and supervisor support while NICE CXone uses AI primarily for self-service chatbots and a GenAI agent assist tool called NEVA.

Five9 excels in workflow automations, allowing users to build complex and multi-event triggers based on business rules, automatically handling workflows like sending a follow-up or order-confirmation SMS to a customer after an interaction, notifying a supervisor via Slack about important activity, and more.

Five9 also includes the following automation features:

  • Proactive notifications: Automate outbound texts, emails, and calls for a variety of customer-service purposes: appointment reminders, billing updates, order statuses, and outage or closure alerts.
  • Agent Assist: AI that analyzes call transcripts to offer live next steps and knowledge base suggestions, as well as call summaries once the call is completed. Agent Assist adds summaries to a CRM system or database of your choice and triggers follow-up actions for agents and supervisors.
  • AI Checklist: Analyzes call intent–using the help of IVR and IVA when relevant–to provide agents a live action-item checklist, with coaching items like HIPAA reminders, objection handling assistance, and upsell opportunities. AI tracks agent speech and checks items off the list throughout the call.
  • Intelligent virtual agent (IVA): Create drag-and-drop multichannel self-service menus that analyze customer language and tone to deliver basic functionality and routing via chat, SMS, or voice. Once the caller is routed to an agent, IVA information is used to contextualize and inform the agent’s service. Choose from 25 natural-sounding voice avatars for your voice menu.

NEVA, CXone’s built-in AI attendant, supports contact center agents across daily tasks, including live interactions, data input, and workflow routines. During live interactions, NEVA provides agents with compliance prompts, next-best-action guidance, relevant sales promotions, and contextual customer data.

Developers can build custom NEVA automations in CXone’s Automation Studio, a low-code cloud-based and local application with a drag-and-drop design interface. NICE users can also customize NEVA’s appearance and design–including links, labels, text, images, and video.

NEVA Discover is a patented task-mining tool that tracks millions of data points and user behaviors to identify repetitive tasks and usage patterns, with the aim of automating new time-saving solutions. AI recommends process optimizations, system enhancements, and training or coaching opportunities.

NICE also allows users to import their own chatbot, purchase one from the CXexchange marketplace, or build one using the no-code builder for any of CXone’s 30 voice and digital channels.

 

Analytics and Reporting

Five9 Analytics

Summary: Five9 offers over 120 real-time and historical reports, while NICE CXone offers 90 reports and dashboards. Five9 also has more options for customizing analytics with various displays including speedometers, charts, line charts, cluster bar charts, stacked column charts, grid charts, and more.

NICE, on the other hand, includes superior AI-powered analytics such as customer sentiment detection and interaction analytics.

Five9 supervisors have live views into IVR and queue activity, agent state, and call distribution statistics, along with the option to customize each display by historical time period.

Five9 reports cover the following:

  • Call distribution and queues
  • Agent activity and performance
  • Call logs and histories
  • Campaigns and outbound dialing results
  • Contacts with interaction history
  • Omnichannel usage, with channel activity and popularity
  • IVR interactions and history

CXone Analytics Standout Features:

  • Enlighten AI: An out-of-the-box analytics solution that scores agents based on AI-detected behavior, customer sentiment, and customer satisfaction metrics. It detects agent soft skills like empathy, listening ability, effective questioning, and self-service promotion.
  • Interaction analytics: CXone gathers thousands of insights and metrics across live customer interactions on all channels, organizing these metrics into hundreds of categories in a repository that supervisors can sort and search.
  • Intuitive dashboards: Supervisors and agents can access over 90 reports and dashboards with real-time and historical insights about trends and call center KPIs, including channel usage, queue activity, and agent performance

 

Pros and Cons of Five9 and NICE CXone

Summary: While Five9 thrives with an easy-to-use agent dashboard and live-interaction display, it does not provide the same depth as competitors when it comes to AI-based automations and analytics. CXone offers highly customizable workflow automations and chatbots, but the software’s agent interface feels clunky and outdated.

 

Five9 Pros

  • Video chat: Enable your customers to make video calls to agents using a mobile device and share what they see with an agent. Agents can also annotate the video feed to help guide customers toward a solution
  • Intuitive and easy-to-use interface: Five9’s platform is extremely user friendly with a forgiving learning curve
  • 6 types of auto dialer: Five9 offers predictive, progressive, power, preview, TCPA, and certified STIR/SHAKEN auto dialers

Five9 Cons

  • Limited data retention: Five9 has less data retention than many competitors with a 120 day limit on contact data and only 60 days for call logs
  • Subpar Customer service: Customers have complained that Five9 customer service is often slow to resolve issues
  • Reporting can feel clunky and basic: Although Five9 offers many metrics and visuals, customizing templates and running reports can be time consuming and the results are often underwhelming

 

NICE CXone Pros

  • Wide-ranging analytics and AI insights: CXone offers users deep business insights via interaction analytics, sentiment analysis, and agent soft skill detection
  • Includes social media monitoring and posting: NICE agents are able to create posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc., respond to comments, and monitor for @mentions right from the agent dashboard
  • Highly customizable chatbots: Chatbots are capable of omnichannel routing, natural language detection and predictive behavior, survey administration, scheduling, knowledge-base recommendations, and voice authentication

NICE CXone Cons

  • Lack of video chat: NICE offers over 30 communication channels but does not include a video chat feature like Five9 and other competitors do
  • Outdated interface: The CXone platform can be clunky and difficult to navigate, particularly the WFM features
  • Limited auto dialer functionality: CXone’s auto dialer only has one mode: predictive, while Five9 has 6 modes

 

 

Which Should You Choose: Five9 or NICE CXone?

Between Five9 and NICE CXone, the best contact center solution for your business depends on several factors: the channels you want, your agents’ sales and customer-support use cases, and how much visibility and monitoring capabilities your supervisors require.

Five9 Is Best For:

  • Outbound call centers: Five9 includes many features for outbound call centers such as international calling, auto dialing, and agent scripting
  • Businesses that need video chat: Five9’s video chat features allows agents to see exactly what customers are looking at and provide precise guidance
  • Large call centers: Five is more expensive than other call center software providers but it offers a high level of reliability and security with lots of advanced features

Five9 is Not Right For:

  • Businesses that want deep insights and advanced analytics: Five9 has a lot of reporting templates and visuals, but it does not offer the deep AI-powered insights that NICE and other platforms provide
  • Small contact centers and startups: Due to its price point and issues with customer service, Five9 is best for larger contact centers
  • Companies that want a voice only solution: Five9 is an omnichannel platform at its core and would be underutilized in a voice only call center

 

NICE CXone Is Best For:

  • Companies that want advanced automations: CXone developers can create automations that combine workflows, callouts, screen elements, data, third-party app integrations, event triggers, and services–like creating appointments, sharing PDF documents, web and MS Office-based tasks, and more
  • Businesses that need customer self-service tools: CXone’s chatbot builder lets users quickly create, test, and maintain conversational AI bots to save money and provide a better customer experience
  • Companies that want a custom solution: NICE CXone is an open platform and users can customize it in an infinite number of ways using pre-built CRM integrations, RESTful APIs and SDKs

NICE CXone Is Not Right For:

  • Low volume contact centers: NICE CXone analytics work best with larger data sets from high volume omnichannel contact centers
  • Companies without an in-house IT department: NICE has an outdated knowledge base and a steep learning curve that can make implementation difficult
  • Businesses that need team collaboration tools: NICE does not include team communication tools such as video conferencing and team messaging