Whether your call center’s North Star metric is its customer satisfaction score (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), or return on investment (ROI), you need a platform that can measure and optimize your efforts.
Yet choosing the right solution is more challenging than it might seem. You’re likely wondering a few things, such as:
- Do I need workforce management software or a complete contact center as a service (CCaaS) platform?
- Is artificial intelligence (AI) crucial or just a nice-to-have feature?
- What’s the most employee-friendly option, and how can I get agents on board reliably?
In this guide, we’ll cover the best call center software on the market so you can find the right option for your team and take steps to improve agent performance immediately. Let’s begin with our contact center management solution, Time Doctor.
1. Time Doctor: Best overall call center performance management software
Time Doctor is a workday analytics platform ideal for outsourced call centers. This software provides the transparency, accountability, and insights call centers need for true workforce optimization.
Key features
From attendance and activity monitoring to productivity and work-life balance insights, let’s walk through Time Doctor’s call center workforce management features.
Agent activity tracking to provide maximum transparency
When are your agents clocking in, and how are they spending their work hours? Time Doctor tracks agent activity non-intrusively, with either automated or manual controls.
Once you input agent schedules, you can easily monitor on-time arrivals and workday activity. Time Doctor automatically monitors the websites and apps your team uses so you can see how call center agents are utilizing their time.
Want to share that data with call center clients? Time Doctor supports client logins so you can provide transparency, prove value, and retain clients.
Call center productivity insights to increase efficiency
Are your agents actively spending most of their shifts working? Do they waste time on apps and sites unrelated to sales or customer service?
With Time Doctor, you can create customized lists of productive and unproductive websites. The software automatically charts both, giving you greater visibility into how your agents work.
While Time Doctor doesn’t log keystrokes, the software does detect keyboard and mouse activity, including idle time. Using these insights, you can spot and address distractions to increase productivity.
Work-life balance insights to improve agent retention
Concerned your agents are putting in too many hours and at risk of burnout?
Call centers can be demanding environments. But when you manage distributed teams, you can’t always see who’s struggling. Time Doctor automatically generates work-life balance insights to reveal the teams and agents most likely to be overworked.
With this data, you can reduce workloads or offer time off to let agents rebalance. As a result, you can cultivate more engaged employees and improve retention center-wide.
Software integrations to optimize processes and cut costs
Time Doctor integrates with major customer relationship management (CRM) and help desk tools like HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Intercom. The Time Doctor API (application programming interface) supports integrations with countless other apps so your team can build the ideal tech stack.
Are your agents not using certain tools as much as you’d anticipated? Time Doctor’s insights can help you cut costs by eliminating apps you don’t need or licenses you don’t use.
Pricing
Time Doctor plans start at $7/agent per month.
2. Route 101: Best for workforce engagement management
Route 101 is a cloud-based contact center solution that aims to enhance the customer experience and improve employee engagement. The software connects customer interactions, identifies key drivers of customer satisfaction, and enables agents to provide superior service.
Key features
- Offers agent feedback and uses gamification to encourage improvement and collaboration
- Generates agent scorecards using customizable key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Identifies areas that need improvement to simplify agent training programs
Pricing
Contact Route 101 for pricing.
3. Call Center Studio: Best contact center as a service option
Call Center Studio is a CCaaS solution designed to create frictionless customer experiences. The platform supports inbound and outbound calls plus interactions across live chat and messaging apps.
Key features
- Measures common call center KPIs like first call resolution (FCR), average handling time (AHT), and CSAT
- Offers insights for increasing efficiency and providing more effective customer support
- Provides real-time feedback to give supervisors the tools they need to improve agent training
Pricing
Contact Call Center Studio for pricing.
4. Observe.AI: Best for real-time coaching and training
Observe.AI is a conversation intelligence platform engineered for contact centers. The software analyzes customer interactions across channels to generate insights, provide coaching, and help managers reach essential business goals.
Key features
- Scores agents and teams and automatically identifies best and worst performers
- Offers custom coaching based on knowledge gaps and missed opportunities
- Tracks historical data and agent improvement so supervisors know what’s working
Pricing
Contact Observe.AI for pricing.
5. Dialpad: Best for AI-powered performance management
Dialpad is customer intelligence software that uses AI tech to provide real-time insights and guidance. Its design helps contact centers improve CSAT in the short term, which can impact everything from revenue metrics to NPS in the long term.
Key features
- Generates call transcriptions and analyzes sentiment in real time to help agents provide better customer service
- Includes quality assurance scorecards to help supervisors monitor agent and team performance
- Has workforce engagement management and forecasting tools to improve the agent experience
Pricing
Contact Dialpad for pricing.
6. RingCentral: Best for customer experience management
RingCentral is a communication platform that links and tracks customer interactions across phone, messaging, SMS, and fax. It helps agents provide better support faster by focusing on metrics like CSAT and ROI.
Key features
- Has conversational AI that analyzes customer interactions across digital channels
- Generates actionable insights that help agents improve service and customer loyalty
- Enhances agent performance with AI-powered tools, omnichannel engagement, and outbound outreach
Pricing
Contact RingCentral for pricing.
7. Insightful: Best for monitoring inbound and outbound agents
Insightful is a workforce management tool that monitors call center agent time and activity. The platform automatically generates real-time insights that managers can use to increase productivity and improve performance.
Key features
- Tracks call times and quotas to analyze agent productivity in real time
- Generates behavioral insights to help team leaders understand and incentivize agent performance
- Uses historical data to optimize agents’ schedules and allocate client resources
Pricing
Insightful plans start at $8/employee per month.
8. EvaluAgent: Best contact center quality assurance software
EvaluAgent is a conversation analytics platform engineered to improve call center quality. The software provides performance insights, business intelligence, and automated coaching to help contact centers scale.
Key features
- Evaluates the quality of all customer interactions and provides insights to increase customer retention
- Gives call center agents live feedback and coaching to support professional development
- Has a learning management system (LMS) to address knowledge gaps and enable agent upskilling
Pricing
EvaluAgent plans start at £18/user per month.
9. SharpenCX: Best for customizable call center analytics
SharpenCX is a contact center platform that uses AI and automation to manage agent workflows and customer insights efficiently. The low-code software is fully customizable, so teams can easily find and act on essential performance analytics.
Key features
- Records and measures customer touchpoints across channels on a unified dashboard
- Supports AI-powered decision-making to improve agent performance and customer experiences
- Automates agent coaching and provides complete visibility into progress and comparative metrics
Pricing
SharpenCX plans start at $79 per license.
Taking the first step to improve call center performance
Want to implement a top call center quality management tool today? Get a Request a demo and discover how our workday analytics platform enables your team to make smarter decisions for clients, customers, and agents.
Andy is a technology & marketing leader who has delivered award-winning and world-first experiences.