What is Inbound Contact Center Software? 

Inbound call center software allows companies to manage their incoming customer calls efficiently without having a physical call center space. Your customer support team needs a laptop, headphones, and a reliable internet connection to solve your customers’ queries. 

Advanced inbound call center solutions can route calls to the appropriate agents or departments based on the customer's inquiry, whether it's a support query, sales inquiry, or any other customer interaction. This ensures that your customer’s needs are addressed promptly and efficiently. 

Happy customers equal higher net promoter score (NPS), customer satisfaction score (CSAT), agent handle time (AHT), and first call resolution (FCR). These core key performance indicators (KPIs) will result in loyal customers, increased revenue, and better customer service, influencing customers' purchasing decisions and helping you outwin competition.

The inbound call software you choose will be the first point of contact for most customers, which means it plays a vital role in shaping their perceptions of a brand. The right software will improve customer satisfaction and loyalty and become a business-critical growth driver. 

Must-Have Features of Inbound Contact Center Software

When choosing an inbound call center solution, you should look for several key features:

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR): It allows customers to interact with the company’s system via voice or touch-tone keypad. It can provide automated responses to common inquiries or route calls to the appropriate department, thereby reducing wait times and improving customer support  
• Call Queuing: This ensures incoming calls are directed to the most suitable agent or team based on pre-established rules and criteria. An effective call-routing process can speed up call resolution times and improve customer satisfaction

• Omnichannel interactions: Customers expect seamless omnichannel interactions across multiple channels, including voice, email, chat, social media, and SMS. An inbound contact center software that enables efficient management and integration of disparate customer channels is a must for customer-centric brands

• Workforce management system (WFM): It helps with forecasting call volumes, scheduling staff, tracking key performance metrics, and managing real-time compliance. WFM can significantly improve operational efficiency and agent productivity

• Analytics and reporting: Allows customer support leaders to collect real-time data about the performance of their call centers. It can help identify trends, monitor agent productivity, and make informed decisions to improve operations
• Third-party integrations: Choose software that integrates well with your existing systems and tools such as the CRM you use 
• Support: Reliable customer support is essential. Make sure your inbound call software provider offers responsive and helpful support

Metrics that Skyrocket When you Invest in the Right Inbound Call Center Software

Investing in inbound contact center software can bring numerous benefits to your business:

1. Improves customer retention: By providing quick and efficient customer service, you can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, leading to higher customer retention rates
2. Enhances agent efficiency: Features like call routing and IVR can reduce the agent workload, allowing them to focus on more complex tasks that require human intervention and improve overall efficiency
3. Streamlines operations: Inbound call center solutions can automate many routine tasks, leading to more streamlined operations and lower operating costs
4. Enhances inbound call management: With features like call recording and real-time analytics, gain valuable insights into your inbound call traffic and improve your call management strategies

5 Best Inbound Contact Center Software Solutions 

1. Plivo CX

Plivo CX’s inbound call center software is designed to revolutionize your customer interactions. Effortlessly manage high call volumes, route calls to the right agents, and deliver exceptional service across all channels. Additionally, the seamless integration of data from different platforms solves a big challenge customer support leaders often face—data silos. 

It can be a useful tool in your CX arsenal with the power to delight customers across multiple channels without losing the human touch. 

Plivo CX key features

• Consistent and personalized customer support service across multiple channels, including voice, email, chat, social media, and SMS; with all platforms in sync
• Smart call routing ensures that calls reach the most qualified agent reducing wait times and boosting customer satisfaction 
• Reduced wait times and improved customer satisfaction during peak hours with Plivo CX's call queuing feature, decreasing customer wait time and call abandonment
• Leverage real-time call center data to identify trends, monitor agent productivity, and make data-driven decisions that optimize operations
• Streamline your workflow by integrating business systems into a unified communications screen, putting essential data at your fingertips
• Access and update relevant customer information seamlessly within Plivo CX, thanks to two-way API integration
• Empower your agents to multitask seamlessly with Plivo CX's concurrent messaging capabilities
• Uncover valuable growth insights by leveraging internal notes and conversation dispositions within Plivo CX's reporting dashboard

Plivo CX limitations

• Lacks features related to quality assurance and workforce management

Plivo CX pricing

• Growth: $29/user/month
• Business: $69/user/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Plivo CX ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.5/5 (700+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.3/5 (80+ reviews) 

2. LiveAgent

LiveAgent tackles high-volume customer interactions across multiple channels with its versatile software suite. Ticketing systems, knowledge bases, search widgets, and mobile apps, empower businesses to deliver exceptional service. 

LiveAgent key features

• Build interactive voice response (IVR) systems with LiveAgent's IVR Designer Tool, even without technical expertise. This tool allows you to record or upload audio directly within the IVR tree for a seamless creation experience
• Store and analyze past interactions for training resources with unlimited call recordings 
• Gain valuable customer insights with the screen pop feature, which automatically displays relevant information when a live agent receives a call 

LiveAgent limitations (taken from G2)

• LiveAgent's interface can be a bit complex, with a learning curve 
• Issues with the mobile app's functionality impacting the ability to manage tasks efficiently. This hinders responsiveness and flexibility in customer service delivery
• Lack of direct integrations with popular CRM systems and other applications creates a gap in the user workflow. This requires workarounds or additional tools that don’t work well with the inbound contact center software

LiveAgent pricing

• Small: $9/agent/month
• Medium: $29/agent/month
• Large: $49/agent/month
• Enterprise: $69/agent/month 

LiveAgent reviews and ratings

• G2: 4.5/5 (1000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (1000+ reviews) 

3. Zendesk

Zendesk stands out in the inbound call center software market, emphasizing simplicity and efficiency and making customer service operations smooth and hassle-free. The preferred inbound call center solution for enterprise-level businesses. 

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Zendesk key features

• Distribute calls based on agent skills, availability, and workload with Zendesk's smart call distribution feature 
• Make data-driven decisions that go beyond providing real-time data with insightful reporting and analytics 
• Omnichannel agent workspace to organize customer data 

Zendesk limitations (taken from Capterra) 

• Occasional bugs within the call functionality impacts call quality and user experience
• Cumbersome admin panel management due to separate systems for managing tickets and automations/workflows

Zendesk pricing

• Suite Team: $55/user/month
• Suite Growth: $89/user/month
• Suite Pro: $115/user/month
• Suite Enterprise: Custom pricing
• Suite Enterprise Plus: Custom pricing

Zendesk reviews and ratings

• G2: 4.3/5 (5000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.4/5 (3000+ reviews) 

4. Nextiva

Nextiva is an AI-powered inbound contact center software. Users save up to 50% of the time per interaction with the AI-powered voice and chatbot. The auto transcription feature reduces agent note-taking, allowing your agents to focus on high-priority tickets. 

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If your customer support team caters to customer communications through SMS, voice, chat, email, video, and social media, Nextiva’s unified platform simplifies agent experiences and interactions across channels. 

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Nextiva key features

• Replace multi-level phone menus with automated call flows using advanced IVR technology featuring speech recognition and text-to-speech
• Gain rich customer insights with the screen pop feature that automatically provides relevant information when a live agent receives a call
• Transform routine interactions into natural exchanges with Nextiva's conversational AI add-on

Nextiva limitations (taken from G2 & Capterra)

• Lacks diverse integration options with other third-party apps
• Users experience difficulty with account management. Grasping the nuances between various account types (user, team, extensions) and their relationship to phone numbers is complex

Nextiva pricing

• Custom pricing

Nextiva reviews and ratings

• G2: 4.5/5 (3000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.4/5 (90+ reviews) 

5. Aircall

If you’re looking for a call center solution that integrates with your helpdesk and CRM to fetch customer/user details and take away manual labor, Aircall is the solution for you. Get weekly analysis on customer wait times and keep track of the activity fee in real time to see the calls coming through. 

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Aircall key features

• Collaborate seamlessly with Aircall's shared call inbox feature that ensures no customer query goes unanswered 
• Effortlessly manage customer relationships with Aircall's contact management features—easily assign, tag, and add comments to contacts
• seamlessly integrates with popular CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot, providing a unified customer service experience

Aircall limitations (taken from G2)

• Stability issues with the application requires agents to close and reopen to resolve problems, thus disrupting workflows and impacting customer service delivery
• Lacks call handling flexibility as it doesn’t direct incoming calls to employee voicemails

Aircall pricing

• Essentials: $30/user/month - minimum 3 users
• Professional: $50/user/month - minimum 3 users
• Custom: Custom pricing

Aircall reviews and ratings

• G2: 4.3/5 (900+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.3/5 (400+ reviews) 

Use an Inbound Contact Center Software to Manage Customer Interactions at Scale 

An inbound call center solution is like a Swiss Army Knife—it improves customer satisfaction and customer support agent’s productivity. 

We recommend signing up on Plivo CX if you’re a small or mid-sized business or an e-Commerce/Shopify brand. 

With its human-centric and intuitive platform, agents can provide scalable customer service, and customer support managers can improve CX KPIs.