Top 15 Call Center Tools & Features Support Agents Use (2025)

The nature of work has fundamentally changed. As of 2024, nearly 30% of all employees work in a fully remote or hybrid model, a number that continues to grow (Statista). For call and contact centers, this shift means agents are no longer tethered to a central office; they’re delivering critical customer support from home offices and co-working spaces across the globe.

This new shift demands more than a business phone system. Businesses need a sophisticated ecosystem of call center tools that support a distributed workforce, streamline complex call center operations, and help build superior customer experiences.

This guide covers the 15 essential call center tools and platforms that will define call center success in 2025 to help you build your technology stack, from foundational necessities to advanced contact center software.

Top 15 Call Center Tools for 2025

Here are the must-have tools and features to consider when searching for new call center software.

1. Help desk software
2. CRM software
3. Desktop softphone and mobile app
4. Interactive Voice Response
5. Automatic Call Distribution
6. Call scripting
7. Call recording
8. Call queue
9. Predictive dialer
10. Dashboards & call analytics
11. Wallboards
12. Customer satisfaction surveys
13. Workforce management tools
14. AI and automation
15. Compliance and security tools

1. Helpdesk software: Omnichannel customer support solutions

Not every customer wants to call. With research showing that a majority of consumers use email, live chat, and social media for support, an omnichannel approach is essential. Helpdesk software is a central hub for these interactions, consolidating every message — regardless of its source — into a single, unified interface.

This unified inbox eliminates the need for agents to switch between different applications, saving time and reducing the risk of missed requests. More importantly, helpdesk tools use automated ticket routing to intelligently assign issues to the agent with the right expertise. Many also offer extensive self-service knowledge bases where customers can find answers to frequently asked questions 24/7. This is crucial for managing high-volume periods during holidays or sales events.

Key Providers: Zendesk, Freshdesk, Nextiva, HubSpot Service Hub

2. CRM software: Integrated customer relationship management

The lines between customer service and sales are blurring. Integrating your call center with a customer relationship management (CRM) platform is essential for a smooth customer journey. You get a 360-degree view of each customer and synchronize customer data across all touchpoints in real time.

When a call is received, features like Screen Pop instantly display the entire call history — previous purchases, previous support tickets, and recent survey responses. Agents can provide personalized service without customers having to repeat themselves. At the same time, businesses can proactively prevent customer churn, identify upselling opportunities, and increase customer loyalty and customer lifetime value.

Key Providers: Nextiva (with built-in CRM), Salesforce Service Cloud, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365

3. Desktop softphone and mobile app: Cloud-based communication

Cloud contact center enables better remote work. Instead of using traditional on-premises hardware, contact centers use Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions that provide agents with powerful desktop softphones and mobile apps.

Cloud solutions help call center agents make and receive incoming calls from any internet-enabled device — whether a laptop at home or a tablet on the go. Download your call center provider’s mobile app, assign licenses, and you’re ready to get started. Just remember to check if the app is compatible with the operating system your devices run on (such as iOS and Android) before committing to a VoIP provider.

Better yet, your agents will have virtual business numbers instead of having to use their personal lines to field support calls. This protects employee privacy and provides automatic failover systems to ensure business continuity during outages. Growing businesses benefit from better seasonal scalability without investing in physical hardware, offering operational flexibility and cost savings.

Key Providers: Nextiva, RingCentral, 8×8, Dialpad

4. Interactive Voice Response (IVR): AI-powered customer self-service

When call volumes surge, a smart Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system is your first line of defense. Far from the frustrating, robotic menus of the past, conversational IVRs use natural language processing (NLP) to understand a caller’s intent in their own words.

The system can then securely authenticate users, provide automated answers to routine inquiries (like account balances or order status), and intelligently route complex issues to the correct human agent. IVRs are adept at handling common requests automatically, reducing wait times, lowering operational costs, and providing 24/7 availability.

Key Providers: Genesys, Nuance, Amazon Connect, Nextiva

5. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD): Skills-based intelligent routing

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) is the brain of your call routing strategy. While an IVR gathers intent, the ACD executes the routing, matching customers with the best-suited agent based on predefined rules.

Skills-based routing can direct a technical query to a certified specialist or a sales call to a top-performing closer. It can also identify high-value customers from your CRM and move them to a priority queue, ensuring your most important clients always receive prompt service. The result is an increase in first-call resolution and a more balanced workload across your team.

Key Providers: Five9, Talkdesk, Avaya, Nextiva

6. Call scripting: AI-powered conversation guidance

A great call script doesn’t create robotic agents but gives them confidence and consistency. Call scripting tools offer dynamic, AI-powered conversation guidance that adapts in real-time to the customer’s needs.

Instead of a static, word-for-word customer service script, these tools offer branching conversation flows and integrate with your knowledge base to surface the right information at the right moment. It’s easy to train new agents, ensure regulatory compliance in sensitive industries like finance and healthcare, and guide agents through complex troubleshooting scenarios.

Key Providers: Balto, Salesforce Einstein, Oracle Service Cloud, Zendesk Guide

7. Call recording: Quality assurance and compliance

Quality assurance is key in a customer-facing role. Call recording provides the foundation needed for effective training, compliance verification, and dispute resolution. Call center platforms automatically record and transcribe all conversations, storing them in a secure, searchable archive. However, the power lies in the analytics.

Call recording tools with integrated emotion and sentiment analysis can automatically flag phone calls where a customer is upset, while keyword detection can monitor for compliance adherence or mentions of a competitor. Quality assurance and analytics tools turn recording from a passive storage tool into a platform for quality improvement.

Key Providers: Nextiva, Verint, CallMiner, NICE

8. Call queue: Intelligent wait time management

No one likes being on hold, but a well-managed call queue can make the experience tolerable, and even productive. Instead of sending callers to a frustrating busy signal or voicemail, a call queue places them in a virtual line and provides dynamic wait time estimates.

The best call center software offer a callback option, freeing the customer to go about their day until an agent is ready. This hold time can also be used to share valuable brand messaging or promotional offers, turning a negative into a positive engagement that reduces call abandonment.

Key Providers: Most call center platforms like Nextiva, Talkdesk, and Genesys offer this as a standard feature, with advanced analytics available in higher tiers.

9. Predictive dialer: Smart dialing tool

For any team focused on outbound campaigns — whether for sales, lead generation, or customer support — a predictive dialer is a massive productivity multiplier. Predictive dialers use an AI algorithm to dial multiple phone numbers simultaneously, filtering out busy signals, voicemails, and dropped lines. An agent is only connected when a person answers the call.

According to InsideSales, outbound call centers can increase agent talk time from 15 minutes per hour to 48 minutes per hour. To ensure compliance with regulations like the TCPA, top-notch dialers also offer features like time zone detection and automatic scrubbing against DNC lists.

Key Providers: Five9, Genesys, Aspect, NICE

10. Dashboards and call analytics: Real-time performance intelligence

You cannot improve what you cannot measure. Call analytics provides customizable dashboards with real-time insights into crucial call center metrics like call volume, average handle time, and first-call resolution. Beyond real-time monitoring, predictive analytics can help with strategic planning by forecasting future call volumes and staffing needs.

By drilling down into team and individual agent performance, managers can identify bottlenecks, spot coaching opportunities, and make informed decisions that optimize the entire operation.

Key Providers: Nextiva, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Calabrio

11. Wallboards: Gamified performance displays

While dashboards are for deep analysis, wallboards are for immediate motivation. These large, publicly displayed screens distill your most important real-time KPIs — like calls in queue, team sales targets, or CSAT scores — into a highly visible format.

Incorporating gamification elements like leaderboards and achievement badges, wallboards tap into the innate human desire to compete and succeed. This creates a sense of transparency and shared purpose, keeping the team aligned on key goals and celebrating wins together in real-time and increasing call center productivity.

Key Providers: Most analytics providers offer wallboard functionality. Specialized vendors include Geckoboard and Plecto.

12. Customer satisfaction surveys: Automated feedback collection

The most direct way to measure the customer experience is simply to ask. Contact centers can automate collecting feedback by sending a CSAT survey via email or SMS the moment an interaction ends.

You’ll get a constant stream of qualitative and quantitative data on everything from agent friendliness to product knowledge. Real-time alerts can immediately notify a manager of negative feedback, enabling swift service recovery to turn a poor experience into a positive one and prevent customer churn.

Key Providers: SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, and integrated tools within platforms like Nextiva and Delighted.

13. Workforce management (WFM): Scheduling and forecasting solutions

Having the right number of skilled agents available at the right time is one of the most complex challenges in a call center. WFM tools solve this with AI-powered forecasting to accurately predict call volumes.

Based on these forecasts, WFM platforms generate optimized schedules that account for agent skills, shift preferences, workflows, and break times. According to a Forrester study, businesses using cloud WFM tools can reduce overtime costs by up to 20%. Furthermore, by providing agents with self-service tools for tasks like shift swapping, WFM solutions can lead to a 20-30% increase in productivity and engagement (McKinsey).

Key Providers: Calabrio, NICE, Verint, Assembled

14. AI and automation: Next-gen customer experience technology

Artificial intelligence and automation are all the rage now in the contact center space, and for good. The global call center AI market was valued at $3.23 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach approximately $25.84 billion by 2034. AI technologies automate routine inquiries with sophisticated conversational AI, freeing human agents to focus on high-quality interactions.

Beyond chatbots, real-time agent assist tools listen to conversations and provide in-the-moment coaching and compliance alerts. Speech analytics can automatically score 100% of customer calls for quality assurance, a task that is impossible to do manually. The ROI is clear: Businesses that deploy AI in their contact centers see a 14% increase in agent productivity and up to a 40% reduction in operational costs.

Key Providers: (Integrated Platforms) Nextiva, Five9, (Conversational AI) LivePerson, Google Dialogflow; (Agent Assist) Cogito, Observe.AI; (Speech Analytics) CallMiner, Verint

There are times when you want to proactively alert customers and let them know you’ve identified something on their behalf. By understanding the customer’s profile, preferences, intents, and needs, you can use AI and automation to enhance the human experience across digital channels.

Kate, Nextiva’s Senior Director of Product Marketing.

15. Compliance and security tools: Advanced security and fraud prevention

With the average cost of a data breach now exceeding $4.8 million globally, security is a business necessity. Call centers handling sensitive data must adhere to strict regulations like PCI DSS for payments and HIPAA for healthcare.

Call center security tools are built directly into contact center solution to mitigate these risks. They provide real-time fraud detection using voice biometrics, automatically pause call recordings when payment information is shared, and create detailed audit trails to ensure compliance. Investing in a secure, compliant platform is critical for protecting your customers, your reputation, and your bottom line.

Key Providers: Solutions are typically integrated within secure CCaaS platforms like Nextiva, Genesys, and NICE CXone, which maintain PCI and HIPAA certifications.

What’s the Future of Call Center Tools?

While the tools above define the modern call center, technology is changing constantly. The next wave of innovation will move beyond simply responding to customer needs and creating predictive, immersive, and highly personalized experiences. Here are three key trends to watch.

1. The shift from reactive to proactive support

The traditional customer service model is reactive: A customer has a problem and contacts you. The future lies in proactive customer service, where companies use AI and data from IoT (Internet of Things) devices to detect and resolve issues before the customer even notices them, improving the service quality.

For example, a software tool that detects a user repeatedly encountering an error and automatically opens a support ticket with a solution. Or an energy provider that detects a smart meter reporting anomalies and schedules maintenance before an outage occurs. This “bidirectional” support model, as Forbes describes it, flips the service paradigm, reducing customer effort and building customer loyalty.

Source: Gartner

2. The rise of “Agentic AI”

AI will evolve from “Agent Assist” to “Agentic AI.” AI acts less as a tool and more as a collaborative partner. As defined by the CX Network, this advanced AI can perform complex, multi-step tasks autonomously.

For example, an agent talking to a customer about a return can use Agentic AI to:

• Retrieve the original order and warranty information.
• Check inventory for replacements.
• Create a shipping label and QR code for the return.
• Compose a summary email to the customer.

AI handles administrative tasks simultaneously, allowing the human agent to focus on the conversation, empathy, and solving complex problems. Gartner predicts that automating agent interactions will increase fivefold by 2026. This collaborative approach is the main driver.

3. Immersive support with augmented reality (AR)

For problems with physical products, augmented reality (AR) will improve troubleshooting. Instead of describing a problem over the phone, a customer can use their smartphone camera to show the agent exactly what they see.

The agent can then use AR to display instructions directly on the customer’s screen — for example, circling the correct button, highlighting the correct cable to connect, or displaying step-by-step animations. This technology is already showing impressive results: Some implementations have seen a 35% increase in first-call resolution and a reduction in the need for costly on-site technician visits. Complex product support becomes a simple, guided visual experience.

Nextiva Gives You the Call Center Tools and Features You Need

At the end of the day, the right call center tools are the ones that empower your agents to succeed and make your customers feel valued. As you evaluate your options, focus on the outcomes you want to achieve:

• Reduce after-call work through intelligent automation.
• Create more personal connections by arming agents with full customer context.
• Increase customer understanding with deep analytics and AI-driven insights.
• Reduce indecision by providing agents with real-time guidance.

Nextiva’s call center solution has the tools and features your agents need to be more productive and more successful in their roles. Meanwhile, your customers will be at peace knowing their questions will be answered quickly and efficiently, regardless of how many calls are coming in. If call center performance slips, you’ll have reporting and analytics tools by your side to see where the bottlenecks in your call center are.

A call center solution with this level of flexibility and functionality leads to more satisfied employees and customers.

Frequently Asked Questions About Call Center Tools