Top 5 Digital Contact Center Solutions for Modern Businesses

In the old days, or even today, for some businesses trying to extract as much value as possible out of their legacy systems, on-premises call center PBXs had agents tied to their desks — limited to the functionality that exists on site.

Today, or perhaps in your future model, the contact center is digital. With a cloud-first approach, customer service is no longer confined to phone calls, and agents are no longer stuck in the office.

Everything today is omnichannel by default. Call center agents (and all staff) can work wherever there’s a sufficient internet connection.

That means businesses that want to stay competitive both in terms of talent attraction and customer satisfaction must become a digital customer care operation.

What Is a Digital Contact Center?

A digital contact center is a cloud-based platform that consolidates customer interactions across voice, messaging, chat, social, and email.

Designed for distributed workforces like those operating in multiple locations or with home-based agents, there is no reliance on physical hardware. Instead, you subscribe to a cloud provider and use it over the internet.

Compared to a call center, you get digital-first elements like AI-driven self-service, proactive engagement, and unified routing. You also unlock access to new channels like social media, SMS, email, and web chat.

Example: A customer starts with a chatbot on a website, then needs to leave their laptop. They switch to an SMS conversation to keep the chat going on the move. Then, if necessary, they escalate to a live voice call to help iron out the finer details. All the while, this interaction (and all data and analytics associated with it) gets tracked seamlessly in one system.

Core Features of Digital Contact Centers

When moving to a digital contact center, you’ll satisfy all your contact center requirements in a single pane of glass. What’s more, you get access to new channels, analytics, and online integrations with your existing line of business apps.

Omnichannel communication

Customers hate repeating themselves across channels, like when they start a chat on a website and then need to call for further information. Shouldn’t it be the case that the advisor knows why they’re calling, or at the very least can recall their previous chat for context?

That’s exactly what omnichannel enables.

How it works: Digital contact centers keep a constant customer history visible to agents, whether the interaction began on chat, email, phone, SMS, or social media.

The digital contact center architecture is made up of as many digital channels as you wish to enable and tied together on the back end. That means while you serve your customer on their channel of choice, you’re also gathering customer data, and the built-in analytics software is processing it to translate into customer insights.

AI-powered automation

Contact center automation comes with features like automated FAQs, auto attendants, and chatbots.

These automation tools route inquiries to the best agent and assist live agents with real-time suggestions. In some cases, you can configure the first step (auto attendant/chatbot) to handle the basic inquiries at the start of a customer interaction.

Example: A chatbot can handle simple queries like sending the most recent invoice or first-line troubleshooting steps. If your customer still needs help, the chatbot will then escalate complex customer issues to a qualified human rep with full context.

Self-service options

The goal of self-service in contact centers is twofold:

• Deflect repetitive requests (like account balances or order status) away from live agents to save their time for more value-added, complex, empathetic inquiries.
• Provide customers with what they need in the fastest possible time (i.e., without holding in a queue for an agent to become available).

You do this by introducing tools like:

• Interactive voice response (IVR) systems
• Conversational AI chatbots
• 24/7 knowledge bases

These enable customers to get quick resolutions to their queries without taking up agent resources that are needed for specialist inquiries. Starting with basic options to direct customers, you can build these IVRs and chatbots to use AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to start serving more and more complex inquiries.

Agent empowerment

Agents need more than just a phone line. They need insights.

Digital contact center features like AI Agent Assist mean they get access to a live coach at all times. Inside their agent console, when keywords get mentioned or specific sentiment (negativity, sales signals, etc.) gets detected, the online agent pops up with suggestions for how to steer the call or with recommended resources.

Alongside this, agents get access to AI-assisted conversation notes, customer relationship management (CRM) pop-ups, and unified dashboards with all customer information and purchases.

This not only reduces agent burnout and constant app switching but it also improves first call resolution times and the overall customer journey.

Real-time metrics and analytics

Regardless of channel, supervisors can monitor queue health, agent performance, and customer sentiment in real time. Armed with this data, they can adjust staff rotas and launch internal investigations when there’s a spike in a certain channel or topic that day.

Example: AI flags spikes in refund-related calls, prompting managers to investigate systemic issues.

CRM and app integrations

Customer interactions are meaningless without full context. If you’re flying blind, customers are only going to give you a small grace period before they get frustrated.

Integrating your most-used apps into your contact center is easy when it’s cloud-based. You just use the pre-built API connection to join them together. Once connected, agents see purchase history, preferences, and open tickets in one view.

Integrations:

• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Zendesk
• Slack

Benefits of a Digital Contact Center

So you’ve got all the new digital channels, you’ve introduced self-service, and your agents have better access and more time for quality responses. Let’s see how that translates in the wider remit of your contact center.

Better customer experience

Faster resolution, personalization, and flexibility to use preferred channels are more than likely the top three requirements of every business’s customer base.

If you can meet the expectations of digital-native generations (Millennials, Gen Z, etc.) while streamlining your calling and self-service processes, you’re improving everyone’s experience.

Improved agent satisfaction

It’s not just customers that benefit from your implementation of a digital contact center. When you free up agents to spend time on what matters (and less time on menial, repetitive tasks), their job satisfaction is going to skyrocket.

Empowered agents are more productive and less stressed. Higher retention means less hiring and training overhead. It’s a win-win scenario for customers, agents, and the wider business.

Operational efficiency

When agents no longer need to carry out so many manual tasks (e.g., transferring calls) or handle so many basic inquiries, they’re free to spend time on more complex issues. You’re no longer paying a salary to conduct work that could be carried out by a system.

If you can automate repetitive work and use AI routing to optimize workloads, the impact on your bottom line is considerable.

It’s not just agent resources that benefit here, either. Supervisors manage performance proactively instead of reactively. With notifications and generative AI prompts, they can see what’s about to happen and step in before a situation escalates.

Cost savings

It would be remiss not to mention the need to save money. When you move to a digital contact center, you eliminate the on-premises infrastructure and associated maintenance.

What’s more, the reduction in operating costs, thanks to self-service, means your investment keeps on giving, years into your new service.

Your return on investment (ROI) when moving to a digital contact center can be almost immediate, as a “pay-as-you-grow” cloud model lets you scale up or down instantly. That means you don’t need to overbuy licenses in case you add more users in the future.

👉 Calculate your digital contact center savings with our ROI calculator here.

Top 5 Digital Contact Center Solutions

To provide a genuine digital customer experience, you need the right software as your foundation.

These five contact center solutions are widely considered the best in the market for many businesses taking their first step into a digital customer experience function.

1. Nextiva (best overall)

Nextiva is a digital contact center platform with voice, SMS, chat, video, and CRM in one. Agents get access to everything they need to serve customers in the most efficient manner possible.

This gets coupled with self-service options like knowledge management and automated call handling to provide a balance of agent productivity and customer excellence.

AI features:

• Transcriptions
• Self-service IVRs
• Sentiment analysis
• Post-call automation
• Real-time Agent Assist
• Automated action items
• Smart routing with language translation

Known for: High uptime (99.999%), 24/7 award-winning customer support, and ease of setup and use from day one.

Ideal for: Businesses that want scalability without complexity.

AI – Cedar Financial – Nextiva Sales Testimonals

2. Five9

Five9 is a full omnichannel solution with AI assist and workforce management. As a cloud-based contact center, it naturally comes with strong built-in analytics and a wide range of integrations with CRMs and line-of-business apps.

AI features:

• Agentic experience engine
• AI trust and governance layer
• Five9 AI agents
• Intelligent virtual agents
• Agent Assist with real-time coaching

Known for: AI-first and self-service approach to customer engagement.

Ideal for: Mid-to-large organizations needing enterprise-grade scale.

👉 Nextiva and Five9 Team Up to Help Businesses Deliver Seamless Customer Communications

3. Dialpad AI contact center

Dialpad is an AI-first design with real-time transcription and agent coaching. From day one, Dialpad has been about providing self-service and automation to more forward-thinking contact centers.

AI features:

• Real-time call transcription and live sentiment analysis
• Automated query deflection
• Chatbots with answer summaries
• Automated interaction evaluation
• Post-call automation

Known for: AI CSAT tool that infers satisfaction without surveys.

Ideal for: Sales and support teams who want AI-heavy features.

4. Genesys Cloud CX

Genesys is a robust contact center as a service platform for enterprises with predictive engagement and global reach. With a traditional focus on large, complex rollouts, Genesys has been viewed as specializing in hybrid and distributed contact center implementations.

AI features:

• Agent Copilot with real-time assistance
• Supervisor copilot for quality assurance
• Virtual supervisors
• Predictive routing
• Virtual agent generation
• Autonomous task orchestration

Known for: Being highly customizable with strong compliance support.

Ideal for: Large enterprises with complex workflows.

5. NiCE CXone

NiCE CXone, despite its funky spelling, is an advanced contact center that includes workforce optimization, speech analytics, and AI copilots. Considered the choice for large businesses in highly regulated industries (think financial services), NiCE has a powerful AI engine and a wide array of next-gen features.

AI features:

• AI virtual assistant
• Copilot for real-time agent support
• Auto summary for automated note-taking
• Intelligent customer matching
• CSAT AI
• Agentic AI deployment

Known for: Being rich in automation and compliance features.

Ideal for: Regulated industries and large-scale operations.

Nextiva: Turning Service Into Growth

Digital contact centers evolve your team from a cost center into a strategic growth engine. By introducing new communication channels, self-service, and operational efficiencies, you don’t just transform your technology but your entire business.

At the heart of any digital transformation must be a solid foundation of technology. Nextiva equips teams with the tools and support to transform every customer interaction into long-term loyalty and revenue growth.

Want to get a first-hand view of Nextiva? Learn more about the top-ranked digital contact center here. 👇