Twilio Flex and Five9 come up quite a lot in contact center conversations — and for good reason. They’ve been around for a while, offering advanced capabilities and features to help businesses manage agent-customer interactions across channels.
If you’re considering investing in either of these platforms, you need to know exactly what they offer to make the right choice.
In this article, we’ll dig into their pricing, features, and everything in between to see which contact center comes out on top. We’ll also show you how Nextiva compares as a third option.
Five9 vs. Twilio Flex: The Pros
Here’s a quick look at the top features of these two contact center platforms.
Pros of Five9
Five9 is a comprehensive cloud contact center solution that improves customer experiences, agent productivity, and business operations through a suite of advanced features and services.
Being a cloud-based solution, Five9 offers flexibility, scalability, and reliability. Businesses can scale their operations up or down based on demand without needing to invest in physical infrastructure. The cloud model also ensures a seamless rollout of updates and new features without significant downtime.
1. Omnichannel routing
This component allows businesses to manage interactions across various channels seamlessly. By routing customer inquiries to the most appropriate agent based on their skills, availability, and customer history, Five9 ensures the efficient handling of customer needs.
The omnichannel capabilities are built on a universal queue that integrates voice, video, chat, email, and social media interactions.
2. Interactive voice response
Five9’s interactive voice response system enhances the customer experience by providing self-service options and directing callers to the right agent or department with voice commands or keypad inputs.
It supports natural language processing for more intuitive interaction and can integrate with external databases for personalized caller experiences.
3. Workforce optimization
The workforce optimization (WFO) feature encompasses tools for quality management, performance monitoring, and workforce management. It includes features like call recording, speech analytics, agent scheduling, and real-time analytics to ensure that the contact center operates efficiently and effectively.
The WFO tools help managers make data-driven decisions to improve agent performance and customer satisfaction.
4. CRM integration
Five9 integrates with major CRM platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, and Zendesk. This integration provides agents with immediate access to customer information, enabling personalized and informed interactions.
The CRM integration helps to reduce call times and improve customer satisfaction by making relevant data accessible to agents during calls.
5. Advanced outbound dialing options
Five9 offers multiple auto dialers for efficient call center management.
For example, its predictive dialer automates outbound calls, freeing time for actual customer conversations. It also has a power dialing option that’s useful for outbound campaigns where agents need to contact a large number of prospects quickly.
Need to familiarize yourself with a customer before a call? Use Preview Dialing to view past customer interactions and get real-time context about your relationship with them for more personalized interactions.
6. Artificial intelligence and automation
Get real-time insights into your contact center performance with Five9’s unified interactions dashboard, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Here, you can track metrics such as the total number of calls, average chat handle time, and average response speed.
You’ll use this data to adapt your contact center strategies to meet customers’ evolving expectations. For example, if you notice a drop in call response time, you can plan to hire more agents to increase capacity and efficiency across the board.
Five9 also leverages AI to enhance customer interactions and agent productivity. Features like AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can handle routine inquiries, freeing agents to focus on more complex issues.
7. Excellent customer support
Five9 has a highly responsive support team that’s available to answer questions 24/7. In one customer’s words:
“Five9 has great customer support. Issues are always resolved in a timely manner, and they stay in constant communication with you with updates so you always know the status of your issue being resolved.”
You can contact the support team via online chat, phone, and email. You can also use the self-service documentation to troubleshoot and resolve issues independently.
Pros of Twilio Flex
Twilio Flex is a fully programmable cloud contact center platform that provides businesses with the flexibility to customize every aspect of their customer interaction workflow.
Unlike traditional contact center solutions, Twilio Flex allows for deep customization and integration, enabling businesses to tailor the platform to their specific needs.
1. Highly customizable platform
Twilio Flex offers a user interface that is completely customizable and extendable through code. This means businesses can design their own workflows, user interfaces, and integration points.
The platform uses a combination of React and Twilio’s own APIs, allowing for a high degree of customization and flexibility.
2. Extensive integration capabilities
In addition to its customization capabilities, Twilio Flex also integrates with multiple third-party tools, helping you build a more robust contact center.
For example, you can connect Twilio Flex to Glance to enable co-browsing and screen sharing on the platform. You can also sync Twilio Flex with your CRM to deliver up-to-date customer information to agents directly.
3. Broad omnichannel support
With the Flex Conversation API, you can integrate all your customer touchpoints, such as SMS, MMS, and online messaging apps like WhatsApp, into one central platform to monitor interactions efficiently. This helps you deliver omnichannel customer experiences at scale.
Let’s say a customer sends a message via online chat, then later continues the conversation via SMS. They won’t have to repeat what they shared earlier because you can track their interactions in a single platform.
4. Extensive documentation
Twilio Flex has a comprehensive knowledge base with developer tutorials and explainer documents for its features.
This is a beneficial resource for developers, as it helps them quickly understand how to use the platform and start building their solutions without spending too much time figuring things out.
5. Flexibility
Twilio offers flexible pricing plans that cater to businesses of all sizes.
You can choose to pay per active user hour or per agent. The former option means contact centers with seasonal traffic or part-time agents only pay for the hours that they use, while the latter is suitable for large-scale contact centers with a predictable call volume.
Five9 vs. Twilio Flex: The Cons
Here’s why users consider switching from Twilio Flex and Five9 to other contact centers.
Cons of Five9
Some of the challenges users face with Five9 include:
- Technical issues: Multiple user reviews suggest that Five9 customers experience frequent downtime, leading to operational disruptions. Sometimes, the software becomes buggy, and you have to log in and out a few times before it works. If this happens during a crucial customer conversation, it can ruin their experience and perception of your business.
- Connectivity delays: Some customers have also experienced abrupt call drops and connectivity delays, such as a two- to three-second delay between the agent answering and the call connecting. Hear from one of them:
“Five9 sold us on the theory that 99.999% of the time, we would have seamless connectivity and not experience any drop in calls. Less than 15 days after this application was implemented, we experienced dropped calls. Even after a resolution was in place, we continued to have issues with connectivity.”
- Complexity and training: New users might struggle with the tool because of its extensive features. It has a significant learning curve, so it takes quite some time to fully grasp how things work and use the platform effectively.
Cons of Twilio
Some of the challenges users face with Twilio Flex include:
- Navigational challenges: Users have mentioned that finding their way around the Twilio website can be difficult. Despite the extensive documentation, setting up certain functions can be confusing, especially for non-technical users who are new to the platform. Customers struggle to resolve these challenges independently, and Twilio’s support team can be unresponsive:
- Complex setup for multi-channel routing: Some users struggle with implementing multi-channel routing in Twilio Flex. Say a customer contacts your organization on social media and later continues the conversation via email. You won’t be able to assign the new discussion to the original agent on the case. This affects omnichannel delivery, which relies on seamless channel integration.
Comparing Five9 and Twilio vs. Nextiva
Let’s see how Nextiva stacks up against Twilio Flex and Five9.
1. Ease of use
Unlike Five9, Nextiva doesn’t sacrifice usability for features. Our AI-powered contact center platform is easy to implement and use, even if you don’t have any technical experience.
We’ve provided extensive documentation to guide you through every feature, and our support team is always available to answer questions and resolve any issues you might encounter.
Here’s what one of our customers says about our contact center software:
2. Customer service
Customer support is one of Nextiva’s many strengths. Service disruptions negatively impact your customers and their overall contact center experience. That’s why our support team is always available to help you resolve any issues quickly.
3. Value for money and overall user satisfaction
Nextiva has a higher value-for-money rating than Five9, indicating that customers believe the benefits they are receiving from Nextiva’s contact center software outweigh its costs. This is a positive indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
You Get More Value With Nextiva
While all three platforms offer robust features, Nextiva’s user-friendliness, exceptional support, and perceived value make it a compelling choice, particularly for businesses prioritizing ease of use and supportive customer interactions.
