Small Business Contact Center Software: Overview & Key Features

No matter the size of your business, how you handle inbound and outbound customer interactions matters most. Be it a new customer, a prospective one, or someone who’s been with you forever, customer care must be top of your agenda.

But how can you achieve high customer satisfaction without a large support team or contact center software with all the bells and whistles?

Actually, it’s quite easy. You just need a provider that brings omnichannel contact center functionality to small businesses. We have five for you to check out, and all the most important features you should look for.

Let’s start with the must-haves when selecting small business contact center software.

What to Look for When Choosing Small Business Contact Center Software

Let’s start with a promise. This blog post won’t use words like digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI). You might be into those things, but we’re going to make this as relatable as possible and talk about what’s important to you, answering questions like:

• Can you rely on the software all the time?
• What happens when things go wrong?
• Will it meet your strict compliance policies?

Then we’ll dive into some features you can get a little excited about. Because who doesn’t love dashboards and CRM integration, right? 

But before we dive into all that, ask yourself a question:

Call center or contact center?

Do your customers only call, or do they want to reach you via email, live chat, and social media? Your first decision is whether you need a call center or a contact center.

If you’re certain you’ll only handle incoming calls, then a call center is fine. But if you think managing other communication channels is the way to go, then it’s worth checking out an omnichannel contact center instead. You’ll get all the call center features, reporting capabilities, and extra channels (email, live chat, SMS, and social media).

Call Center	Contact Center
Voice calls only	Voice calls, email, live chat, social media, video
Call reports only	Multichannel analytics
Focus on call metrics	Focus on customer engagement
Disjointed customer experience	Connected customer experience
Lacks future expansion capabilities	Able to connect future media channels

With that said, let’s move on to what to consider when selecting small business contact center software.

Reliability

Look for at least 99.999% uptime to minimize downtime and keep your contact center operational. In fact, 99.999% is now the norm for cloud-based call centers. Nextiva, for example, boasts 99.999% with eight points of presence and carrier-grade data centers. No matter your business size, you’ll get enterprise security as standard.

Make sure your vendor has a disaster recovery plan. This will ensure your data and service remain available if either of you suffers an outage. 

Power goes down? There’s a plan for that. ✅

You may also need to adhere to contact center compliance practices, including HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or FINRA. To protect customer data and stay within guidelines, make sure your chosen vendor supports all these regulations.

Pricing

No matter what any salesperson tells you, pricing is important. After all, if you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it. It’s as simple as that.

When researching call center pricing, ask questions about the vendor’s pricing model to fully understand the proposition.

• Is it per agent or per user, and are the plans tiered?
• Should you expect any extra costs for integrations or premium features?
• Are there any hidden fees for professional services, exceeding call caps, etc.?

This is also the time to review contract terms carefully and understand minimum commitment periods and termination clauses. While you may want a long-term partner, looking after yourself must be your top priority.

Customer support

When things go wrong or you’re stuck, you need help. If your business operates 24/7, your call center provider’s support must reflect that. Beyond being ready to answer your calls, your provider must also be available on the channels you find most accessible.

For example, if you can’t talk because of a sensitive situation, then logging a ticket via email might be your only solution. Likewise, if you’re tied up on a call, you can still type, and this is where live chat comes into its own. Fully understand the types of support your vendor offers before signing on the dotted line — including paid professional services.

To get a feel for how vendors treat customers, ask peers for advice. Gauge the vendor’s customer support reputation by checking customer reviews on forums like GetVoIP, Capterra, and G2.

Top Contact Center Vendors for Small Businesses

Let’s explore five companies that excel in providing small business contact center software solutions. Yes, we’ve included ourselves (Nextiva). And for good reason! Let’s find out why.

1. Nextiva

Nextiva is a unified communications provider that offers a cloud-based contact center solution, plus a business phone system, video conferencing, and collaboration tools.

Pros	Cons
Quick and simple setup	No free trial
Affordable for businesses of all sizes	No support for on-premises deployments
New advanced AI features	Lack of integrations with niche business apps

For inbound call centers, expect a wide range of features, including:

• Skills-based routing
• Call recording
• Advanced Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
• Analytics for measuring agent performance and caller behavior
• Omnichannel access to email, web chat, SMS, and social media

For outbound call centers (like sales teams), expect computer telephony integration, a power dialer or predictive dialer, and extensive reporting.

Out-of-the-box CRM system integrations include:

• Salesforce
• Microsoft Dynamics
• Microsoft Teams
• HubSpot
• Zendesk
• Zoho
• Oracle Sales Cloud
• Workbooks
• ServiceNow
• SugarCRM
• Act! CRM
• Lotus Notes
• ConnectWise
• GoldMine
• Bullhorn

2. Five9

If you’re a small business and need a basic VoIP phone service but crave the advanced functionality AI can bring, Five9 is for you. You’ll still get the stock call center features we’ve come to expect, like call queuing, IVR, and custom routing. But Five9 really excels at using AI to generate reports and provide sentiment analysis on customer transactions.

Pros	Cons
Longstanding AI legacy	High price point for small businesses
Focus on automation	Can be overwhelming for new users
Enterprise scalability	Needs a separate provider for voice calls

If you’re a data-driven organization with a lot of customers, Five9 can be a great way to get control of your contact center. It includes the following features:

• Agent assist
• Call recording and transcription
• Workflow automation
• Digital engagement
• Conversational IVR
• Quality assurance
• Workforce management

3. Zendesk Talk

Zendesk Talk is a Five9 alternative for businesses already using Zendesk’s CRM platform, making it a worthwhile consideration for small businesses that use Zendesk for customer support. That said, you need to go all-in with Zendesk to access its call center platform.

Pros	Cons
Instant integration with Zendesk CRM	Can’t buy as standalone
Phone support and digital channels	Must also buy phone numbers
Pricing included in Zendesk Service Suite	Expensive for high-volume call centers

If you do go down this route, you’ll get access to features like:

• Always-on call
• Call recording
• Call monitoring
• Business SMS
• Voicemail
• IVR
• Supervisor dashboards
• Reporting and analytics

4. Talkdesk

Talkdesk is a cloud-based contact center solution that’s built on a scalable and reliable platform. It offers features like call routing, call recording, and analytics.

Talkdesk supports basic call routing, multichannel communication (email, web chat, SMS, and social media), and workflow and interaction personalization.

Pros	Cons
Advanced call routing and workflows	Lack of enterprise case studies
Focus on automation and self-service	Expensive add-ons
Easy implementation	Poor support for lesser integrations

You’ll get all your basic call center software features:

• Agent dashboard
• Call forwarding
• Call queuing
• Agent callback
• Click-to-call
• Predictive dialing
• IVR
• REST APIs
• Call tracking
• CRM software integrations
• Call recording
• Voicemail inbox

However, while Talkdesk boasts easy implementation, it doesn’t offer the scalability and customization of more complex deployment models.

5. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is an affordable option, and it’s best known for its ticketing and help desk software. However, with a user-friendly, intuitive interface, it’s a great choice if call center costs are your primary concern and your core function is customer service. 

Pros	Cons
Great alternative for budget-conscious businesses	Not a fully featured call center
30-day free trial	Lack of call center market exposure
Adds extra help desk features	Implementation can be lengthy

Think of LiveAgent as a shortcut to a call center software solution. It has help desk features like:

• Configurable business hours
• Canned responses
• Contact forms
• Email forwarding
• Universal inbox
• Time tracking

But it also comes with basic call center features like:

• IVR
• Call back requests
• ACD
• Smart call routing
• Call transfers
• Call recording

You can also get out-of-the-box integration with popular CRMs like Zoho, HubSpot, and Freshsales.

Must-Have Small Business Contact Center Software Features

We’re not going to get carried away with discussions about over-the-top functionality. However, small business tech platforms now offer robust features without complex implementation.

Screen Pop

When calls come in, it’s important to know who’s calling before you answer. As an inbound call arrives, Call Pop automatically displays customer information from your customer relationship management (CRM) system, saving time and helping you streamline transactions.

You could simply get the caller’s name and company name. You can also pull details from their last survey response, how much they spend with you, and any other details you choose from your CRM.

Call recording & transcription

For quality assurance, training, or compliance, make sure your calls get recorded so you can refer to them when needed. Recording customer service calls is the bare minimum. This previously standalone feature now comes packed with its own bells and whistles.

Make sure your call center solution includes:

• PCI compliance
• Sentiment analysis
• Speech analytics
• Unlimited cloud storage
• Flexible call recording policies

Call analytics & dashboards

When you handle hundreds or thousands of calls, you’ve got a ton of data at your disposal. But that’s only helpful if you use it. With call center analytics built into most modern platforms, you can track metrics like call volume, wait times, and agent performance to identify areas for improvement.

There’s no longer a need to spend days interpreting data in spreadsheets. Instead, get instant access to historical and real-time reports.

You can get insight into qualitative data, like how long customers wait on hold. But you can also track survey responses, like customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score. Whatever data you collect from your customers, you can view it with a simple click.

Internal notes

This is an often-overlooked feature, but it’s important nonetheless. Internal notes let agents add notes during calls and store them in the CRM for better context and future reference. 

When the next call comes in from a particular customer, any agent can see what happened last time, whether the customer received any special treatment, or anything else they need to watch for. When agents keep notes updated, the next call gets off to a great start.

Internal collaboration

Sending instant messages to colleagues has become a staple feature in any collaboration platform. But connecting call center agents with back-office experts ensures smooth handoffs and efficient problem-solving.

Staff can collaborate in channels, group chats, or one-to-one. When you enable a two-way, real-time connection between front-line agents and subject matter experts with the knowledge to handle complex support issues, you get information faster, share documents and processes more efficiently, and spot potential escalations before matters get out of hand.

Call routing

When a customer calls, which department or agent do they get? Ideally, they want the agent with the right skill set to handle their query. In fact, that’s their minimum requirement.

With different call routing types, you can distribute inbound requests based on agent skills, availability, and predefined rules. A simple behind-the-scenes configuration can drive a major uplift in customer satisfaction and agent productivity.

Small Businesses Love Nextiva

As a small business, your priorities should be scalability, reliability, and accessible features. 

After all, while your business may be small, you need to project the image of a much larger company that’s comfortable handling a high volume of phone calls. You also need to handle other communication methods, like email, live chat, and social media, and offer the same (or better) experience as when someone calls in.

Nextiva has it all and then some. We’re built for small businesses that want to scale their contact centers without getting locked into expensive, inflexible contracts.

Take AVIT, a high-growth managed services provider. It grew headcount by over 75% and has been able to take on new employees, onboarding them rapidly. Since it serves customers like Planet Hollywood and Metro Diner, it can’t use being a small business as an excuse for any shortcomings. AVIT needs to provide high-class customer service, regardless of volume and complexity.

Unlike larger businesses, AVIT doesn’t have the benefit of multiple locations, so disaster recovery is critical.

“I wanted something that I knew would stay up. AVIT is based in the state of Florida, the hurricane and lightning capital of the world, so we know that if things go down, or if there’s an issue, we can forward our calls to our cell phones using Nextiva.”

~Kelly Green, general manager at AVIT

So, if you’re a small business that craves the functionality of larger businesses, look no further than Nextiva’s small business contact center software.