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Contact Center and CX

Contact Center

A contact center is the software that routes customer calls, chats, emails and texts to the right person and shows you how it all went. Bought as a cloud subscription it is called CCaaS, contact center as a service, and it has replaced most of the call center hardware that used to sit on site.

  • 94 companies on the shelf
  • Coverage

Buyer's checklist

Eight questions that decide this purchase

Think these through before you buy. Answer what you can and your quote comes back faster. Skip what you cannot, and we will work through it with you.

  1. 01

    Why now, and how much time do you have: an end-of-support date, an outage, or a planned upgrade?

  2. 02

    How many agents and supervisors need seats, and will you license them by name or by how many are logged in at once?

  3. 03

    Is the work inbound, outbound or blended? Outbound dialing modes carry different legal exposure, so decide this early.

  4. 04

    Which channels must agents cover now and later: voice, chat, email, texting, video, social messaging?

  5. 05

    Will you keep your phone system and add the contact center on top, replace both together, or run calls through Microsoft Teams?

  6. 06

    Which system must it connect to, such as your customer database, ticketing or a health records platform, and how deep: showing the record, or two-way automation?

  7. 07

    Which standards apply to you, such as payment card, healthcare, financial or government rules, and can the provider document how each one is met?

  8. 08

    What happens to your phone numbers: port them, get new ones, or keep your current carrier? Which countries need local coverage?

94 companies to compare

Capabilities come from published supplier material. We confirm them for your addresses before anything is quoted.

More on what it is

Here are the parts, in the order a customer meets them. The IVR is the phone menu, which lets a caller steer to the right department or finish a simple request without an agent. The ACD is the routing engine, which decides which queue and which agent gets each contact. Skills-based routing sends it to an available agent with the right skill, language or product knowledge, instead of the next free person. Omnichannel means voice, chat, email and text arrive in one queue on one screen, so an agent can see that the person now calling is the same person who wrote yesterday. Supervisors get tools to listen in, coach an agent privately during a call, or step into it. Reporting runs from live wallboards watched during a shift to the historical trends you use to justify staffing.

Other products layer on top. Quality management records, scores and coaches. Workforce management forecasts volume and builds schedules to match it. The two are often sold together as Workforce Engagement Management. AI now appears on both sides of the conversation, as virtual agents facing the customer and as an assistant that suggests answers and drafts the call summary for the agent. That has its own page, CX and Conversational AI. Automated notifications and campaigns belong to Outbound Engagement.

There is a lighter tier for a business that wants queues, routing and supervision without running a formal contact center. It often comes from the same provider as your cloud phone system.

Know the catches before you compare. Plans come in editions, and recording retention, quality management and AI features are frequently held back for a higher one, so a headline feature list tells you little. Licensing counts seats either by named person or by how many agents are logged in at once, and the two produce very different bills for a seasonal operation. A rollout is a staged project of design, configuration, testing, launch and support, and treating it as a single install is how cutover goes wrong. Many providers implement and train remotely unless you ask for, and pay for, people on site. And the vendor's training covers the software. Teaching agents your own products and policies is still your job.

Who needs it

  • Your contact volume swings with the season, and you want to flex with it instead of staffing for the peak all year.
  • You are under pressure to answer faster and improve satisfaction without simply adding headcount.
  • Your agents work from home or from several locations.
  • You take payment details over the phone and carry the exposure that comes with them.
  • Customer contacts are scattered across separate tools, and no one can see who contacted you or why.
  • You are a smaller business that needs better queues and supervision and do not think of yourself as a contact center.

If a receptionist and a few ring groups handle your calls without complaints, a phone system is all you need. A contact center is the next step, and it usually comes when you need queues, reporting or more than one channel.

Signs you need it

  • The maker no longer supports your platform, or the support contract is about to lapse.
  • A recent outage showed how fragile the setup is, and leadership noticed.
  • Seasonal peaks routinely overwhelm both the staff and the system.
  • Customers repeat themselves every time they change channels.
  • Nobody can give a straight answer to why customers are calling.
  • Agent turnover is high and hiring cannot keep up, which is often a scheduling problem in disguise.
  • Compliance depends on habit instead of a documented, repeatable process.

How IT Raven helps

Add Contact Center to your quote list and tell us your seat counts, your channels and what you run today. A person takes that to the contact center providers in our 500+ partner network and narrows the field on what truly disqualifies: the system you must integrate with, the standards you have to document, the countries you operate in, and whether the service can be bought alone or only with a phone system.

Then we do the unglamorous comparison. We check which edition of each plan really includes the recording retention, quality management and AI features you are counting on, and how each provider counts seats, so the proposals can be read side by side.

We raise number porting and international coverage at the start, because they are the items most likely to hold up a launch. We stay on one thread through design, testing and go-live, and the same team is here for added seats, new channels and the next renewal.

How buying works

The store is the easy part. Staying on the account is the job.

Anyone can show you logos. The reason to buy here is what happens on install night, and on the ticket you open nine months later.

  1. 01

    Build your quote list

    Add services and companies as you shop. No form stands between you and the shelf.

  2. 02

    We bring back real options

    A person shops the bench against your addresses, then walks you through what fits and what does not.

  3. 03

    We handle the order and install

    Paperwork, site survey, install dates, cutover night. You get one thread, not five vendors.

  4. 04

    We stay on your account

    Same team for moves, adds, tickets and the next renewal. That is the part everyone else drops.