15 Call Center Phone System Features for Customer Support

A call center phone system, or call center software, helps you efficiently manage high volumes of customer interactions. It reduces wait times and quickly resolves customer issues, enhancing the overall customer experience.
 

Moreover, call center software offers tools and features that automate routine tasks, track performance, and provide real-time insights to boost agents’ productivity. It ultimately improves operational efficiency and drives business success.

Your call center phone system must have essential features to streamline operations, empower agents, and ensure that customers receive timely and effective support.  Below are 15 essential call center phone system features for exceptional customer support.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) software allows agents and customers to communicate using a computing system via automatic dialing menus.
 

It helps you deliver better customer service and experience in a call center by using pre-recorded and customized greetings and menus. This self-service to customers helps you increase your first call resolution rate.
 

For example, if a cell center launches a new product, then the IVR software can customize and pre-record the queries related to the product in the system accordingly.

When the recipient cannot answer a call, and the incoming call automatically connects to another phone number, it’s call forwarding. It never lets you miss your customers’ calls and provides them with the needed information anytime.
 

For example, When a customer support agent fails to answer a customer’s call, the call is automatically forwarded to another agent, who can then address the call and clear all the customer’s queries.

If you are a part of a call center, it is a familiar thing for you to receive a massive volume of incoming calls. While having such a high call flow, call queue features compose callers into a virtual wait in line. It distributes the workload evenly to agents, reducing customer wait times for a better customer experience.

ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) is an essential call management feature of call center systems. It automatically receives, queues, and distributes inbound calls to agents based on predefined rules and criteria. The feature provides faster service to customers and ensures a decrease in call resolution abandonment rates at the same time.

The unified callbox is a phone system feature that brings all your business communications tools, including calls, SMS, voicemail, and video conferencing, together in one place. It allows a call center to manage all of its customers’ communications from a single window without any interruption.

The call recording is a must-have feature for call centers in this competitive business world. It allows you to easily record all agents’ calls and store them for future use, legal procedures, and training pursuits.

Live call monitoring allows the supervisor to oversee the agent’s interactions with a customer during a live call. It plays a vital role in analyzing the call quality in a call center and delivers real-time coaching.

Call whispering is an essential feature of training agents in call centers. If your agent lacks knowledge regarding any of the cases, you can guide them privately during a live call without creating any disturbance. Don’t worry; the client won’t be able to hear you.

AI-powered call summary is a modern business phone feature that creates a report using Artificial Intelligence, summarizing the details of the calls between your agents and the customers.
 

The report includes the call transcription, the reason, and the call’s conclusion. It also categorizes your calls according to the conversation sentiment - whether the call was positive, negative, or neutral.

Internal message is a call center phone system feature that boosts collaboration among client support in various departments. Call center members can communicate privately regarding customer queries without letting clients know about the interaction.

Voicemail is a digitally recorded voice message a caller leaves when the recipient is unavailable. It helps you receive, manage, and respond to voice messages smoothly without letting you miss any important calls.

Call notes allow you to list the critical information of a customer from a call handled by a customer service agent. It also allows another agent to quickly review the case so that a customer does not need to restate their concerns, and the agents can resolve the issue more efficiently.

On the other hand, the call tags feature allows a call center to arrange calls with customizable tags for smooth follow-up actions and immediate sorting.

When customers call a support number, they receive instant greetings; those recorded playing are known as custom phone greetings. Businesses use custom greetings to inform customers about their new offers and updates or simply just to greet them.

Bulk SMS is a marketing strategy that sends a text message to a huge crowd simultaneously to increase customer engagement. It lets your customers be updated with your brand’s discount codes, invitations, the latest products they’re interested in, and special offers.

Calilio is a cloud-based business phone system that provides call centers with exceptional call quality and operational efficiency. It provides virtual phone numbers from 100+ countries, which allows you to make international calls at local rates.
 

With features such as call queue, AI-power call summary, unified callbox, and voicemail transcription, Calilio is an ideal call center phone system for businesses of all sizes, whether startups, growing companies, or large enterprises.
 

Calilio’s pricing plan starts at only $12 per user/month for the basic plan, $28 per user/month for the business plan, and custom pricing for enterprises.

Dialpad is a UCaaS (Unified communication as a service) provider that offers cost-effective and scalable solutions to your business with a starting cost of $15 per user per month.
 

Its features include AI-powered calls, voicemail transcriptions, open APIs, and webhooks. For some users, it might not be that reliable due to the limited features of its basic plans and the app issues with older Android phones.

Openphone is a modern business phone system for startups and small businesses. It offers unlimited calling and texting to customers all over Canada and the U.S. It’s a budget-friendly call center software for those who have a customer base in these two countries only.
 

Its basic plan is priced at $15 per user per month, which provides you with basic call center communication features, including voice transcripts, AI message responses, and call recording.

8X8 offers two monthly pricing plans: $24 and $44 per user. It is a simple, reliable, straightforward, and easy-to-use web interface. The softphone has features such as call recording, voicemail transcription, auto-attendant, software phone, toll-free option, and video conferencing.
 

Its conference call feature allows you to add 500 participants simultaneously. It also helps stream private and public meetings via YouTube.
 

8x8 has limited call queuing options and does not have 24/7 live chat or phone service for customer support. Likewise, its price and setup are primarily suitable for large enterprises rather than small businesses. 

Nextiva provides call center solutions for businesses of every size. However, its pricing is quite expensive - its service plan starts at $25.95 per user/month. Nextiva’s call center features include screen-sharing and auto-attended. Moreover, it offers free unlimited voice and video calling within the U.S. and CA.

Ooma is a good call center software for residential and business customers looking for a safe, budget-friendly substitute for traditional landline phone systems. Its service plans cost $19.95 per month.
 

Ooma has a user-friendly interface, making it a good choice for those new to using call center software. It has various advanced features like a virtual receptionist, call extension, and live call monitoring.

Vonage has successfully established itself as one of the most popular phone systems for call centers. Starting with a pricing plan of $13.99 per month per mobile line, it facilitates businesses with unlimited domestic calling, virtual receptionist, and visual voicemail.

A call center software with the right features helps businesses deliver exceptional customer support and ensures efficient operations. With features like IVR, call forwarding, unified callbox, and AI-powered call summaries, your call center can enhance customer satisfaction, streamline workflows, and boost agent productivity.
 

From routing customer calls to the right department with IVR to providing detailed reports of the calls with AI-powered call summary, Calilio encompasses all the call center phone system features for improved customer satisfaction and enhanced business productivity. Sign up today and modernize your call center.

Call centers typically use VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems, which allow calls to be made over the Internet. Some call centers may use PBX (Private Branch Exchange) systems for internal and external communication management.

Call center agents use various software tools to manage customer interactions, including CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, call center software with features like automatic call distribution (ACD), IVR, call recording, and analytics tools.

Contact centers use the following technologies for better customer experience,
 

• VoIP for internet-based calling
• ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) for efficient call routing
• IVR (Interactive Voice Response) for automated call handling
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for managing customer data and interactions
• AI and chatbots for automated customer service
• Workforce management software for scheduling and productivity tracking
• Call recording and monitoring tools for quality assurance

CRM call center software integrates customer relationship management capabilities with call center functionalities. It helps agents manage customer data, track interactions, and provide personalized service. Features typically include customer data storage, interaction history, automated workflows, and analytics.

Basic plans for a virtual call center software costs vary depending on the provider and the features offered. Basic plans can start as low as $10-$20 per user per month, while more advanced plans with additional features like AI, advanced analytics, and extensive integrations can range from $30 to $100 or more per user per month.