Read our independent editorial review of the best contact management software for salespeople, including the best use cases for each option.
A call center CRM is software that combines inbound and outbound calling features with sales pipeline management tools that help you better support your customers or leads via phone. The top call center CRMs include built-in dialers, call tracking, support ticket routing, workflow automation, and more features. To help you choose the right one for your business, we’ve rounded up the top seven options, including their use cases.
Here are the seven best CRMs for call centers:
Although all CRMs on our list are great options for call centers, we found Freshsales to be the best overall, scoring the highest for cost and tying for ease and customer support. Check out how each platform fared regarding pricing plans, features, and primary use cases. To learn how we scored our top options, skip down to our evaluation explanation.
Note: All per-user prices are with a one-year commitment unless noted.
Offers automatic inbound calling, call monitoring, and other key features at an affordable price.
Price Range: Free to $69 per user, per month (21-day free trial)
Freshsales by Freshworks is a top sales CRM with robust customer management tools and call center features. Inbound calling features like ticket routing and call management allow you to answer calls from leads and get them to the right person, while its outbound built-in dialer helps you call by auto-dialing the number in client records. These, along with Freshdesk integrations, make Freshsales a good choice for call centers looking for strong yet affordable tools.
While Freshsales offers many important features for call centers at a price most can afford, its free version lacks many of these tools. If a free plan is one of the most important factors for your team, consider Bitrix24, which provides robust features even in its no-cost tier.
Provides built-in CRM features and call center tools that are easy for teams to learn to navigate.
Price Range: Free to $91.99 per user, per month
EngageBay is an easy-to-use CRM that provides marketing, sales, and customer support tools in its All-in-One package. It’s easy to set up, doesn’t require any coding, and has an intuitive user interface and dashboard to easily access call reports and customer history. Menu items, including tools like call automation, are also simple to find and implement. If you need help when you’re using the CRM, EngageBay has excellent customer support according to users.
Although EngageBay is easy to use, it has pricey higher tier plans, and its free plan lacks native call features. If you’re looking for a CRM with robust built-in features at an affordable price, check out Freshsales.
Combines robust free call center tools and telemarketing features, plus the ability to upgrade for more functionality.
Price Range: Free to $325 per month for 5 to 250+ users (15- to 30-day free trial)
Bitrix24 is a customer management software that combines comprehensive call center features and essential CRM tools. Its free version offers inbound and outbound phone calls, IVR, call recording and forwarding, and typical CRM features like workflow automation and robust lead management. If you need advanced features later, like analytics tools and sales intelligence to help turn leads into paying customers, you can upgrade into its paid tiers.
Bitrix24 provides a wealth of call center and CRM features in its free plan, which offers good value for your money. However, it has a complex user interface and limited customer support. For a free CRM that’s easier to use, check out EngageBay
Enables teams to connect, collaborate, and share real-time updates from one platform.
Price Range: Free to $52 per user, per month (15- to 30-day free trial)
Zoho CRM is a sales and marketing CRM that offers a wide range of call center tools for sales teams. Team collaboration features like a shared CRM dashboard, tagging, and a call roster help teams stay connected and manage leads and prospects. Zoho CRM integrates with Zoho Desk for a more simplified service process that includes call management and ticket routing. Zia, its AI companion, also centralizes existing data so everyone on your team can easily access it.
Zoho CRM is a great option for collaborative sales teams, but its customer service is lacking. For a CRM that has great customer service plus some collaboration tools, learn about Freshsales or EngageBay.
Features a visual sales pipeline with robust workflow automation and call distribution tools.
Price Range: $14.90 to $99 per user, per month (14-day free trial)
Pipedrive is an easy-to-use sales CRM offering a wealth of pipeline management functionality as well as calling features like automatic call recording and communication history. You can set up robust workflow automations that route incoming calls to the most appropriate agent according to preset rules, as well as automatically input important data into contact records. You can then schedule follow-up activities based on the outcome of your last interaction.
Pipedrive’s core call center features are useful, but many of its advanced features need integrations or add-ons. Try Nextiva if you need a CRM that has more complete phone system features, including automations.
Offers a fully-customizable platform to personalize and automate call center services.
Price Range: $25 to $300 per user, per month (14- to 30-day free trial)
Salesforce Service Cloud is a well-known CRM ideal for teams with long or complicated sales cycles. Its vast customization and integration features help you create specific softphone and user profile layouts as well as multiple custom call reports and dashboards, email templates, roles, and more. Upgrade to Professional to build unlimited custom apps so your CRM functions in the exact way that works best for your customers (on the frontend) and you (on the backend).
Vast options for customization and integration can be overwhelming and a bit hard to use, especially for small businesses. If this is the case for you, check out EngageBay, which has a simpler interface but still provides robust features and a good amount of customization.
Provides a full range of high-definition VoIP phone services with advanced CRM features.
Price Range: $22.95 to $43.95 per user, per month (7-day free trial)
Nextiva is a customer service CRM with a robust VoIP phone system. Its auto attendants route inbound calls to the right agent and prioritize calls from toll-free numbers, while its AI-powered customer service tool provides advanced responses to customer inquiries through voice and text. Sales and service representatives can record unlimited inbound and outbound calls in the cloud, as well as recall and share details from fast-paced conversations.
Although Nextiva offers a complete business phone system, it could have more sales and marketing automation tools. For more comprehensive features at an affordable price, consider using Freshsales.
The best call center CRMs have these primary features in common:
Call routing, aka lead distribution, automatically directs inbound customer calls to an agent or department based on predetermined rules. This feature speeds up waiting times and helps in resolving customer issues faster.
Managers can easily track and assess their team’s call performance through this feature. A call monitoring tool allows managers to observe, record, and analyze interactions between customers and call center agents.
With automated support ticket routing, teams can create rules that determine how tickets are assigned to agents or teams. This helps teams reduce ticket response time and resolve customer issues faster, and it allows agents to focus on more important tasks instead of manually sorting and assigning tickets.
Workflow automation helps agents minimize repetitive tasks by scheduling tasks through preset rules or triggers. Specific automations for call centers include collecting customer data through forms, following up with leads via email, and more.
With this telephony technology, agents can interact with incoming callers with an automated voice response. Callers are greeted with a pre-recorded message and are offered a range of options to answer their question or get them to the right person by using speech recognition or keypad prompts.
To determine the best CRM software for call centers, we divided our scoring into six major categories, each of which included several weighted subcriteria. Using the subcriteria, we assigned each of 10 quality CRMs an overall score out of five. Finally, we assigned primary use cases to the seven options that scored highly enough to make our list.
Call centers should have CRMs that allow you to track your responses and actions and provide you with customer insights. The most fitting industry-specific CRM software will have the essential tools to manage customer interactions and integrate with phone providers and third-party applications. Read through our list of the best options, consider our rankings and primary use cases, and try the call center CRM software that will serve you best.
The above options include a mix of general and industry-specific CRMs; however, some industry or service-focused options lack the robust general features you'd expect out of a standard sales CRM. If a general CRM sounds more right for you, check out our article on the best overall CRM software.
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