6 Best Call Center Monitoring Software Platforms of 2022
Corey McCraw is a staff writer covering VoIP and Unified Communications. Corey has over a decade of experience in marketing, tech writing, and corporate communications and has even penned content for the former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative.
Marianne is a staff writer at Fit Small Business who covers business phone services, VoIP, and video conferencing tools.
This article is part of a larger series on VoIP.
The best call center monitoring software provide businesses with a variety of agent monitoring tools that capture, analyze, and collect conversations to identify areas of improvement. They provide features like call barging, call recording, call metrics, and real-time dashboards to keep track of agent performance efficiently. In this article, we compare the top six call monitoring providers and evaluate them based on the needs of small business owners.
- Freshdesk Contact Center: Best overall full-featured call monitoring software with intuitive agent monitoring functions
- RingCentral Contact Center: Excellent call monitoring software combined with a business phone system
- Twilio Flex: Recommended for teams looking for a programmable call monitoring software with flexible pricing models
- Zoho Desk: Ideal choice for businesses needing a call monitoring platform with an extensive ticketing management system
- Talkdesk: Best call monitoring system with artificial intelligence (AI)-powered workforce management capabilities
- Zendesk: Top call monitoring software for businesses wanting to connect with multiple customer communication channels
Call Center Monitoring Software | Starting Price | Key Features | Advanced Features | FSB Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Free or $15 per user, per month, billed annually |
|
| 4.58 out of 5 |
 | Contact sales for pricing |
|
| 4.39 out of 5 |
 | Free or $1 per hour |
|
| 4.06 out of 5 |
 | Free or $14 per user, per hour, billed annually |
|
| 4.02 out of 5 |
 | Free or $75 per user, per month (3-year contract) |
|
| 3.84 out of 5 |
 | Free or $49 per user, per month, billed annually |
|
| 3.77 out of 5 |
Freshdesk Contact Center: Best Overall Call Center Monitoring Software
Freshdesk Contact Center
Overall Score: 4.58
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Offers free incoming call minutes on all plans
- Free version comes with basic features, such as call metrics and custom greetings
- Intuitive call monitoring features, such as live call monitoring
What's Missing
- Lacks screen-sharing tool
- Mobile version has limited capabilities
- Call center features, such as call lifecycle and smart escalations, are an overkill for small businesses
Freshdesk Contact Center Pricing*
- Free: Local and toll-free numbers, inbound caller ID, call notes, custom greetings, call metrics
- Growth: $15 per user, per month for up to free 2,000 incoming call minutes, number porting, call queues, voicemail, call recording, and warm transfer
- Pro: $39 per user, per month for up to free 3,000 incoming minutes, holiday routing, call barging, agent availability report, power dialer, and call monitoring
- Enterprise: $69 per user, per month for up to free 5,000 incoming minutes, omnichannel routing, voicebot, speech-enabled IVR, and abandoned call metrics
- Free trial: 21-day free trial on all paid plans
*Pricing displayed is based on annual subscription. Monthly billing is also available. Free incoming calls apply to the U.S., Canada, EU, U.K., AU, and New Zealand. Once the free minutes are exhausted, a flat rate of 1.3 cents per minute applies.
Freshdesk Contact Center is our best overall call center monitoring software with its real-time call management capabilities, such as call barging and call recording. These features enable supervisors to barge into ongoing calls and listen to recorded calls to monitor agent performance. Additionally, setting it up is easy because of its user-friendly interface. All you have to do is port numbers, add agents, and start making calls through its real-time dashboard.
With Freshdesk, supervisors have access to real-time metrics, such as average talk and wait time. This enables them to detect when agents go beyond the designated handling time. Meanwhile, call barging allows supervisors to listen in and barge in on ongoing calls when needed. As we covered in our Freshdesk Contact Center review, Freshdesk also enables recording calls to gather insights into agent and customer conversations.
On the downside, Freshdesk Contact Center’s mobile app is lacking in functionalities, such as admin settings and custom ticket views. Consider Zoho Desk if you’re looking for mobile contact center software. Zoho Desk allows you to get instant ticket updates, access customer information, and stay on top of agent-customer conversations.
Freshdesk Contact Center Features
The warm transfer enables agents to take notes from a call inquiry before passing them on to another agent.
(Source: Freshdesk Contact Center)
- Voicebots: Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the voicebot offers quick answers 24/7 without the need for a live agent. The voicebot responds to customers on frequently asked questions, such as account activation and password reset.
- Abandoned call metrics: Manage your call center team by analyzing call drops and knowing why they are happening. This will open opportunities to enhance the customer journey and analyze call drops in real time.
- Warm transfer: Eliminate the need to ask customers to repeat their query when transferred to multiple agents. Warm transfer provides agents with enough context about the caller’s issue before transferring the call to their end.
Visit Freshdesk Contact Center
RingCentral Contact Center: Best Call Monitoring Software With a Business Phone System
RingCentral Contact Center
Overall Score: 4.39
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- The inclusion of RingCentral MVP features, such as free domestic calling and company-wide collaboration
- Advanced APIs and integrations for developers
- Supports omnichannel communication, such as team messaging, video, and text messaging
What's Missing
- It doesn’t publish its pricing on all tiered plans
- Key features are only available as add-ons
- Complex report customizations
RingCentral Contact Center Pricing*
RingCentral doesn’t publish its contact center solution’s pricing. Contact sales to get a quote.
- Essential: ACD, IVR with visual flow designer, 5GB recording storage
- Standard: 30+ digital channels for omnichannel routing and advanced voice recording
- Premium: Quality management and screen recording
- Ultimate: Workforce and performance management
*All plans include integrated RingCentral MVP capabilities, such as global telephony and company-wide communication.
RingCentral is one of the best business phone systems in the voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) landscape, which also has a contact center offering. Its contact center solution has a wide array of supervisor tools, such as screen recording, speech text analysis, and coaching tools, to improve contact center performance. All plans include integrated business phone capabilities, such as free domestic calling, real-time metrics notifications, and configurable routing.
RingCentral has plenty to offer, but its workforce and performance management features are exclusive to premium plan subscribers. This is a huge disadvantage for small business owners who don’t have the budget to upgrade to high tiers.
If you need access to workforce management tools without upgrading to premium tiers, try Talkdesk. Talkdesk has a Workforce Management add-on package that offers automated scheduling and omnichannel forecasting. Read more about this provider in our RingCentral Contact Center review.
Want to know the features to look for in a business phone system? Check out our guide on the top VoIP business phone features and discover which providers offer the right feature set you need.
RingCentral Contact Center Features
With digital engagement, it’s easy to interact with customers on whatever social media platform they prefer. (Source: RingCentral Contact Center)
- Digital engagement: Go beyond phone calls by handling social media interactions, whether on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. This enables you to create a seamless customer experience by integrating with other social media channels.
- Virtual assistants: Free up agents from basic and repetitive queries and allow them to take on more complex tasks with the help of chatbots. Chatbots automate basic inquiries, handle high inbound call volume, and provide consistent customer service.
- Analytics and reporting: Provide a seamless customer experience through data-informed insights and feedback surveys. The RingCentral analytics feature allows you to spot trends across channels and enhance team performance.
Visit RingCentral Contact Center
Twilio Flex: Best Programmable Call Center Monitoring Software With Flexible Pricing Models
Twilio Flex
Overall Score: 4.06
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Flexible pricing plans
- API integrations to extract data from ecosystem partners
- Customizable drag-and-drop reports
What's Missing
- Lacks detailed pricing and feature comparisons on its website
- Difficult to set up
- The platform is only available through a browser; no mobile or desktop app
Twilio Flex Pricing*
- Starter pricing: Free $14.50 trial credit for 5,000 active user hours and 1 U.S. phone number
- Active user per-hour pricing: $1 per hour for flexible scaling with seasonal traffic or account for part-time agents
- Named user per-seat pricing: $150 per user, per month for predictable spend, regardless of activity or volume
*Contact sales to use Twilio Flex for a specific number of agents.
Twilio Flex is a programmable contact center with robust APIs, which gives you control over deploying your contact center solution. Programmability enables businesses to tailor their contact center without the limitations of a one-size-fits-all solution. From developer tools, sample code, and documentation, Twilio Flex helps developers customize their contact center by adding channels and creating engagement workflows.
When it comes to call monitoring, Twilio Flex offers a real-time view of agents’ activities by allowing supervisors to listen to live conversations. Chat monitoring is also available, allowing admins to view messages in any active conversation.
Since Twilio Flex doesn’t have its own software platform, consider Freshdesk Contact Center, which comes with its own intelligent software. Deployment is also fast and convenient, so it’s easy to onboard your team in no time. Curious about what more Twilio has to offer? Check out our Twilio review.
Twilio Flex Features
Twilio Flex offers over 200 built-in metrics and allows customer report creation with no technical skills required. (Source: Twilio Flex)
- Custom report builder: Create and develop reports and dashboards with an intuitive report builder. It enables users to add context and improve reports through custom attributes related to the interaction.
- Omnichannel contact center: Design an enhanced agent experience by allowing them to manage tasks across multiple channels within a single user interface. Twilio Flex supports voice, email, chat, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger alongside performance tracking and intelligent routing.
- API integrations: Embed contact center features within existing customer relationship management (CRM) software and ecosystem partners, such as Salesforce or Zendesk. Twilio Flex also allows you to pull in payments, past orders, and inventory data through API integrations.
Zoho Desk: Best Call Center Monitoring Software With an Extensive Ticketing System
Zoho Desk
Overall Score: 4.02
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Robust ticketing capabilities
- Service level agreement (SLA) is included in all plans
- Supports up to 22 languages
What's Missing
- Lacks extensive integrations
- Free version has few collaboration capabilities
- AI-assistant is available only in the highest-tier plan
Zoho Desk Pricing*
- Free: Good for 3 users with email ticketing, customer management, and mobile app
- Standard: $14 per user, per month for social and community channels, product-based ticket management, workflow, assignment and supervise rules, customer happiness ratings, and reports and dashboards
- Professional: $23 per user, per month for multidepartment ticketing, team management, telephony, ticket templates, and automatic time tracking
- Enterprise: $40 per user, per month for live chat, artificial intelligence, advanced process management, custom functions, and scheduled reports
- Free trial: 15-day trial for all plans
*Rates displayed are for annual contracts. Monthly contracts are also available.
Zoho Desk is a cloud-based call center phone system that offers a robust set of tools for virtual assistance, agent productivity, collaboration, and self-service, as well as an extensive ticket management system. The ticket management feature focuses on tracking customer requests across products, brands, and messaging channels, such as email and social media.
Zoho Desk allows you to get actionable insights through reports, dashboards, and a time-tracking feature. For example, the Headquarters, or its manager dashboard, offers live insights into help desk activities. Users will also appreciate the Radar tool, a mobile app that brings real-time call center statistics straight to your mobile phone.
On the downside, Zoho Desk has a very limited number of third-party integrations. If you prefer a contact center solution with powerful cloud integrations, choose Zendesk. As of this writing, Zendesk offers 1,321 apps, including the most popular business solutions, such as Microsoft Teams, Google, and Salesforce. We have a dedicated review about Zoho Desk that goes more into the comprehensive features of this provider.
Zoho Desk Features
Work Mode comes with a Ticket Peek feature to help agents decide which tickets to prioritize. (Source: Zoho Desk)
- Multichannel support ticket management: Track call queries across multiple channels, products, brands, and departments. The ticketing system provides all the needed context to resolve customer issues and automate routine support tasks.
- Work Mode: Zoho Desk offers various ticket views to help agents organize their tickets according to priority, status, and due time. This allows agents to save time when deciding which ticket requires urgent attention.
- Zia Voice: Zia is Zoho Desk’s AI-powered assistant that performs specific actions for customers, such as placing orders. It also performs a wide variety of tasks, such as diving into the caller’s feelings in a conversation and identifying key aspects of tickets.
Talkdesk: Best Call Center Monitoring Software for Businesses With Advanced AI Needs
Talkdesk
Overall Score: 3.84
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Extensive AI capabilities, such as virtual agent and agent assist
- 100% uptime SLA available
- Multiple engagement options, such as voice, chat, email, and SMS
What's Missing
- Lacks transparent pricing
- No free trial and free version
- Contact center features are overkill for small business needs
Talkdesk Pricing*
- CX Cloud Essentials: $75 per user, per month for voice engagement, real-time dashboards, virtual agent, API access, and up to 60 integrations
- CX Cloud Elevate: $95 per user, per month for digital engagement, quality management, screen recording, feedback, and automated notifications
- CX Cloud Elite: $125 per user, per month for 100% uptime SLA, performance management, and custom reporting, including one add-on package, such as workforce management
- Experience Clouds: Contact sales for customized pricing; industry workspace and workflows, including 1 add-on package (such as agent assist)
*Prices are based on three-year contracts, exclusive of telco and usage fees. Call for a quote for per-hour login consumption and concurrent pricing.
Talkdesk is a contact center as a service (CCaaS) software solution that uses AI to provide optimal customer service. Through AI, Talkdesk delivers automated personalized assistance and recommends responses during live interactions, reducing the need for supervisor assistance. You can find out more about its AI features in our Talkdesk review.
However, Talkdesk features may be overkill for small business owners who need the basic tools of a call monitoring system without AI. If you prefer a no-frills call listening software, choose Twilio Flex. Twilio Flex is great for managing a small contact center operation, helping you to affordably scale your business communications.
Talkdesk Features
Talkdesk’s ACD feature collects data for real-time and historical reporting to deliver insights into team performance. (Source: Talkdesk)
- Automatic call distributor (ACD): Route inbound calls to agents based on agent skills, customer data, business hours, and IVR selection to enhance customer experience. This increases customer satisfaction and first call resolution as you direct calls to the most qualified agent and department.
- Click-to-call: Talkdesk enables agents to place calls directly from any business tool, such as CRM software, help desk, or ecommerce platform. This feature provides all the functionality of a contact center solution—directly from the interface of business software. It increases call center efficiency by simply clicking a number to make outbound calls.
- Call barging: Listen to live calls without the agent or caller knowing and barge in on the call to speak to the agent or caller when the need arises. This feature benefits managers in improving agent training and quality assurance.
Zendesk Talk: Best for Connecting With Multiple Support Channels
Zendesk
Overall Score: 3.77
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Extended help desk capabilities
- AI-powered feature is available on all plans
- Up to 1,300 third-party integrations
What's Missing
- Entry-level plan lacks collaboration tools
- Subscription plans may be too costly for small business owners
- Steep learning curve because of advanced features, such as knowledge management and intelligent routing
Zendesk Pricing*
- Suite Team: $49 per user, per month for ticketing system, multichannel messaging, group call routing, custom greetings, and call recording
- Suite Growth: $79 per user, per month for self-service portal, customizable ticket layouts, multilingual content, and SLA management
- Suite Professional: $99 per user, per month for conversation routing, private conversation threads, customizable dashboards, and advanced voice capabilities
- Suite Enterprise: $150 per user, per month for skills-based routing for live chat, extended queue size, and contextual workspaces
- Free trial: 30 days
*Pricing is based on annual billing. You may also choose the monthly billing option.
Zendesk is a cloud-based call center software that offers an all-in-one solution to connect with clients through multiple channels, such as voice, social, and live chat. This approach enables teams to streamline customer service instead of juggling between channels. Zendesk Talk’s integrated voice solution integrates with several channels, empowering your agents to resolve complex issues instantly.
With real-time dashboards, it’s easy to manage calls, texts, and voicemails within the same place where you handle chat, emails, and social messaging. It also enables managers to see how their agents are performing, how many agents are online, and how long the average callback wait time is. Check out our dedicated Zendesk Talk review, which breaks down the many features of the platform.
Since Zendesk Talk is lacking in collaboration tools, we recommended RingCentral. RingCentral offers a global telephony solution for company-wide collaboration. All plans include business phone capabilities, such as global telephony, to help your team communicate in real time.
Zendesk Features
Agent workspace enables you to unify all your messaging channels without hopping between dashboards. (Source: Zendesk)
- Agent workspace: Help your agents deliver seamless support by bringing all support channels into one place. This feature offers real-time updates about incoming messages, whether via chat, email, messaging, or phone.
- Routing and intelligence: Improve first-call resolutions by getting tickets to the right agents based on their skills. This ensures all queries have a clear path toward resolution. Through AI, Zendesk collects all relevant customer data to solve more tickets faster.
- Reporting and analytics: Prebuilt dashboards offer access to real-time and historical data that helps you get insights on customer service metrics.
How We Evaluated the Best Call Center Monitoring Software
The best call monitoring software should include a variety of call monitoring tools, such as call recording, call barging, and call center metrics. These tools contribute to ensuring quality workforce performance and better customer relationship management. The ability to track, store, and evaluate agent and customer interactions is the cornerstone of an effective phone call monitoring solution.
Learn how we evaluated the best call center monitoring software by clicking on the tabs below:
25%
Pricing
25%
General Features
25%
Advanced Features
25%
Expert Score
25% of Overall Score
Since cost is a huge factor for budget-conscious small business owners, we analyzed each provider based on the cost of their pricing plans. We checked offers, such as free plans, annual discounts, and volume pricing discounts.
25% of Overall Score
While the main function of a call monitoring system software is to track agents’ performance, it should also offer tools to streamline call center operations. We focused on general capabilities, such as call recording, automatic call reports, automated attendants, and wait queues.
25% of Overall Score
The right call monitoring software should offer niche features to make agent monitoring more effective. We gave points to those providing custom call metrics, call barge, and software integrations. In addition, we also looked at API customizations and agent status notifications.
25% of Overall Score
We examined call monitoring companies based on our personal experience and what users have to say about their services. From those insights, we determined their overall value by looking at their standout features, popularity, ease of use, and value for money.
*Percentages of overall score
Bottom Line
A call monitoring solution offers an efficient way to see how your contact center team is performing. It should offer useful tools to analyze and store information for agent training and quality assurance. Fortunately, there are plenty of platforms to consider based on your budget, business size, and specific use case.
Freshdesk Contact Center is our top choice for the best call monitoring software for small businesses. It comes with easy-to-use call management systems, such as call recording, call barging, and live call monitoring. Get started today by signing up for its free version.
