The 6 Best Call Monitoring Software of 2021

Call monitoring software is a must-have feature of modern-day call centers. They let you record conversations, log call data, listen in on calls, and live coach agents. However, not every phone system provides call monitoring solutions. Some of the most popular customer service platforms only provide ticketing and CRM functionalities rather than real-time call tracking and analytics.

To find the best business phone system with call monitoring software, we narrowed it down to six solutions based on pricing and features that are most useful for small businesses.

• Twilio Flex: Best overall flexible call monitoring software for businesses that want to affordably scale their communications
• Freshcaller: Excellent option for teams that want an easy-to-use call center system with out-of-the-box monitoring capabilities
• Zendesk: Great option for those looking for a solution that works for a call center, sales, or customer support operations
• RingCentral: Top choice for businesses that need a robust, full-featured business phone system with extensive call monitoring functionality
• Zoho Desk: Recommended for small teams that need a call monitoring platform with low-cost entry-level pricing
• Talkdesk: Excellent tool for businesses that need a platform that can support a large department

How We Evaluated the Best Call Monitoring Software

Call monitoring software offers a wide range of capabilities to sales teams and contact centers. Some provide built-in CRM and VoIP phone features, while others let managers listen in on calls in real-time to provide training and great customer experiences.

After looking at all the best call monitoring software solutions, we found Twilio Flex to offer the best solution at scale. Its affordable, flexible pricing combined with its scalable APIs make it an excellent platform for businesses of all sizes. Its comprehensive feature set gives teams complete call performance insight.

Here’s a breakdown of our evaluations:

Twilio Flex: Best Overall Call Monitoring Software for Small Businesses

Twilio Flex is a relatively new cloud contact center, but it’s gaining popularity quickly thanks to its robust APIs and extensive call monitoring capabilities. It lets you do everything—from recording calls to listening in on live conversations. With per-hour and per-user pricing, you can adapt Twilio Flex to just about any team size or business model.

Twilio Flex is the only software on this list to offer per-hour pricing options. This makes it a great option for small businesses with part-time employees or contract workers who won’t be working the normal 9-to-5 hours. It’s also an excellent pricing strategy if your agents have multiple responsibilities beyond just making and answering phone calls.

However, there are still a few bugs that need to be worked out, and a lot of the feature development is left to you and your developers. This makes for a truly custom, scalable experience, but it requires developer time and resources. If you want more out-of-the-box features, you’ll be better off with Zendesk or Freshcaller.

Twilio Flex Features

• Listen in live on conversations and enjoy a shared multichannel inbox across SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook, and audio calls
• Extensive integrations let you connect with popular CRM platforms and payment processors
• Dashboards and insights allow you to add custom metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for flexible reporting
• Per-hour pricing gives you the option to pay less for users who might be part time or contract workers
• Create intelligent workflows and routing to help inbound callers find the right agents from the get-go

Freshcaller: Best Call Monitoring Software for Ease of Use

*Billed annually. You can also choose a monthly billing option.

Freshcaller’s call monitoring software is easy to get set up and running. Brand-new users can sign up for a free account that has all the basics you need to experiment with the platform to see if it’s a good fit. Freshcaller offers a wide range of helpful monitoring features, such as call queue visibility, agent presence, live monitoring, and customer interaction history.

Despite Freshcaller’s strengths, it falls short for not offering an OpenAPI. If you need OpenAPIs to integrate with your application, you’ll be better off with Twilio Flex. Unlike Twilio Flex, it doesn’t provide per-hour pricing subscriptions, which means you’ll have to pay per user, per month—regardless of how active that user is.

Freshcaller Features

• Barge into ongoing calls when your agents need a bit of extra help or to de-escalate tense conversations
• Access real-time metrics to learn how your agents are performing and where you can improve
• Take your call monitoring on the go with powerful mobile apps on Android and iOS
• Automate your call routing with custom routing rules based on information in your CRM
• Use smart escalations to route calls appropriately with a set fallback plan in case of unexpected call scenarios

Zendesk: Best for Service & Support Call Center Operations

*Billed annually. You can also choose a monthly billing option.

Zendesk offers a complete customer service platform with a fully customizable ticket system that’s great for customer service or IT support teams. With the live call monitoring functionality, you can listen in on live conversations and barge in if necessary. You’ll also get call quality notifications to help ensure network and audio issues don’t damage your customer experiences.

Zendesk has a lot to offer, but the platform is on the more expensive end. Many users report struggling to reach or receive help from Zendesk’s technical support team. Thus, you need to troubleshoot on your own.

This software fails to provide users with a free plan, while Twilio Flex, Freshcaller, and Zoho Desk all have free options available.

Zendesk Features

• Zendesk’s live call monitoring lets you listen in, whisper in your agent’s ear, and barge in when necessary
• The fully customizable ticketing system helps you build the perfect workflows for your business
• Shared inboxes let you collaborate privately with teammates as you communicate on how to help resolve tickets
• Conversation routing automatically assigns tickets to the right agents based on skill sets
• Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered knowledge management learns from your responses to help you and teammates respond faster in the future

RingCentral: Most Robust Business Phone System With Call Monitoring Functionality

*Billed annually and based on 2 to 20 users. You may also choose a monthly billing option.

RingCentral is a full-featured VoIP business phone system that offers call monitoring on its premium subscription plans. With RingCentral, you’ll get a complete VoIP solution along with real-time monitoring and live call support features like listen, whisper, barge, and takeover.

While RingCentral provides a comprehensive business phone system, it can be overwhelming for new users and smaller businesses. The user interface is a bit dated, and the agent experience can be clunky to navigate. However, it’s a reliable system with a solid infrastructure that you can trust at scale.

If you’re looking for a simple call monitoring platform with a clean user interface, take a look at Freshcaller.

RingCentral Features

• Monitor calls in real time to offer live coaching assistance or take over the call if things go in the wrong direction
• Keep all your internal and external conversations consolidated with an all-in-one unified communications platform
• Popular CRM integrations let you sync your system with Salesforce and Zendesk
• Real-time status alerts let you know when agents are available and when devices go offline
• RingCentral’s multilevel auto-attendant ensures inbound callers reach the right extension without unnecessary forwarding and transferring

Zoho Desk: Best Low-cost Call Monitoring Software

*Billed annually. You can also subscribe to a monthly billing option.

Zoho Desk is a cloud contact center platform that supports email, chat, social media, and voice. Users can monitor real-time calls and agent productivity to better facilitate customer service. Zoho’s advanced ticketing system will automatically organize and assign tickets to maximize team efficiency.

However, Zoho Desk’s live call monitoring features are a bit lacking. You won’t have the ability to listen in live on calls or barge in if necessary, which are all features found on Zendesk, RingCentral, and Freshcaller. Instead, you’ll need to rely on call recordings for training opportunities. But for what you pay, Zoho Desk is an affordable call monitoring system and contact center platform.

Zoho Desk Features

• Zoho Desk’s Headquarters is a one-stop shop for all your analytics, call metrics, and dashboards
• Receive live updates on agent availability to see who’s offline and who’s available to tackle urgent tickets
• Monitor negative feedback to ensure future customer satisfaction with follow-up conversations
• Study ticket traffic to learn when you need to allocate more agents and resources
• Take advantage of multichannel functionality to communicate with your customers where they choose

Talkdesk: Best Call Monitoring Software for Large Teams

Talkdesk provides a robust AI-powered contact center that can be built on-premise, in the cloud, or a mix of both. Extensive call monitoring features let you manage and train employees with in-person mentoring and artificial intelligence. Call reliability is top-notch, and you’ll have no problem scaling to meet your business’ growing demands.

Talkdesk lacks transparent pricing, and you’ll have to talk to sales to request a custom quote. However, they do mention that licenses start at $65 per user, per month. At that price point, that’d put Talkdesk as one of the more expensive options on this list.

Despite minor app glitches and vague pricing, Talkdesk is an excellent call monitoring solution for businesses that need a complete quality management system. However, if you don’t need a tool designed to support large teams, you’ll be better off with a cheaper platform like Freshcaller or Zoho Desk.

Talkdesk Features

• Quality management assist uses AI and speech analytics to help your agent understand intent and improve performance
• Automatic call quality monitoring ensures audio quality never suffers
• Proxy guarantees you always have a backup system in case of an outage
• Monitor calls in real-time without the agent or customer knowing you’re there
• Omnichannel support helps you communicate across SMS, voice, social media, and chatbots

Bottom Line

When it comes to maintaining a high degree of quality and customer satisfaction in a call center, you simply can’t do without robust call monitoring software like our best overall choice, Twilio. However, when selecting your monitoring solution, it’s essential that you understand the needs of your center. Are you going to sometimes need to take over calls? Is AI something you’ll need to measure things like sentiment? What’s your budget? All of these questions will help you narrow down your choices so that you can find the product you need.