The Best Call Centre Phone System Solutions

Our carefully curated research has revealed that RingCentral provides the best IVR call centre phone system. Its agile, customisable features will equip your call centre with the necessary savviness to keep your customers happy and as far away as possible from the scathing frustration that has made traditional call centres infamous.

Although we believe that RingCentral is a solid choice, whether it’s the right IVR phone system for your call centre is a completely different question. Read on as we discuss other providers, and explore the best business VoIP providers here.

The best call centre IVR phone system providers

Even if customers love a brand, a third of them will leave after a single bad experience. In the event of two or more episodes of dissatisfaction, this abandonment rate jumps to 92% of customers. How do you avoid the danger of a customer service catastrophe? By investing in a high quality cloud IVR phone system.

After extensive research and analysis, our have researchers rounded up the four best call centre phone systems. These are:

1. RingCentral: the best all-round phone system for call centres
2. Vonage: the best phone system for small call centre teams
3. 8×8: the best call centre phone system for scalability
4. GoToConnect: the best call centre phone system for value for money

** only available at more exclusive subscriptions

RingCentral

Best all-round system for call centres

RingCentral for call centres: the key features

• Training: call barge, call whisper, call monitoring, and analytics are only available to Premium and Ultimate subscribers. These features offer crucial guidance and data to help train your agents, so it’s worth the investment. Other helpful features like call routing, call transcripts, and setting up teams are available at all subscription levels.
• Onboarding: only offered starting at the standard subscription.
• Integrations: at the Premium and Ultimate subscriptions, you can sync your IVR phone system with over 90 CRM platforms, with key Helpdesk integrations like Salesforce and Zendesk, analytics, and other platforms like Slack, WhatsApp, and Facebook. This makes your customer service muscle stronger, and allows you to instantly draw on customer-specific data to provide a frustration-free experience.

How does RingCentral compare to other call centre phone system providers?

Factoring in price, integrability, features, and customer support, our in-depth research has awarded RingCentral an excellent 4.7-star rating for its value as a system for customer service teams. While it’s worth considering that some of the most valuable features are only available at the more luxurious subscription plans, RingCentral’s skill-based call routing and intuitive dashboards can ensure you make the right matches between your agents and customers, making your customer service provision memorable for all the right reasons.

What’s even more impressive is that, compared to competitors like Vonage and 8×8, RingCentral races ahead for customer service features in our research, scoring a 4.8-star rating in this category. So, you can be confident you’ll have a whole dashboard of nifty features to power your call centre.

Vonage

Best for small call centre teams

Vonage for call centres: the key features

• Training: although analytics and reporting are widely available – which are key to identifying how you can help your call agents improve – call whisper and call barge are only available on the Professional and Ultimate subscriptions.
• Onboarding: only available at an additional cost.
• Integrations: although it comes at an additional cost, you can integrate Vonage’s IVR phone system with a wide range of software platforms, including Hubspot, Slack, Office 365, Salesforce, and Zendesk.

How does Vonage compare to other call centre phone system providers?

Backed by our thorough research, which considered training, onboarding, and the integrability of IVR phone systems for call centres, we gave Vonage a 4.2 star rating. Although you’ll need to make more of an investment to access all the features that make Vonage a top-notch phone system, it’s still cheaper than RingCentral. For that reason, we gave Vonage a 5-star rating for price – the highest pricing score of all the providers on this page!

8×8

Best for scalability

8×8’s pricing is now bespoke, the figures above reflect its most recent public pricing. If you want an accurate quote, you’ll need to contact 8×8 directly.

8×8 for call centres: the key features

• Training: call monitoring, call recording, call barge, call whisper, and analytics are available, but they’re not offered on the cheaper subscriptions. If you’d like to access call transcripts, these come at an additional cost.
• Onboarding: provided through 8×8’s Customer Success Managers, although it’s unclear if this comes at an additional cost.
• Integrations: integrable with CRM, Helpdesk, web conferencing, external and internal live chats, email, and more, starting at the X2 subscription. This makes 8×8 a powerful tool your agents can leverage to personalise customer experience and work quickly by avoiding having to hop back and forth between different communication channels

How does 8×8 compare to other call centre phone system providers?

Awarded a 3.9 star rating by our independent researchers, who’ve put 8×8’s call centre features, pricing, and customer support to the test, we believe it stands out due to its flexibility of choice. Whether your call centre needs a comprehensive, savvy system or you just want the essentials, 8×8 can tick off the boxes on your IVR phone system checklist.

Although we’ve given 8×8 a 0-star rating in pricing, placing it far behind Vonage’s 5-star rating in this category, you can consider the extra couple of quids you’re putting down on the table a worthy investment. Nevertheless, we have awarded 8×8 a stellar 5-star rating for its generous customer support, which is only rivalled by RingCentral’s equalising score in the same category.

GoToConnect

Best for value for money

GoToConnect for call centres: the key features

• Training: key features like call barge, call whisper, call recording, and analytics are available, but not on the Basic subscription plan, so you’ll need to invest a bit more to train your agents with GoToConnect. Call transcripts aren’t available.
• Onboarding: available at all subscription levels.
• Integrations: compatible with CRM, Helpdesk, web conferencing, internal live chat, API, email, and SSO, but the menu of the platforms you can sync GoToConnect with is less generous than other providers, missing Office 365, Hubspot, and Bullhorn.

How does GoToConnect compare to other call centre phone system providers?

After combing through all the information available on GoToConnect, our researchers have given it a 3.7 star rating. Although its customer support lags a bit behind the support offered by other providers like RingCentral and Vonage, the features you can access for what you pay at each subscription level give you greater value for your money than those systems. 

What is an IVR phone system?

Short for interactive voice response, IVR phone systems gather information from callers by giving them choices in a pre-recorded menu. You’ve probably encountered them when calling a restaurant to make a reservation, or any other sort of customer support that involved calling. Depending on the number you press on the keypad, your call is then routed to the correct agent to help you out with your query. In other words, it’s a way to connect your callers to the agent that will be able to best answer their questions.

What are the benefits of a call centre phone system?

• Keeps your customers happy – When customers give your business a call, they expect their query to be handled quickly and seamlessly. A powerful IVR phone system that can assign the right calls to the right agents will ensure your customers can hang up – rather than slam down – the phone, feeling satisfied with your service.
• Boosts efficiency – Whether you’re running a small or big business, your call centre is likely to experience a large number of inbound calls. Therefore, streamlining your service is key. IVR systems allow you to track all call activity in a single place, making it simple to understand where you’re faltering in customer service. Did you know that IVR phone systems can help reduce telephony-related costs by 30%?
• Scale up your business – The perfect fertiliser for growing your business is slashing costs and planting an infrastructure that’ll make your agents as productive as they can be. Call centre phone systems can do just that. They can also help you collect data to understand how your product is performing, and where it needs improvement. In fact, call centre phone systems can reduce your IT costs by up to 14%.

What do call centres need from a phone system?

Compared to other areas of your business, your call centre has a specific and unique set of needs. With so many features and systems available, you may be overwhelmed with what exactly you need to choose the right system.

We’ve done the research for you and noted the key features phone systems for call centres should have:

• Call routing – this will help callers be put through quickly and efficiently to the right person. There’s nothing worse than being put on hold for a long period of time or being bounced around to different departments before you eventually find the right person. Efficient call routing will reduce this from happening.
• Call recording – an important features as it helps to protect both your business and the caller if a dispute is raised. Call recording is legal in the UK in this scenario as it is done to ensure a business is complying with regulatory procedures.
• Integrated CRM – an integrated CRM system will help keep all of your calls and records unified. It makes it easier for your employees to access necessary information quickly, providing callers with a more efficient experience and ensuring less mistakes are made. If you already have a CRM system then look for a phone system that integrates easily.
• Training mode – this will ensure your agents avoid mistakes that could lead to bigger issues and provide agents with more confidence when dealing with real calls.

What hardware do I need for a call centre?

To provide a high-quality customer experience, each of your agents will require hardware equipment, including a computer, headset, and high-speed internet connection. As for the software tools, you will need a call centre phone system, a customer relationship management (CRM) system, and workforce management tools.

Here is why you need them:

Hardware equipment (£900+ per workstation)

• Computer – to access your call centre software and other tools.
• Headset (headphones and microphone set) – having a comfortable and reliable headset with a noise-cancelling feature will facilitate clear communication between your agent and the customer.
• Internet connection – you’ll need strong bandwidth to ensure smooth communication, high-quality calls, and uninterruptible service.

Software tools (£3,000+ per year)

• Call centre phone system – whether cloud-based or on-premise, a call centre software is your agents’ main tool to manage all your customers interaction.
• Customer relationship management (CRM) system – a database typically integrated to your call centre phone system, which stores important customer information, such as client demographics, call logs, and purchase history.
• Workforce management tools – a software that helps you manage your workforce to make sure you have enough call centre agents to handle high call volumes, such as customisable SLAs and call monitoring.

How We Compare Call Centre Phone Systems