Best for ticketing management and routing: Zendesk
Best for giving agents access to real-time data: Pipedrive
Customer relationship management software made specifically for contact or help centers are used by agents or reps to help serve existing and potential customers. These platforms host all customer information, including contact information, interaction history, purchase orders and more.
These CRMs help manage ongoing customer relationships by streamlining support throughout the sales process.
Apart from standard CRM features and capabilities, contact center CRMs include in-depth customer profiles, ticketing systems, multiple communication channels and advanced reporting and analytics. Typically, general CRM providers have all of these functionalities when the platform is integrated and set up with contact center intentions.
Following CRM software best practices can ensure your implementation of top providers like HubSpot, Engagebay, Zoho CRM and more into effective contact center CRM. Below we dive into how these platforms can support users looking for a great contact center CRM solution.
HubSpot: Best provider offering robust AI-powered features
Image: HubSpot
Within HubSpot’s Service Hub, the entire helpdesk and ticketing dashboard empowers reps and agents to manage and resolve queries in an AI-first and fully integrated workspace. Users can utilize AI-powered tools throughout their experience with the platform. With conversation intelligence, chatbots and messaging, users can use AI to assist in not only strategizing support efforts but actually engaging with clients as well.
Why did we choose HubSpot?
HubSpot is a very popular CRM platform that offers a robust free version of their software. The call tracking, analytics and reporting and playbook features help users manage end-to-end sales processes, including post-sale support. HubSpot also offers over 1,500+ potential integrations, making it an easy CRM provider to implement into any businesses’ current sales process and tech stack.
While HubSpot free tier is feature-rich, there still might be some advanced tools only accessible in premium plans. HubSpot’s premium subscriptions can be considered costly for startups or small businesses, so if that’s the case, we’d consider looking into Engagebay for similar support features.
Free CRM: Free for up to 2,500 users with contact management, quotes, live chat and more.
Service Starter: $20 per seat per month, billed annually. The Starter plan includes all free tools plus simple automation, e-signature, conversation routing and more.
Service Professional: $100 per seat per month, billed annually. This plan includes all Starter features and prospecting workspace, platbooks, forecasting and more.
Service Enterprise: $130 per seat per month, with an annual commitment. Users of this plan receive all Professional tools plus advanced permissions, predictive lead scoring, conversation intelligence and lead form routing.
Features
AI assistant: Increase rep and agent productivity and efficiency with AI built directly into the platform with response suggestions.
Feedback management: Create NPS, CSAT, CES and even custom surveys to gather critical client feedback.
Omnichannel messaging: Communicate with customers wherever they want by accessing multiple channels through one inbox and seamlessly switch between them.
HubSpot content AI-assistant. Image: HubSpot
HubSpot pros and cons
Pros
Cons
1,500+ app integrations.
Users report easy software deployment.
HubSpot acts as an all-in-one software for sales, marketing and administration support.
Premium plans can be costly compared to others on this list.
Users report occasional bugs around data.
Doesn’t offer live support for free users.
Engagebay: Best offering free live chat
Image: Engagebay
Engagebay offers free live chat software for agents to deploy quick and personalized responses to customers. The tool also offers customer tracking, reports and insights, unlimited website widgets, automations, chat shortcuts and more. Agents are able to talk with customers in real time and even send proactive messages, inviting customers to chat. With chat transcripts, agents can strategize for future conversations.
Why did we choose Engagebay?
Engagebay offers a free Service solution that can be added to their sales or marketing product while also offering a unique all-in-one product with sales, marketing and help desk features. Overall, Engagebay is an affordable option with a variety of payment options and subscription levels. Together, the platform can help small to mid-sized businesses organize and manage all client interactions, from lead generation to ongoing support.
Since Engagebay caters more directly to smaller businesses, if you’re a mid-level or even enterprise-sized user, consider HubSpot for their additional scalability.
To learn more about this provider, head over to our Engagebay review.
Pricing
Service Bay: Free help desk and free live chat for support teams.
All-in-One Free: Free for up to 15 users and 250 contacts with email marketing, CRM access, landing page builders and more.
All-in-One Basic: $12.74 per user, per month when billed biennially, $13.79 when billed yearly and $14.99 when billed monthly. This includes everything in the free tier, plus email templates, landing pages, reports dashboard, custom deal milestones and more.
All-in-One Growth: $55.24 per user per month when billed biennially, $59.79 when billed yearly and $64.99 when billed monthly. Users can access multi currency, email sequences, automations and workflows and more.
All-in-One Pro: $101.99 per user per month when billed biennially, $110.39 when billed yearly and $119.99 when billed monthly. This paid tier includes proposal analytics, role management, call records and call scripts.
Features
Support groups: Create groups of service agents based on location, product, service skills or more, and route customer queries based on those filters.
Custom ticket views: Organize tickets by grouping them into lists based on different criteria that the user wishes to sort by.
Canned responses: Save time by creating canned responses for similar service queries and use them to reply to email or message tickets.
Example support group within dashboard. Image: Engagebay
Engagebay pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Provides extensive integrations.
Offers a basic free version of the platform.
Tech support is reviewed as highly effective and helpful.
The software requires some learning for less experienced users.
Limited platform customization.
The free tier has limited features.
Zoho Desk: Best solution offering a self service portal
Image: Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk offers a unique self service portal that enables customers to find quick answers by themselves, wherever they are. The portal can be embedded into your website or mobile app to ensure user experience is consistent and doesn’t cause a roadblock. The self service is an easily configurable and low code platform that also notifies agents about progress made on customer tickets.
Why did we choose Zoho Desk?
Zoho Desk integrates seamlessly as an additional solution with Zoho CRM. Businesses can use the two to capitalize on cross-selling opportunities and support and sales teams both have access to the same information. With better collaboration between departments, profit can increase, reps and agents alike can respond timely, and retention rates can jump with proactive support and selling.
Zoho Desk and Zoho CRM are technically two different solutions, meaning businesses need to budget and account for subscribing to both. If you want a software with both sales and support within one solution, consider Kustomer.
To learn more, head over to our independent Zoho CRM review.
Pricing
Free CRM: Free for up to three users and comes with lead and document management and a mobile app.
Standard: $14 per user per month, billed annually, or $20 per user when billed monthly. Users can access email insights, sales forecasting and multiple currencies.
Professional: $23 per user per month, billed annually, or $35 per user when billed monthly. This tier includes all Standard features, plus assignment rules and unlimited custom reports and dashboards.
Enterprise: $40 per user per month, billed annually, or $50 per user when billed monthly. This plan introduces all AI-powered tools, plus email segmentation, auto-response and more.
Features
Auto-tag tickets: Identify key aspects of a ticket and have notes and tags automatically attached for reps to review.
Zia reply assistant: Receive relevant solutions from Zoho’s AI assistant, Zia, based on the knowledge base to use in ticket responses.
Mobility: Manage ongoing tickets and deliver support from anywhere with Zoho Desk mobile app.
Customer ticket profile via mobile app. Image: Zoho CRM
Zoho Desk pros and cons
Pros
Cons
15-day free trial.
24/7/365 data security.
Offers a free-for-life version of the solution.
Users report limited data pdf exporting.
Users report occasional bugs.
Only offers 8/5 customer support.
Kustomer: Best for providing omnichannel support
Image: Kustomer
With Kustomer, reps or agents are able to deliver seamless customer support around the clock across a variety of digital channels. This includes CRM-powered chatbots with FAQs, social media messaging through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp, email, live voice and SMS. Users can also leverage AI and historical customer insights to personalize engagement strategies and set up automations that help provide quick resolutions.
Why did we choose Kustomer?
Kustomer is a well-rounded CRM with a focus on customer service. The platform uses contextualized data to deliver hyper-personalized client support and drive smarter sales processes that can scale businesses. With a 360-degree view of customers and process automations, users can improve their customer experience from beginning to end with custom logic and rules that sort and assign conversations to the right agent at the right time.
Kustomer only offers about 60+ plug-and-play apps and integrations. Though the CRM is heavily focused on customer experience, this lack of potential integrations might make the platform siloed when it comes to deploying it within your existing tech stack. For a similar provider with more integration possibilities, check out HubSpot.
Pricing
Enterprise: $89 per user per month. All contracts and billing schedules are annual. This tier offers multi-channel communication, proactive service features, voice provider integration and more.
Ultimate: $139 per user per month. All contracts and billing schedules are annual. This plan offers all Enterprise features plus real-time user supervision, enhanced routing and dashboards.
Features
Bulk messaging: Generate profit by bulk messaging specific customer segments based on unique filters, such as orders, location or CSAT.
Voice and SMS: Manage calls, SMS and MMS directly in the Kustomer platform with ticket routing.
Timeline view: Visualize every customer interaction from orders, reviews, appointments and more in a threaded chronological view.
Customer history and timeline view. Image: Kustomer
Kustomer pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Offers a product demo.
Users praise the speed of the program without needing extra RAM or processing power.
Offers robust purchase order visibility and accessibility.
Limited social media integration and monitoring.
Users report a learning curve with the platform interface.
Zendesk: Best for ticketing management and routing
Image: Zendesk
Zendesk offers a fully integrated ticketing system that acts as a central hub for all client questions, requests and concerns. After customers reach out via email, chat, phone or any web channel, submissions are immediately entered as tickets and entered into a queue for reps to pick up. With the help of additional features such as routing, CSAT ratings, time tracking, service level agreements and more, agents are able to support clients effectively and efficiently.
Why did we choose Zendesk?
Zendesk offers a unique solution specifically for customer service. Promoting AI-first service, Zendesk works to deliver customers fast and more personalized experiences using AI trained in the art of customer service. Their solution allows reps to meet customers exactly where they are, across any channel of communication.
While Zendesk also offers a modern sales CRM, its bread and butter is the Zendesk Service software. If you need a more robust CRM software first, consider HubSpot, Zoho CRM or Pipedrive.
Pricing
Zendesk offers a unique breakdown of their solutions. They offer basic plans for users who just want a ticketing system, calling those plans Support tiers. Zendesk Suite plans offer the complete solution for ticketings, messaging, help center, voice and powerful AI.
Support Team: $19 per user per month, billed annually, or $25 per user when billed monthly. This plan includes a ticketing system, customer details and conversation histories, business rules and more.
Support Professional: $55 per user per month, billed annually, or $69 per user when billed monthly. This tier comes with all Support Team features plus multilingual support, SLAs and more.
Support Enterprise: $115 per user per month, billed annually, or $149 per user when billed monthly. All mentioned features come in this tier plus skills based routing, custom agent roles and more.
Zendesk Suite Team: $55 per user per month, billed annually, or $69 per user when billed monthly.
Zendesk Suite Growth: $89 per user per month, billed annually, or $115 per user when billed monthly.
Zendesk Suite Professional: $115 per user per month, billed annually, or $149 per user when billed monthly.
Zendesk Suite Enterprise: Contact sales for a custom quote.
Features
Voice: Speak directly with clients and deliver personalized solutions to complex issues. With embedded voice, customers can seamlessly contact agents and keep all conversations in the same space.
Agent workspace: Create custom dashboards and workspaces for agents that house all the data, relevant information and communication channels so they can work efficiently.
AI agents: Deliver instant and personalized service with AI assistants that can solve tickets of any complexity by offering nonstop service for customers.
Ticketing summaries and priority filters. Image: Zendesk
Zendesk pros and cons
Pros
Cons
14-day free trial.
Users praise easy-to-use interfaces.
Allows for user permissions for both clients and agents.
Users report too many add-ons can make the system run slowly.
Limited system user support.
Limited email feature integration, such as no email forwarding.
Pipedrive: Best for giving agents access to real-time data
Image: Pipedrive
With Pipedrive as a contact center CRM, agents or sales reps can access real-time customer information and use the CRM data to better understand the customers needs and solve their submitted queries efficiently. Pipedrive offers this customer tracking software that collects data from every interaction with the customer, including emails, website visits and more, and then provides valuable insights into their buying decisions. This will help reps close deals quickly and also keep clients engaged and satisfied post-sale.
Why did we choose Pipedrive?
Pipedrive assists businesses that wish to prioritize customer satisfaction through their contact management, real-time data, lead management and retention and more. Pipedrive is an easy-to-use sales CRM with powerful integrations, intuitive pipeline tracking and more. With pricing tiers made for small businesses that are growing, Pipedrive is a scalable solution that can supercharge every step of your business’s sales cycle.
Pipedrive doesn’t offer a totally free version of their platform, and some add-on features can quickly increase the monthly subscription. If you’re looking for a basic CRM with robust customer support features, starting with a free-for-life plan, consider looking into HubSpot for their robust free tier.
Essential: $14 per user per month, billed annually, or $24 per user when billed monthly. This plan supports 3,000 open deals, 15 reports per user and multiple communication tracking features.
Advanced: $29 per user per month, billed annually, or $39 per user when billed monthly. This plan offers all Essential tiers plus active automations, active email syncs and more.
Professional: $49 per user per month, billed annually, or $64 per user when billed monthly. This tier comes with all Advanced features plus custom visibility groups, formula fields and unlimited general availability scheduling links.
Power: $64 per user per month, billed annually, or $79 per user when billed monthly. Power offers all Professional features in addition to 24/7 live chat support, phone support and more.
Enterprise: $99 per user per month, billed annually, or $129 per user when billed monthly. This plan comes with all Power features plus security alerts and rules, free project add-ons and more.
Features
Embed contact forms: Create customized forms on your business website, making it easy for customers to submit their best contact information.
Email integration: Connect your email to Pipedrive so reps and agents can read and reply to customers directly within the platform.
Document management: Create, send and manage contacts, proposals, reviews and more with Smart Docs. Then store the information and resources in a secure location.
Sample web form and customer contact. Image: Pipedrive
Pipedrive pros and cons
Pros
Cons
14-day free trial.
Designed specifically for small businesses.
Offers 24/7 support.
No free-for-life version.
Users report the sales feature add-ons can be pricey.
Users report limited advanced reporting.
How do I choose the best contact center CRM software for my business?
Using our list of the top contact center CRM software, the next step would be to request demos, sign up for free trials or begin communicating with the sales team of the providers on this list that peak your interest. Understanding your budget and standard CRM pricing is important before committing to subscriptions or contracts.
Below are questions to ask when researching contact center or client support CRM software:
Does the CRM software integrate with tools you already have in your tech stack?
What is the total in-market expertise for your industry, if any?
Is the CRM scalable and detailed enough to fit your small business or enterprise?
Does the software fit your business’s budget? Would a free CRM tool be a better option?
To evaluate the top contact center CRM software, I used an in-house rubric with outlined criteria, with a special focus on client support capabilities. After scoring and reviewing each provider with the rubric, an algorithm calculated an overall star rating, which I used to assign each software an ideal use case.
Here’s a breakdown of the exact scoring criteria used:
Cost: Weighted 25% of the total score.
Core features: Weighted 25% of the total score.
Customizations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
Integrations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
Ease of use: Weighted 10% of the total score.
Customer support: Weighted 10% of the total score.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Which CRM software is best for a call center?
We’ve found the best CRM software that offer robust customer support, contact and call center features, including HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Kustomer and Zendesk, among others. Along with each provider’s pricing information, pros and cons, and top relevant features, we’ve also identified each solution’s ideal use case. This guide will help you determine which software fits your business’s specific needs and priorities.
What is CRM for customer service?
CRM software for customer service refers to CRM features that aid sales reps or agents to continue customer engagement and support post-sale. Specific customer service features include storing all client history, enabling multiple channels of communication and more. The top enterprise CRM software typically offer some degree of customization when it comes to customer service solutions. This way, businesses are able to deploy the solution into their existing sales process and actively support customer retention goals.
What is CRM in a call center?
Customer relationship management software, specifically used in a call center, acts as a hub for all client information for agents to instantly access while troubleshooting issues and providing a live communication channel to clients. To best support customers, the CRM can organize and manage account history and all relevant business information in real time while agents are on the phone.
