Selecting the very best contact middle service is a serious determination. You doubtless want it to do greater than deal with incoming calls.

Choosing the proper contact middle platform can simplify the implementation course of, making certain profitable onboarding. The very last thing you need is a two-year onboarding saga.

It’s clever to match the frontrunner towards its prime contact middle as a service (CCaaS) opponents. 

Five9 is a cloud-based contact middle that permits brokers to work from anyplace with a pc, headset, and web connection​​.

It helps quite a few communication channels, together with voice, electronic mail, chat, SMS, and social media, with a constant consumer expertise.

Let’s have a look at the strengths, limitations, and alternate options to Five9.

What Are Some Strengths of Five9?

Five9 is persistently acknowledged as one of many leaders within the CCaaS market. It has many strengths which have earned it this constant reward.

CRM integration depth

Five9 is a contact middle resolution with a variety of integration choices, together with buyer relationship administration (CRM) methods:

• Salesforce
• ServiceNow
• Zendesk
• Oracle
• Microsoft Dynamics 365

These integrations give a complete view of buyer interactions and historical past​​​​.

Environment friendly omnichannel routing

Five9 has all the time supported omnichannel routing, making certain each interplay is linked to essentially the most acceptable useful resource and enhancing total customer support effectivity​​​​. 

Whatever the channel a buyer prefers to achieve out on, your contact middle brokers have a holistic view of the shopper journey and might reference all earlier interactions, orders, and tickets.

Superior IVR with speech recognition

Five9 is among the protagonists of pure language processing know-how inside contact middle platforms, and its interactive voice response (IVR) system makes use of superior speech recognition for intuitive self-service choices and environment friendly caller routing​​.

This implies callers get to their required vacation spot shortly with out ready on maintain for a human agent.

Actual-time analytics and reporting

Be it self-service transactions or detailed calls with brokers, Five9 offers in-depth insights into name middle operations with detailed analytics​​.

You may report on contact middle metrics:

• Web Promoter Rating
• Buyer satisfaction
• Buyer retention fee
• First contact decision
• Buyer effort rating
• Buyer churn fee
• Channel combine

And it additionally tracks extra conventional name middle metrics:

• Adherence to schedule
• Agent utilization fee
• Agent attrition fee
• Occupancy fee
• Common pace of reply
• Common deal with time
• Common after-call work time

Predictive dialer

For gross sales operations and groups conducting market analysis, Five9 gives a machine-learning-powered predictive dialer.

This will increase the effectivity of your outbound groups by optimizing name patterns and lowering misdials and handbook errors.

High-notch safety and compliance

Five9 gives enterprise-grade safety measures and compliance with business requirements to guard buyer knowledge​​.

The identify Five9 stems from the flexibility to continually present 99.999% uptime. The platform hosts a plethora of protection approaches, together with:

• Stateful inspection firewalls
• Demilitarized zones
• Intrusion prevention and detection methods
• Vulnerability scanning
• Annual penetration testing
• File integrity monitoring
• Anti-virus/anti-malware safety
• Two-factor authentication

Why Prospects Search for Options to Five9

If Five9 is so nice, what’s prompting clients to search for assist elsewhere? There are three recurring themes that pop up in buyer critiques.

Complicated setup and onboarding

Five9 targets enterprise clients or these in search of a excessive stage of automation, and a few customers, significantly in smaller companies, discover the setup course of complicated and cumbersome.

Whereas the customizability could possibly be seen by some as factor, the various settings and integrations may be overwhelming for small and medium companies that lack the urge for food for AI and self-service.

Steep studying curve

The great set of name middle options, integrations, and automation can current a steep studying curve for brand spanking new customers​​. Should you’re a small enterprise with restricted sources, getting on top of things can take months slightly than hours.

Restricted historic knowledge storage

Holding onto knowledge for an prolonged interval has confirmed difficult with Five9. Customers have expressed a need for longer knowledge storage or extra choices when deciding on knowledge retention intervals​​.

You may obtain name logs and internet chat scripts for as much as 60 days, however different gadgets, like dialing lists, E911 name recordings, and electronic mail attachments, don’t at present have a obtain choice after 30 days of storage.

High 7 Options to Five9

1. Nextiva

Strengths

Nextiva has an in depth vary of options, together with collaboration options, staff messenger, doc sharing, job administration, and CRM integrations.

Nextiva’s CRM integrations are sturdy, with some distinctive administration and collaboration instruments not present in opponents’ options​​​​​​​​.

Nextiva integrations embrace:

• Microsoft Dynamics
• Microsoft Outlook
• Oracle Gross sales Cloud
• Salesforce
• ServiceNow
• NetSuite 
• HubSpot
• Zendesk
• Bullhorn
• Workbooks
• SugarCRM
• Zoho

Providing comparable name middle performance out there in Five9, you too can profit from contact middle AI with out getting overwhelmed. There’s no strain to make all the pieces digital and go away robots to run issues, however there may be loads of intuitive name middle automation and machine studying to reap the benefits of.

Key options 

Nextiva consists of all the essential name middle software program options, together with inbound name flows, IVR, and computerized name distribution. 

You get limitless name queues, buyer callbacks, CRM connectors, efficiency dashboards, and superior options like workforce administration and workflow automation.

Why is Nextiva a compelling Five9 various? 

You should use Nextiva for each unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and CCaaS, and integrating the 2 is easy due to behind-the-scenes APIs that work exhausting to deliver you an environment friendly, easy-to-navigate interface. 

Whether or not you’re utilizing Nextiva in your telephony and your contact middle otherwise you’re integrating one other contact middle, maybe Five9, with Nextiva’s enterprise cellphone system, your contact middle brokers get a streamlined expertise with built-in video conferencing, a cell app for on-the-go accessibility, and aggressive pricing plans.

Nextiva’s 24/7 buyer help and wonderful service make it a terrific know-how companion for small companies and huge enterprises. The truth is, 94% of consumers say they’re very pleased with Nextiva’s service and help.

2. 3CX

Strengths

3CX has a easy unified communications consumer that’s common with clients who need to do little greater than make calls. 

You should use your individual VoIP supplier to underpin the answer and select from a listing of off-the-shelf CRM integrations for laptop telephony integration options similar to click-to-dial and display pop. There’s an easy-to-use cell app, and internet conferencing is included as normal.

Key options

You may create an off-the-cuff name middle utilizing name queues and routing with out the necessity for intensive coaching. 

Prospects just like the video name help and cross-platform compatibility. 3CX is a favourite for these searching for an open normal software-based PBX.

Why is 3CX a compelling Five9 various?

3CX gives a free tier and is understood for its ease of use and set up. It’s excellent for small corporations that want a versatile, feature-rich system with out vital infrastructure funding​​​​.

3. Avaya

Strengths 

Avaya offers omnichannel contact middle help throughout a spread of on-premise, cloud SaaS, and hybrid fashions. 

Every implementation choice comes with superior reporting and analytics, CRM integration, and a regular characteristic listing on par with Five9’s.

Key options 

Avaya has a legacy of offering telecom infrastructure and is versed in skills-based routing and historic and real-time reporting.

Its more moderen cloud providing, typically partnering with resellers to offer further companies, additionally consists of options like self-service automation, IVR with speech recognition, and workforce optimization.

Why is Avaya a compelling Five9 various?

Avaya is appropriate for giant enterprises with a concentrate on omnichannel communication methods. 

It has a legacy of delivering dependable efficiency and a complete set of name middle options to corporations with a restricted urge for food for cloud and AI.

4. CloudTalk

Strengths 

CloudTalk offers a high-quality name and CRM software program integration with efficient workforce optimization instruments. 

Because the identify suggests, CloudTalk solely offers a cloud contact middle and has the benefit of getting no on-premise baggage. Every part is scalable and versatile, selling the advantages of consumable cloud know-how.

Key options

CloudTalk is filled with inbound routing, name recording, name monitoring, name analytics, historic and reside reporting, and buyer surveys. 

It excels at dealing with inbound requires groups and has sufficient protection for primary omnichannel administration instruments.

Why is CloudTalk a compelling Five9 various?

Recognized for its ease of configuration and user-friendliness, CloudTalk gives a spread of integrations and options which can be particularly useful for gross sales and help groups. 

If your online business is searching for a powerful concentrate on buyer name analytics, that is CloudTalk’s precedence.

5. 8×8

Strengths 

8×8 offers an all-in-one communications platform for UCaaS and CCaaS with what it calls a “composable” resolution. 

For instance, for those who solely want complete name routing and social media messaging, you don’t must pay for outbound calling and internet chat licenses.

Key options

Should you choose to help all digital channels, 8×8’s omnichannel skills-based routing helps brokers effectively handle buyer queries.

It features a sturdy efficiency monitoring dashboard to observe agent productiveness.

Why is 8×8 a compelling Five9 various?

8×8 gives a spread of superior options that make it a powerful competitor by way of know-how and flexibility.

On the prime stage, you may entry high quality administration, AI-powered insights, and open APIs for personalization and CRM integration.

6. Aircall

Strengths

Aircall offers a slick consumer interface for brokers to effectively deal with calls and handle buyer queries. 

With out the litter of different digital channels, you may concentrate on offering the very best buyer expertise doable.

Key options

Aircall is filled with calling options to thrill your clients, together with:

• Calling queuing and IVR
• Time-based routing
• Native cellphone numbers
• Toll-free numbers
• Pause–resume name recording with transcription (together with voicemail)
• Actual-time analytics
• Heat switch for easy name hand-offs
• Name tagging for group and reporting
• Ring teams and parallel calls 
• Limitless concurrent name dealing with
• Integration with CRMs and helpdesk instruments

Why is Aircall a compelling Five9 various?

Should you’re searching for fast deployment, getting began with Aircall is faster than with Five9 as a result of it’s constructed on a cellphone system spine. Assuming your brokers have used primary cellphone name controls earlier than, they are going to decide it up straight away.

On the prime finish of the pricing tiers, Aircall is less expensive than Five9. Should you don’t want each doable CCaaS characteristic, Aircall’s highest package deal offers important options at a pretty worth.

7. NICE CXone (previously InContact)

Strengths

NICE has spent appreciable programming and improvement effort on its AI Worker Digital Attendant (NEVA) for agent efficiency enchancment. 

By placing the agent first, NICE focuses on elevated worker engagement, which interprets into higher buyer experiences.

Key options

NICE is among the most customizable contact middle software program options, with loads of choices for queue routing and reporting.

It integrates with common CRM methods like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk, and permits brokers to ask for mid-call assist from AI-powered digital assistants. If an agent is about to overlook an upsell alternative, the digital assistant will ship a pop-up message stating it’s the proper time to say a brand new product.

Why is NICE a compelling Five9 various?

NICE stands out for its AI capabilities to report on and motion buyer conduct patterns and supply on-the-spot teaching for brokers.

What’s the greatest Five9 Different?

There isn’t a doubt that the market has many alternate options to Five9, however discovering the proper resolution for your online business is essential.

Matching the wants of your contact middle with the strengths of the out there distributors is usually a powerful job. 

Should you’re a small-to-medium enterprise in search of a multi-level IVR, name recording, and name screening, Nextiva can get you arrange very quickly. There’s no want for intensive coaching, and utilizing the interface is as straightforward as working your new smartphone.

Should you’re available in the market for a cellphone system resolution in addition to contact middle software program, Nextiva gives sturdy video and audio conferencing, display sharing, and on the spot messaging as a base telephony system. 

Customers (and admins) love the flexibility to combine back-end customers with front-end contact middle brokers, making for a streamlined workforce to handle buyer interactions.

Prospects additionally cite their love for usability, efficiency, and buyer help.

Elizabeth Morales, the Gross sales Supervisor at Labrada Distributors, says she loves the analytics she will get, that are particularly essential for retaining monitor of her distant groups:

“Nextiva offered me with exactly the options I want to take care of group metrics and see the place we will enhance, make changes, and supply higher gross sales service to our clients.”