Call Center vs Contact Center: Key Highlights & Differences

Published On March 13th, 2024 Product News & Updates

“Call centers today stand as one of the prime heart-hubs for several businesses looking to boost customer service.”

That being said, many customers call in to resolve their queries and reps call out to market their products. This is what happens in a call center. And lately, the call center has evolved into the contact center.

  1. So what does both the term mean, 
  2. what are the real differences between call center vs contact center, and 
  3. Which approach should businesses choose to improve customer satisfaction?

Our guide answers all these, with a little spice on statistics as well. So stay tuned!

Recent Stats On Call Center & Contact Center Usage

Here are some of the important statistical data to consider by businesses who use call centers as a service:

  • The satisfaction score is 73%
  • 80% of calls are answered in less than 20 seconds
  • Agent interactions will increase by 10% in 2026
  • 73% of customers value call center BPO setup as a good sign to boost satisfaction

Now, here are some of the important statistical data to consider by businesses who use contact centers as a service:

  • 79% of customers feel their queries are answered instantly
  • 38.08% of contact centers use post-contact survey
  • 58% of customers used chatbots for queries 
  • Contact centers helped customers not wait for a long time

What is Call Center?

A call center is a space or a department that is built to handle customer queries, service requests, and outbound sales calls over the phone. 

Plus, call centers are equipped with CRM tools and advanced telecom technologies to increase customer response time, streamline operations, and boost customer service.

We can see call centers are categorized into two types:

  • Inbound call centers: Calls made by the customers regarding billing, tech support, and knowledge-base support.
  • Outbound call centers: Here, agents make calls to customers that can either be to promote a market, a sales call, a debt call, or more.

Though call centers offer these, customers still have the bad impression that when they dial in, they are routed through a programmable IVR that might increase their response time. And this led to the growth of a contact center solution. 

Contact center service providers

Did you know? Contact centers are now evolving to become cloud-based contact center solutions. All thanks to cloud SDKs that make this tech work.

What is a Contact Center?

Contact center is a centralized department managing customer queries, requests, and interactions through a wide range of communication channels like emails, live chats, social media, VoIP, SMS, in-app chats, video, and phone. 

Plus, businesses usually integrate CRMs to contact center solutions to seamlessly track and manage all interactions happening with the customers and agents.

customer support

Now, let’s understand the difference between Call Center Software and Contact Center Solutions

Call Center SoftwareContact Center Solutions
Communication is mostly on a telephonic network (only by voice).
The communication is carried on different channels (text, video & voice).
It’s completely predictive based on agent’s ideas, ineffective.
It’s a proactive action, increases customer service efficiency through reaching customers over social
The response time certainly depends on agents and issues.
It empowers self-service with IVR, Call recording and so on.
Advanced call routing increases consistency and betterment customer experience.

So finally understanding that your businesses can thrive and succeed upon using a contact center solution, what’s going to be your next great step?

Simply integrate an enterprise-based contact center API to your existing application. Now with a lot of options available in the market, it is going to be a tough one to choose the right solution.

And that’s where MirrorFly’s modern contact center support APIs come into play that offers you to add omni-channel services with advanced features thereby boosting agent-customer interactions 3X times. 

contact center support

What are the benefits of using a contact center solution for your business?

Below are some of the major benefits that businesses find upon embedded this type of support:

contact center solution

i). Scale Your Customer Service Globally:

With enterprise contact center features, you can scale elastically across different regions, different customers across the countries through functionalities such as:

1) SIP/VoIP To make Carrier Calls:

Get rid of making calls with the actual and limited budget plan to carrier networks. Go unlimited voice calls across any carrier device instantly and make concurrent calls.

2) Add Virtual Phone Numbers:

Access instantly to local, national, international, and mobile phone numbers based on your tailored business needs.

3) Engage Customers Through WebRTC:

Make virtual calls video calls to any device from your web interface and provide a better customer experience to your customers at any time.

ii). Communicate Through Multiple Channels

1) Make Real-time Chat With Customers:

Make instant web and mobile chat with customers to transfer rich information over a secure chat screen.

2) Give them in-person experience with Video Call:

Make face-to-face video interaction with your customers for information sharing, visual solutions right from any device (App or Web).

3) Reach Customers on their device with Voice Calls:

Enable customers to schedule calls over the internet from their phone, website or app to engage and offer instant support to their queries over any device.

4) Interact With Customers On Social Platforms:

Enable customers to schedule calls over the internet from their phone, website or app to engage and offer instant support to their queries over any device

iii). Enhance Customer Experience

1) Multi-level IVR To Direct On-going Calls:

Route your customer calls to the relative support team through a self-service system. Greet customers with an interactive voice response (IVR) system to customize the call flow to the right person or team to solve their needs in a much quicker way.

2) Monitor Every Single Call With Call Recording:

Track the entire calls of your customer’s conversation to analyze your communication effort and take up decisions to improve your customer experience.

3) A Real-time Hub To Monitor On-going Calls:

Manage your entire calls and call center within a real-time dashboard. Analyze the list of live calls, calls queues taking place between your customer and agent to optimize the performance of your call center.

4. Centralized Management Hub To Control Overall Calls:

Optimize your entire contact center with a real-time and virtual contact center management to operate calls and analyze the performance of your team.

Why Should You Go With MirrorFly’s Modern API Based Contact Center Solution?

modern contact center services

1. Customization has been the Prime

When you build a modern contact center with all several communication channels and features, you have the opportunity and freedom to customize the contact center solution based on the exact user experience that your customers would love to experience.

Let it be communication channels (voice, video & chat, SIP/VoIP), UI/UX, other functionalities, you can design it according to your desired needs and drive better customer experience.

2. On-Premise/Cloud-Hosted Contact Center Solution

Whatever the hosting possibilities, whether you want your data to be available on cloud or could be managed entirely under your premises with robust security, Modern contact center API is ready with any hosting flexibility.

3. One-time License Cost For Entire Platform

Pay only for the features, communication channels that your business demands. Get rid of the monthly subscription-based options, own the entire contact center platform armed with all communication channels and features.

Just pay once for all the communication channels, features, and functionalities, experience unlimited calls right from your contact center Application to customers’ devices.

4. Enhance Team Productivity

With us, set up your communication features in < 10 minutes and get a chance to scale your app with billions of interactions. Plus, avail benefits of interacting with your customers through chatbots and ChatGPT powered support.

5. Best-in-class Real-time Communication Features

Use our SDKs and connect with supervisors, agents, customers, and managers through 1:1 and group chats, secure video conferencing, video or audio calls, and share documents instantly. 

What are the Industries Our Contact Center API Supports?

Delivering the best customer experience is the key soul of any industry. Upgrading the call center software with a virtual contact center solution would be the best ever decision that an organization can take to offer the utmost customer service and excel in the business. Here are some top industries that have seen sublime growth using the contact center platform.

modern customer services
Modern Contact Center for Business Process Outsourcing
  • It helps to convert the call into actionable insights through contacting across all channels.
  • Increases the trustworthiness of the agents by offering extensive customer support.
  • Seamless synchronization with CRM helps to locate contacts quickly and increases efficiency.
Real-time Contact Center for Healthcare Services
  • Offers premium customer service to patients right from any device, anywhere and anytime.
  • It helps patients to choose preferable communication medium, sharing of bills, details, etc.
  • Assist staff in offering personalized care through virtual video calls that act as an in-person interaction.
  • Virtual healthcare customer service agents support great patient outcomes at every step in their journey.
modern customer support solution
modern contact center api
Contact Center For Telecommunication Customer Services
  • The cloud contact center platform replaces the traditional calling methods with internet (VoIP/SIP) calling where offering customer service is significant in telecom.
  • Reduces the call rate and helps in offering the best possible customer experience through video call interactions.
  • Manage the entire call customer calls within one single software where the agents can work peacefully and effectively.
Ideal Contact Center for On-demand Services
  • The Food industry sees the highest competition where the food delivery platforms can reach out to customers across multiple communication mediums.
  • With instant interaction with customers, restaurants and on-demand platforms can collect feedback and improvise business to take corrective decisions on different situations.
Contact-center-sdk-api-for-customer-suppor 7

Wrapping up!

To conclude, a contact center is an ideal revenue-boosting hub for any business and investing in it isn’t a big deal. Because, choosing the right one for your business is what is required. 

So, if you are thinking of adding value to your enterprise, grow your customer service strategy, and meet the user expectations with top-notch services, simply opt our contact center APIs that just elevates the service experiences.

Contact Center Solution

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What is contact center software?

A contact center software is a centralized hub for automating all the contact center processes through various communication channels like phone, email, chat, social media, and more.

2. What is a cloud contact center solution?

It is a type of solution that operates on the cloud infrastructure, allowing businesses to manage all their user-agent interactions without on-premises hardware. Cloud contact center solution gives the required flexibility, accessibility, and scalability for businesses.

3. Which software is used for call centers?

Software like CRM, ACD, IVR, and other workforce management tools are used for call centers.

4. What is the difference between a contact center and a call center?

While a call center handles all interactions through phone, a contact center on the other hand offers diverse communication channels to customers to connect with agents like email, chat, social media, and phone.

5. What is a contact center in BPO?

A contact center in BPO refers to the department that is known to manage customer interactions on behalf of the client businesses, where agents look after sales, requests, and support.

6. What is the difference between a CRM and a contact center?

A CRM ( customer relationship management) is a tool or software that is mainly focused on managing and analyzing data, whereas a contact center is a centralized system for managing user interactions across different channels.

Alexander S

18 Comments "Call Center vs Contact Center: Key Highlights & Differences"

  1. AnnaLipnicka says:

    Hi, Good day wishes!
    Your blog is quite informative and delivers the entire essential about video chat app. Yes! Creating a own chat app is a right choice of business nowadays since it is an utmost necessity of this fast moving world. https://bit.ly/3bGtP31

  2. bunnhashim says:

    I would like to know the pricing for the Data voice Call for large volume. I have been using other thirdpary provider for voice calling in one of my successful application. I have an average of 2 Million minutes per month. So can you provide me the best possible pricing for one-to-one voice call over data.

  3. fdsrfestfretre says:

    Hello! We are looking to develop a call center within AWS or other cloud services. The call center makes phones for customer support, collects billing, and track collections. We need to move our servers to the cloud, VOIP calls, call recording, call to text, AI to analyze the call script. As well as an interactive panel, where the admin and the users can see their performance during the day. We have designed a mock prototype that you might be able to use. Let me know if you are AWS certified and have previous experience building a call center in the cloud. Thank you.

  4. Prashanth says:

    Hi,
    Im planning to develop a chatting app with text, voice and video for 1-1 and group as basic features. And all communications are end to end encrypted. Also will need to support ios, android and web. Let me know how mirrorfly could be utilize in my project, estimated costs and the hardware and software requirements

  5. Hema says:

    Hi I need to build the voice connect with our call center system. Yesterday I emailed but no one replied yet

  6. Gyandev says:

    Hi,
    I’m looking for Voice and Video calls API’s to integrate with Flutter/React Native cross platforms, I just wanted to know MirrorFly supports cross platform integration. If available could you share with us.
    Thanks & regards,
    Vamsi K

  7. Digital says:

    Hi
    I am creating a website for one of my client for customer support I need following services: 1. voice call 2.vedio call ( one sided) + screen share 3.chat

  8. Dheeraj says:

    I’m a web developer working for ***** Events ***** http://*******.co.uk/ They organise speed dating events with 1-1 face to face meetings.
    Suppliers and Buyers. They normally organise all events at various venues, but due to covid-19 they would like to move events online and organise video meetings. They run up to 60 meetings concurrently. Each meeting slot lasts 15 minutes, then 5 minutes break and next meeting.

    The events are 1 or 2 days long.
    There are about 20-25 meeting slots on the first day and 10 on the second day.
    There is always one supplier representative participating and usually one buyer company representative, though there can be more buyers, 2 or 3, therefore up to 4 separate participants, though usually it’s 1-1 meeting. We expect between 1000 and 2000 meetings per month, which means between 15 000 to 30 000 minutes per month, and usually 2 participants at each meeting.

    There will be up to four 30-60 minute webinars during per event, and broadcasted to up to 70 participants. Therefore between 8 to 16 hours per month broadcasted to 70 participants. We don’t expect more than 100 000 video minutes per user per month initially. Since there is a daily schedule, it’s important for the meeting to start at certain time and finish at certain time. It’s important for the video solution to offer a way to display the remaining time, or at least periodically notify participants about the remaining time, even if they are in full screen video mode. We would like the solution to offer in meeting chat.

    We would like the solution to also offer screen sharing. All participants will be in UK. All meetings and webinars will be scheduled via API. We are looking for a video platform to integrate with Forum Events system to allow running events online.

    Do you offer all in one solution that supports:
    * meetings with integrated chat?
    * webinars for up to 70 participants
    * screen sharing?
    * sending notifications to live meeting participants during the meeting
    * displaying a meeting coundown timer on a full screen video meeting?

    How much does your solution cost for 100 000 user video minutes per month?
    Do you offer some default html widget for video and chat meetings or everything needs to be built from scratch?

    Regards,

  9. asdff says:

    Hello Team,
    I want to integrate video calling feature to my client website. Website is about adult industry, So i want to know that there is (mirrorfly ) any restrict for such type of website.? Looking forward for your quick answer.
    Thanks & Regards

  10. werertetr says:

    Hello, I want to start a startup project in Turkey for my company. I want to get pricing information for your mirrorfly contact centre solution. I need as sdk and I will use in web and maybe in app. Can you send different pricing models?
    Thanks,
    Özgür

  11. Gobinda says:

    Hello,
    I want to connect my customers with my dedicated team via video calls embedded on web site,
    can I do that using MirrorFly via API?

  12. Mehdi Hussen says:

    Hi
    My self abilash looking for chat app with something like yalla app , Actually i need to know the price , technology used , is there is any dashboard to monitor ,Technology used for backend ,When you can deliver etc

  13. Barbara says:

    Hi,

    This app is built by me, i want to add video/audio calling + recording feature. So, i need to test your sdk with this. Please provide.

    Kind Regards,
    Barbara

  14. Subham says:

    We are looking at expanding our current chat, voice and video consultations and looking for a solution like yours to embed it into our app and into our business. Email me the pricing so that we can get started.

  15. KennethDible says:

    Hello,
    We’re looking for a video calling API solution for one of our client website, He wants to have video calling chat on his website..Let me know how you can help us. Thank You

  16. Robertmem says:

    Hi!
    We’re looking for the solutions which will let us to build up a video+chats solution for remote selling purposes. I would like to get to know more info about your sdk and api (suitable environments, possible requests etc.). In general I would love to see more detailed info about it for me to engage dev team to have a review and make a decision how we can use it.

    Thank you,
    Robertmem

  17. Moursmers says:

    Hello.
    We would like to integrate with our Shopify portal, it would be really nice if we could get further clarity on this platform, so could you please connect with us to provide further clarity.

  18. Milariva says:

    Hi,
    I would really appreciate it if you could send me some information concerning your pricing for Video API & SDK usage. Basically we have to implement a one-2-one video call solution for Android, iOS and Web. Are you able to restrict your solution to servers in the European Union (f.e. *******)? I have to prepare an offer until tomorrow, 08th of April 12:00am.

    Therefore I would really appreciate to get the information as soon as possible. Sorry and thanks in advance!

    Kind regards,
    Milariva
    Gernot Bernkopf

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