What to look at when choosing call center software

Every vendor shows the same list of features. The questions that tell one apart from another are quite a bit more specific.

The reports: what they are measured against

The first question worth asking is where the numbers come from. A CRM can report contact rate against its own database, and that says nothing about what actually happened on the phone platform.

Ask to see a report reconciled against the platform's call log. If the gap is large, you are making decisions with the wrong number.

Capacity: how many agents for real

"Scalable" and "no limits" are not answers. The useful question is how many concurrent agents one instance supports, and how that number was measured.

In our case it is 100 per server, measured under real load, and to grow you add servers instead of switching systems. Another vendor may have a better number; what matters is that they have a number and can explain it.

Omnichannel, properly understood

Having WhatsApp is not being omnichannel. What changes the operation is that the conversation is one: if the customer called yesterday and writes on WhatsApp today, the agent has to see the same thing.

And for collections there is a legal detail worth asking head-on: whether WhatsApp and SMS count against the same contact quota as calls. If the system tracks them separately, you break Law 21.320 without anyone noticing.

The exit: what happens if you leave

It is the most uncomfortable question and the most useful. Before you go in, it is worth knowing in what format they hand back your portfolio, your activity history and your recordings if you decide to switch vendors.

A vendor who answers this without flinching is telling you something about how they plan to keep you: by service and not by how hard it is to leave.