What is a contact center platform?
A contact center platform (often called CCaaS — Contact Center as a Service) is the software stack that handles inbound and outbound customer interactions across voice, chat, email, SMS and social. It includes ACD, IVR, dialers, agent desktop, reporting and increasingly AI for routing, summarisation and quality.
Who buys it
- BPOs and outsourced sales floors
- In-house customer service teams (10–10,000 seats)
- Sales development orgs running outbound dialing
- Enterprises modernising from on-prem PBX/ACD
What to compare
- Channel coverage (voice, email, chat, SMS, social, video, async)
- Routing (skills-based, attribute-based, AI-driven)
- AI features (agent assist, summarisation, sentiment, conversational IVR)
- Reliability and global PSTN footprint
- Pricing model (per-seat vs per-minute vs hybrid)