I tested the RingCentral Contact Center - read what I thought about this powerful contact platform with advanced features

RingCentral Contact Center is a cloud-based solution that helps organizations create great customer experiences to connect, empower, and engage employees. As a leader in cloud helpdesk software, RingCentral blends UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) and CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) to create a strong omnichannel platform.

RingCentral simplifies customer interactions across channels like voice, web chat, mobile SMS, email, and social media. It includes features like skills-based routing, session queuing, intelligent IVR, speech analytics, workforce management, and real-time reporting.

Businesses using RingCentral Contact Center have experienced up to a 46% increase in revenue growth, a 24% rise in average revenue per agent, and a 47% jump in customer satisfaction scores. The platform guarantees a 99.99% uptime, while offering layers of enterprise-grade security.

RingCentral is ideal for organizations of all sizes, from mid-sized businesses to large enterprises. It's especially good for companies wanting to adopt future-ready technology, support remote work, cut costs, and meet high customer expectations.

RingCentral Contact Center: Plans and pricing

RingCentral Contact Center, or RingCX, is a premium solution with prices that match its robust features. It starts at $65 per user each month when billed annually. But beyond that, RingCentral does not share clear pricing details on its website. This means you must reach out to the sales team for a custom quote tailored to their specific needs.

For those looking at RingCentral's wider communications system, their core business phone system, RingEX, has three pricing tiers: Core ($20/user/month), Advanced ($25/user/month), and Ultra ($35/user/month). These plans do not include all contact center features, but they help illustrate how RingCentral sets its prices. The Contact Center solution builds on this with added capabilities for customer service operations. RingCentral also has enterprise-level contact center solutions with advanced features like proactive outreach, sales dialers, and Interactive Voice Agents (IVA), though these come with custom pricing.

RingCentral offers a 14-day free trial for its business communication plans. During the trial, users get support for up to 20 phone lines using RingCentral desktop phones (up to 2 devices) and the RingCentral app. The trial includes full access to RingEX features like voice, auto attendant, online meetings, team messaging, fax, and conferencing, but SMS is unavailable during the trial. Any free trial hardware must be returned within 21 days of canceling to avoid charges.

In terms of value, RingCentral shows a generally positive public view of the platform's cost versus value. However, some users have raised concerns about the pricing structure. The platform's extensive features, reliability (with a 99.99% uptime SLA), and integration capabilities add to its value, especially for mid-sized to enterprise organizations with complex contact center needs. For businesses already using the RingCentral ecosystem, the smooth integration between the unified communications platform and the contact center solution enhances value by streamlining operations and simplifying vendor management.

RingCentral Contact Center: Features

RingCentral Contact Center offers a wide range of features to improve customer interactions across many channels. The platform combines omnichannel support with smart routing, workforce management, and analytics tools. This creates a strong solution for contact centers. It supports voice, web chat, mobile SMS, email, and social media. This lets businesses connect with customers on their preferred channels while keeping context in all interactions.

The solution is notable for its many features. It includes skills-based routing, session queuing, AI-driven sentiment analysis, and workforce optimization. G2 reviews show high satisfaction for key functions like session routing and queuing, which score 82% and 81%. This highlights the platform's effectiveness in real-world use. These features help organizations respond to customer inquiries faster. They also provide valuable insights for ongoing improvements in service delivery.

Omnichannel routing and distribution

RingCentral's smart routing cuts costs and boosts customer interactions. The platform uses skills-based routing to connect customers with the best agent for their needs. This means issues get resolved by those most qualified.

The system also employs data-driven routing. It uses information from IVR systems or CRM integrations to find the right agent for each call.

With session queuing, callers wait in the right queue until agents are free. Features like automatic call-back requests further reduce wait times. These new routing functions improve first-contact resolution rates and raise customer satisfaction scores.

Workforce engagement

The platform offers a complete workforce optimization suite. This helps contact center managers gain insights and boost efficiency. Key features include:

- Workforce management for better scheduling.

- Quality management to enhance agent performance with coaching and feedback.

- Speech and text analytics to identify customer pain points and hidden opportunities.

These tools work together to create a more engaged and productive workforce. The performance management dashboard gives insights across all systems. Also, gamification features encourage agent performance. Customer surveys show that businesses using RingCentral Contact Center have seen a 45% increase in employee productivity.

Call recording and quality management

RingCentral Contact Center offers call recording features that help supervisors track and improve agent performance. It supports both screen and call recording, along with agent self-evaluation through its quality management (QM) tools. Managers can access and download recordings, using filters to sort them for easier review.

The supervisor tools include monitor, whisper, and barge-in features. These let managers listen to calls in real time. This live monitoring helps correct course, especially for new agents dealing with important leads and existing clients. It prevents issues from escalating and provides valuable training experiences. Together with quality management tools, these features help businesses find effective strategies and improve customer interactions.

CRM integration and MAX

RingCentral Contact Center works well with top CRM systems like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow, Oracle, and Kustomer. They give agents timely screen pops with relevant customer info. This helps them personalize interactions and solve issues faster.

The platform's "MAX" (My Agent Experience) service further boosts user satisfaction. It provides contextual customer data during calls. With access to purchase history, open tickets, and other details, agents can offer better service on all channels. This integration not only enhances the customer experience but also boosts agent productivity. Agents no longer need to switch between different apps during calls.

Uptime guarantee

RingCentral Contact Center is entirely cloud-based. It helps organizations easily adjust staffing levels as needed for better business continuity. The platform also offers 99.99% uptime through a financially-backed SLA. It even includes an automatic failover, ensuring operations continue if a primary data center fails.

RingCentral protects data by complying with PCI and GDPR standards. It offers enterprise-grade security and layers of built-in redundancy, so agents can work from anywhere even during disruptions.

RingCentral Contact Center: Analytics

RingCentral Contact Center offers many powerful analytics tools through the RingCX platform. It provides real-time and historical reporting, giving supervisors full visibility into contact center operations. The platform includes over 250 pre-built reports on key metrics like average handle time, average wait time, and first call resolution. This allows businesses to gain insights right away. For specific needs, RingCX Analytics provides access to over 350 metrics for custom report creation tailored to unique requirements.

The analytics dashboard is the central hub for contact center data. It features widget-based visualizations for tracking important KPIs and finding actionable insights to boost agent performance and productivity. Real-time reporting helps managers make quick decisions, while historical data analysis reveals trends in contact center performance over time. The dual approach allows businesses to respond to immediate needs and plan for the future.

RingCentral's analytics capabilities go beyond basic reporting. They help businesses accurately understand channel performance and track engagement costs. The platform also offers predictive analytics that forecasts future trends based on historical data. This helps contact centers prepare for changes in call volume and customer demands. Additionally, the Shadow All-In-One Analytics integration uses RingCentral APIs to gather metrics on messages, meetings, and calls.

For workforce optimization, RingCentral provides tools to track key metrics like schedule adherence, agent occupancy, call abandonment rate, and average handle times. These insights help managers spot potential issues like agent burnout or inefficient call handling. The platform's AI-powered features, like sentiment analysis, offer deeper insights into customer interactions and agent performance.

RingCentral Contact Center: Ease of use

RingCentral Contact Center has a user-friendly interface that improves customer service and boosts agent productivity. The platform features a clean, modern design with a left-side menu for easy navigation, making it simple for all users. Yet while functional, some users feel the interface could be modified to work better for support teams managing outbound campaigns. Still, it works on both desktop and mobile devices, with mobile apps being only slightly less feature-rich than the desktop version.

The learning curve can be steep for RingCentral Contact Center, especially during setup. Some users find it intensive and confusing without clear instructions, which may increase upfront costs for organizations. However, once set up, the intuitive design helps agents adapt quickly. The redesigned app, released in March 2025, has a more compact interface that reduces distractions and saves screen space. New features like Compact Mode, Narrow Navigation, and responsive design ensure content resizes smoothly as users change the window size.

RingCentral also listens to user feedback. Agents can customize their desktops with features like a single inbox for SMS, voicemail, and faxes. They also get a unified contact card for customer info. Supervisors enjoy a modern interface that combines data across all channels. Clickable widgets help them spot key performance issues.

While some users find certain settings confusing, RingCentral offers a helpful resource center for resolving most issues quickly. Plus, a consistently clean call quality and financially-backed performance guarantees are seen as big strengths of the platform. Overall, RingCentral Contact Center delivers a powerful yet user-friendly experience that combines advanced features with an intuitive design.

RingCentral Contact Center: Support

RingCentral Contact Center is backed by self-help and live support streams. Solutions to common problems can be found in the RingCentral knowledge base, which includes tutorials, guides, video resources, and full documentation outlining how the program works.

There is also a selection of live support options for those with more complex issues. Live chat, email, and phone support are available, and there’s even an active community forum where users discuss their problems.

RingCentral Contact Center: Security

RingCentral Contact Center is backed by security features designed to keep sensitive data safe and to keep your service staff working efficiently in all situations.

For starters, certain parts of your Contact Center can be controlled with permission-based access restrictions. With this, you can give users access to the tools that they need to do their job. The platform is built on the cloud, and RingCentral guarantees at least 99.99% uptime.

RingCentral boasts full compliance with numerous security standards, including HIPAA, CPNI, SOX, and PCI. The platform uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP) encryption for transmitting data, similar to Microsoft Teams. Their data centers also have a number of onsite engineers and security guards.

In case you don't want to take RingCentral's word for all of this, the company claims to submit to regular independent audits to make sure they're compliant with all security standards. For instance, RingCentral MVP has earned the Skyhigh’s CloudTrust rating of 'Enterprise-Ready' - their highest rating.

The rating system measures 66 types of risk and then awards top marks only to those providers with the very best data protection, identity verification, service security, business practices, and legal protection methods.

RingCentral Contact Center: The Competition

When you compare RingCentral Contact Center to other options, you see competitors with similar features but different strengths. Top choices include Nextiva, known for excellent customer service and reliability. Nextiva offers full contact center features at a lower price, making it great for small businesses that want to save money. Other notable alternatives are Dialpad Contact Center, Zendesk Talk, Freshdesk Contact Center, and Talkdesk, each with unique features and pricing.

For enterprises looking for advanced AI capabilities, NICE inContact and Genesys Cloud CX provide strong AI features like predictive analytics and conversational AI. Newer options like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center (launched in June 2024) emphasize self-service and robust monitoring features. For businesses in specific ecosystems, Salesforce Service Cloud works well with CRM data, too.

RingCentral has a solid feature set in a unified platform and offers local PSTN support in 46 countries. However, other options may provide better value, specialized features, or easier integration based on each business's needs. For small to medium businesses, Enchant can offer more affordable and user-friendly solutions with similar functionality.

RingCentral Contact Center: Final Verdict

Ultimately, RingCentral Contact Center is one of the most powerful helpdesk programs in the world. It has a range of advanced features, an intuitive user interface, and the tools to help you manage large teams of customer service specialists.

On top of this, RingCentral Contact Center is backed by leading safety features, as it's compliant with all relevant industry standards and uses advanced encryption for data transmission.

There's also a wide range of pre-coded third-party integrations, including popular apps like Salesforce and Microsoft Teams. We were also impressed to see that RingCentral isn't resting on its laurels but is also testing new features like "Push to Talk".

Customer support is also impressive: there's an extensive knowledge base with an overhauled UI, not to mention a dedicated live chat for customers.

Check out the best contact center as a service (CCaaS) platforms.