What Is CXone?
NICE CXone is a contact center platform that enables customer service through voice calling, SMS texting, live chat, email, social media and social messaging channels. Companies can choose from voice-only, digital-only or omnichannel plans that combine these communication channels.
The provider’s core plans include essential call center features including call queues and interactive voice response (IVR). And the higher-tier plans stand out with AI tools such as live sentiment analysis that provides insights about customer experience and agent performance. NICE supports agents with real-time response suggestions. For companies looking to support sales, NICE’s auto dialer received a high score on our Best Auto Dialer Software list due to its AI-powered proactive dialing.
Featured Partners
1
RingCentral
$20 per user, per month (paid annually)
Yes
200 monthly SMS per user, 1 cent per SMS after
2
Zoom
$10 per user per month, $15 unlimited calling
U.S. and Canada
Unlimited in the U.S. and Canada
3
Dialpad
$27 per user per month
Your country, the U.S. and Canada
250 monthly SMS per user, 8 cents per SMS after
CXone Key Features
NICE CXone offers basically every feature you would want from a call center—including digital communication channels, self-service and chatbots, intelligent routing, IVR and call queues. Higher-tier plans add AI-based features such as live agent assistance, conversation analysis and sentiment scoring.
Here’s a deeper look at NICE CXone’s features:
Communication Channels
Choose from a voice-only call center, a digital contact center with messaging channels only or an omnichannel contact center that combines all communication channels. The desktop app’s agent dashboard displays a task inbox that compiles all of an agent’s customer conversations, across all channels.
Agents can switch between the following channels directly from the desktop interface.
- Voice calling: Voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) telephony with virtual phone numbers based in over 100 countries, including toll-free numbers
- SMS texting: Send unlimited text messages
- Web chat: Embed a chat widget on your website or mobile app for live chat and self-service chatbots
- Email: Sync your email inbox to send and receive customer support emails from NICE CXone
- Social media: Access and communicate using social media channels such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook (FB) and LinkedIn
- Messaging channels: WhatsApp, FB Messenger and X direct messaging
Chat messaging in the CXone omnichannel interface
IVR and Call Queues
The software’s automated IVR routing system handles inbound queries across voice and digital channels, routing each interaction to the appropriate agent or department. The drag-and-drop studio lets you design multilevel IVR call flows that handle inbound calls. NICE CXone IVR systems not only route calls and messages but unlock self-service use cases such as bill pay and updating account records.
You can create call queues for each department, which organize waiting callers and messages when agents are busy. Customers have the option of hanging up and receiving an automated callback when an agent becomes available. Agents and supervisors can view queue activity in real time, seeing how many callers or messages are waiting. These features make your agents more efficient and keep customers satisfied, even when waiting.
The IVR system and queues are included with all NICE CXone plans.
NICE CXone Studio provides a drag-and-drop IVR flow builder
Quality Management Workflows
NICE CXone’s Essential Suite plan provides multiple ways for supervisors to track agent performance and the customer’s experience. For example, you can create feedback forms, utilize automated and AI-driven reviews and track performance insights, such as customer sentiment, across an agent’s interactions. These tools provide unique agent insights that most supervisors can’t access.
Agent feedback forms are customizable by fields, rules and metrics. AI then uses these forms to evaluate agents across all interactions, using call transcription to track customer sentiment, agent choices and overall task resolution rate. This automated feedback streamlines the coaching process. You can also administer self-evaluation forms to drive agents’ intrinsic motivation.
Performance dashboards display interaction success, call times and sentiment scores that supervisors can sort by particular agents, drilling down into each agent’s overall success.
The supervisor portal’s agent performance dashboard
AI Workforce Management
Call centers often have fluctuating call volume, so managers have to schedule employees accordingly. CXone’s Workforce Management (WFM) makes this easier, using AI to forecast staffing needs and automatically schedule employees. The technology uses historical data to track customer behavior and call volume, anticipating how many agents each queue will need in the future. It then weighs agent FTEs to create and share schedules with the staff, saving lots of time for supervisors.
WFM tools are included with the Core Suite and above, starting at $169 monthly per user.
Supervisors can manage each agent’s shifts and breaks
AI-Driven Analytics
NICE CXone’s analytics use AI and call transcription to provide a historical view of virtually everything within the contact center: customer experience, agent performance, call center activity, IVR and self-service usage patterns. Analytics dashboards and reports show statistics, leaderboards and visual displays such as graphs and charts.
Here are some of the KPIs displayed in the analytics dashboard.
- Agent activity: View agent activity status and distribution across various queues within the call center
- Queue insights: Statistics such as average handle time, number of calls in queue, average hold time and queue abandonment rate
- Agent feedback insights: View the aspects of agent performance that have most frequently required feedback and coaching
- Performance trends: View each agent’s performance scores over time
- Customer experience: See customer satisfaction scores and the most common reasons for customer frustration
Agent performance KPIs and queue reports are included with all plans, but customer experience analytics and agent feedback trends come with the Core Suite ($169 monthly per agent) and up.
Self-Service and Virtual Agents
If you don’t employ customer support staff 24/7, creating a virtual agent with NICE CXone could be a huge draw to handle customer inquiries during off hours. NICE’s virtual agents provide conversational customer self-service across voice and all digital channels—live chat, SMS and social media. NICE’s drag-and-drop studio editor lets you customize conversation paths and provide buttons for customer answer options—all with no coding required.
NICE’s virtual agents support rich customer interactions too. Connect your bots with your databases, inventory, ordering software and other platforms you use to enable self-service payments, product ordering, appointment booking and customer account updates. Virtual agents also link with AI tools such as Google Dialogflow to power more lifelike interactions.
Intelligent virtual agents are only included with the CXone Mpower plan, costing $249 per user per month.
Auto Dialer and Outbound Communication
CXone Personal Connection is a multichannel proactive dialer that lets you create campaign lists across voice and digital messaging channels such as SMS and email. You can import campaign lists from customer relationship management (CRM) systems or build a custom list of contacts. To ensure that the optimal agent gets paired with each contact, you can also evaluate agents by their skills and preferred channels.
When an agent has a lull in inbound queries, Personal Connection automatically dials or initiates outbound contact from your campaign list. The agent’s screen display populates with real-time assistance, script suggestions and background information about the customer they’re reaching. Much more than a dialer, this feature helps you optimize agent efficiency and contact more leads for sales and marketing purposes.
Proactive outreach is only included with the Mpower plan.
The on-call screen populates with customer information, checklists and suggested scripts
What Sets CXone Apart?
NICE CXone’s higher-tier plans, especially the Mpower plan, feature a suite of proprietary technologies that support agents and improve customer service. While many alternative platforms require you to build chatbots and voice agents separately, CXone’s Enlighten Autopilot lets you deploy intelligent virtual agents across multiple channels—including SMS and email. With integrations such as Google Dialogflow, NICE also enables exceptionally intelligent self-service that can handle advanced customer needs such as bill payment.
The platform’s live-agent assistance, Enlighten Copilot, is responsive and integrated smoothly into the agent’s dashboard. NICE’s outbound dialer lets you create multichannel outbound campaigns that fit into an agent’s workflow whenever they have extra time. This flexibility is a big help for companies whose agents do double duty as customer-support and sales reps, and teams that plan to proactively reach customers through multiple channels.
CXone Pricing
| Digital Agent | Voice Agent | Omnichannel Agent | Essential Suite | Core Suite | Complete Suite | CXone Mpower | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (per User per Month) | $71 | $94 | $110 | $135 | $169 | $209 | $249 |
| Communication Channels | Live chat, email, SMS, social messaging, social media | Voice
calling | All channels | All channels | All channels | All channels | All channels |
| Self-Service IVR and Routing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Customer Queues | - | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Quality Management Workflows | - | - | - | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Customer and Agent Insights | - | - | - | - | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| AI Conversation Analysis | - | - | - | - | - | Yes | Yes |
| Live Agent Assistance | - | - | - | - | - | - | Yes |
At $71 per user per month, NICE CXone’s digital-only plan is one of the cheapest options on the market. Both the Digital Agent and Voice Agent plans offer cost-effective software for teams that want to connect with customers on just a few select channels, with basic task routing and customer self-service at a low cost.
However, the expanded number of channels and AI features in higher-tier plans quickly escalate the price. NICE CXone’s Omnichannel Agent and Essential Suite plans are roughly equal with competitors in terms of cost, but the Complete Suite and Mpower plans are some of the costliest plans on the market. However, these expensive plans (especially the Mpower plan) still provide value because they are so feature-rich with AI analytics, intelligent self-service and live agent support.
The Mpower plan, which includes the full array of NICE CXone’s AI tools, such as virtual agents and proactive dialing, offers value for companies that prioritize high-level agent support regardless of cost.
CXone vs. Top Alternatives
| NICE CXone | Aircall | Five9 | RingCX and RingCentral Contact Center | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Monthly Price (per user) | $71 to $249 | $40 to $70 | $175 | $65 (billed annually) |
| Communication Channels | -Voice
-SMS
-Chat
-Email
-Social messaging
-Social media | -Voice
-SMS | -Voice
-Chat
-Email
-Social messaging (one plan)
-SMS (one plan) | -Voice
-SMS
-Chat
-Email
-Social messaging
-Social media |
| IVR and Call Queue | All plans | All plans | All plans | All plans |
| Digital-Only and Voice-Only Options? | Both | Voice only | Both | Omnichannel only |
| Auto Dialer | Highest-tier plan | Highest-tier plan | All plans except Digital | Add-on |
| AI Agent Assistance | Highest-tier plan | No | Paid add-on | Paid add-on |
| Read Reviews | - | - |
NICE CXone vs. Aircall
CXone is more of a full-fledged call center, while Aircall is more of a voice-focused unified communications platform. CXone lets you serve customers across more than 10 digital channels, while Aircall only offers voice calling and SMS texting. While Aircall offers limited AI features—including call transcription and analytics—NICE CXone’s AI features are much more advanced, with capabilities such as live agent assistance and sentiment analysis.
However, Aircall’s plans are substantially cheaper. Aircall is a better option for companies that only plan to serve customers with voice and SMS, while CXone is for those who also want digital channels such as live chat and email.
NICE CXone vs. Five9
Five9’s cheapest plan is $175 per user per month—more than NICE CXone’s Core Suite, which is one of its highest-tier plans. Further, Five9’s $175 voice-only and digital-only plans are comparable to CXone’s Digital Agent and Voice Agent plans—which include similar features at half the cost. Teams seeking voice-only call centers with basic IVR and queueing will find much better value with NICE CXone.
Five9’s higher-tier plans match NICE CXone’s with rich features such as workforce management, quality management and conversation analytics. However, NICE CXone’s high-tier plans tend to be slightly cheaper. Five9’s main advantage is its user interface, which feels more modern and easy to navigate.
NICE CXone vs. RingCentral Contact Center
RingCentral offers two call center platforms: RingCX starts at $65, and RingCentral Contact Center has quote-based pricing. This makes it difficult to compare pricing between RingCentral and NICE CXone—but at $65 per user per month (billed annually), RingCX offers strong value for an omnichannel platform with over 20 communication channels. By comparison, NICE’s omnichannel offerings start at $110 per user per month.
RingCX’s $65 plan also includes some advanced features such as skills-based routing, AI call summaries and customer surveys. Further, the provider lets you choose which advanced features you’d like to add on—with many of the same features that NICE has such as workforce management, live agent assistance and sentiment analysis. For a low-cost omnichannel contact center, RingCX offers better value.
Our Expert Opinion
NICE CXone offers value at both ends of the feature spectrum: low-cost digital-only and voice-only plans, and expensive but feature-rich high-tier plans. Small businesses just getting started with customer service may have an easier time acclimating to one of NICE’s lower-tier plans. On the other hand, companies looking to take their multichannel customer service to the next level should go for a higher tier such as the Mpower plan.
Ease of Use
Most call center software solutions have a steep learning curve, which steepens with more advanced features. However, NICE CXone’s advanced features are relatively user friendly. Live agent assistance is easy to understand and utilize, and CXone Studio’s drag-and-drop design makes it easy to design virtual agents without coding knowledge.
The user interface itself feels overwhelming at first, but it becomes intuitive after several days of use. We found it easy to understand where tasks are, how to switch between channels during an interaction and even how to browse a customer’s screen alongside them. Our only complaint is that the CXone interface feels slightly outdated compared to some alternative CCaaS systems.
Value
At $71 per agent per month, NICE CXone’s digital-only plan is a strong value for teams that want only messaging channels. The $94 voice-only plan is a decent value, but you can find cheaper call center software with an alternative such as Aircall or Genesys Cloud CX. For a full-fledged contact center with all the AI bells and whistles, NICE’s Mpower plan is a strong value because it includes such a comprehensive suite of high-level features.
Customer Service and Support
NICE CXone offers multiple layers of customer support, depending on how personalized you’d like the service to be. Any NICE user can contact representatives 24/7 for live chat, phone and email support. NICE also offers an online community forum, where you can ask questions to other users. There’s also a NICE knowledge base with articles and guides.
For those seeking more personalized support, NICE CXsuccess paid plans offer multiple tiers—including priority service and specialized expertise.
Reputation
On review sites such as G2 and Gartner, NICE CXone has a similar reputation to other popular call centers such as Genesys and Five9. Users appreciate the comprehensiveness and depth of CXone’s analytics, and they like that you can use the Studio to customize personalized bots for customer service.
Featured Partners
1
RingCentral
$20 per user, per month (paid annually)
Yes
200 monthly SMS per user, 1 cent per SMS after
2
Zoom
$10 per user per month, $15 unlimited calling
U.S. and Canada
Unlimited in the U.S. and Canada
3
Dialpad
$27 per user per month
Your country, the U.S. and Canada
250 monthly SMS per user, 8 cents per SMS after
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is NICE CXone used for?
NICE CXone is contact center software used for customer support and sales. It lets you support customers on multiple communication channels including voice, SMS, chat and email.
Is NICE CXone a phone system?
NICE CXone is not just a phone system but a contact center. It includes voice calling and virtual phone menus, and it also offers other channels.
Is NICE CXone a CRM?
No, NICE CXone is contact center software—not a CRM. However, NICE CXone integrates with popular CRM software such as Salesforce and HubSpot.
How do I install NICE CXone?
Agents can access the NICE CXone web app directly through the NICE CXone website or download the Omnichannel Agent Desktop app that’s integrated with other systems such as Salesforce, Microsoft Teams or Zendesk.
What companies use NICE CXone?
NICE CXone is used by dozens of big-name companies, including Bose, Disney, IBM and Walmart.
