3CX Live Chat: from text messages to voice calls

Web chats, phone calls, Facebook Messenger, text messages, video: customers have a huge number of options when they need to reach out to a business, and your agents need to be on top of them all. The question is, how? The answer is to have a customer communication system that stretches from start to end, which is exactly what the latest update to 3CX provides.

Live chat is a powerful tool. What began as a handy way for web visitors to communicate with agents has evolved into a potent weapon that makes it easier for customers and your business alike, and with V18 of 3CX it’s become even more powerful.

Facebook feedback

Facebook is one of the main ways that people interact with businesses, but often that Facebook page hurts a firm’s reputation more than it helps – what do you think when you see “usually responds in three days” on the page?

With 3CX Facebook and Live Chat integration you can save time, increase customer satisfaction and boost conversions. Connecting with customers is easy – messages are delivered immediately to both web client and smartphone apps, so agents can answer, transfer and resolve customer queries from the same platform they use for all other communication.

3CX’s Facebook integration means there’s no need to give multiple agents access to your Facebook page. Simply complete the integration with your Facebook account, assign incoming chats to a specific queue, and your agents can respond as they would a live chat, without ever opening the Facebook app or being granted admin permissions.

Business text messages

In his YouTube video announcing what’s new with 3CX V18, CTO and Founder Nick Galea had a simple message. “A clear trend is that customers are reaching out to businesses more and more via text,” he said. “It turns out 89% want to be able to text the business and use different platforms to do so,” citing a Twilio survey, including good old SMS.

However, less than half of businesses have a mechanism to handle text messages. Even if they do, it’s unlikely to be integrated into their existing system. This adds confusion, time delays and costs more as you have to pay for two or more systems running in parallel. Worse still, you can’t move live chat conversations across to the call centre.

Businesses need a single, integrated solution that allows the same teams to handle both messaging and calls – and have just one system to administer and pay for. Most importantly, they can close requests faster by elevating a message to a call if needed. While people want to reach out via text, they frequently need voice communication to describe an issue or have the solution explained.

With the 3CX mobile apps for iOS and Android, users can send and receive instant text messages via a designated business phone number, without giving out their personal mobile number. Incoming text messages can be assigned to queues so there’s no relying on a single agent to respond, so no message goes unanswered.

Response rates will increase as rapidly as your customer service satisfaction: answer incoming messages, send out appointment reminders, and use SMS marketing to boost business and drive customer engagement. It takes just minutes to set up in the 3CX Management Console.

Free WordPress plugin

Let’s not forget website visitors. The 3CX Live Chat plugin for WordPress turns visitors into leads, instantly connecting them with your customer service team.

From the admin console, you can easily add agents, customise your live chat box, and configure the behaviour of the chat function on your website to suit your business needs. You can install and set up the live chat plugin in minutes to offer customers a hassle-free way to get in touch in real time with your team.

What’s more, agents can help customers find what they need, answer questions and upsell products or services – just like they would on the shop floor. With more than 1.9 million downloads worldwide, 3CX Live Chat is the most popular live-chat plugin for WordPress. Plus, the plugin can be fully integrated with 3CX, so you can manage your entire communications suite from one easy-to-manage central platform.

And for those times when customer problems or queries are best resolved via voice, the minimised chat bubble now presents a “call us” option right at the start of the customer journey. This is ideal for website visitors who want to jump right in and talk with an agent. With V18, 3CX is also adding support for its Live Chat bubble for several new content management systems – including Drupal, Joomla, Shopify, Weebly and Wix.

Greater analytics

The final gift in the 3CX V18 Live Chat package is for managers. Using Google Analytics, you can now track and report your website visitors’ interactions, in turn helping to improve conversion rates.

Websites already set up to use Google Analytics can now track how visitors interact with the chat bubble and greeting message, allowing you to hone your message and improve results. You can see all the data you need about chat sessions, and even check on the successful delivery of offline messages. It’s also easier to check what images agents have sent, with a preview of the attachment, while a number of enhancements behind the scenes improve both performance and security.

Updates are coming

Not content with all the live chat improvements that arrived with V18, 3CX has numerous plans to improve the service still further via its frequent feature updates. “First off, we’ll support new Google messaging,” said Galea. “This appears on search on Google Maps and allows customers to reach out to you.”

3CX will also be adding support for Apple iMessage and MMS messaging. And you will soon be able to dispatch a one-way SMS with alphanumeric sender ID – this is popular across Europe for customer notifications, making it easier to track shipments, for example.

And there’s more

The 3CX Live Chat will be upgraded so users can directly state which department they want to speak to, and people will be able to provide instant chat ratings. That leads to better reports to help you evaluate the performance of your agents, wherever they’re working.

3CX can already smoothly integrate with countless CRM systems, from Freshdesk to Zendesk, from Salesforce to Microsoft Dynamics, but an update will embed live chats into the CRM software and not only display the conversation as it happens but show you which web page the customer is currently visiting. All of this provides greater insight that will allow your agents to understand exactly who the customer is and what they want. Finally, agents will be able to email the customer a complete transcript, send them a response to their Facebook account or fire over an SMS.

Existing customers benefit from all these upgrades as part of their package, and if you’re new to 3CX you can try it for free for a year – no strings attached. Just visit the address below and pick the right solution for your team.

Try 3CX free for one year