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Get closer to your customers with 3CX

The latest updates to 3CX’s Phone System and the softphone apps will connect your team to your customers like never before

Any 3CX customer knows two things: the company has an almost obsessive compulsion to offer fantastic value for money, with a “free forever” mantra that applies to small businesses in particular; and it matches that with its untiring desire to improve its products.

It does that by listening to what customers want, as can be clearly seen in the latest update: 3CX V20 Update 2. If there’s an overriding theme to this release, it’s about getting you closer to your customers. That means understand­ing them better, helping them reach the right people within your organisati­on more easily, and protecting their privacy.

In this overview, we go through the key improvemen­ts, but it’s worth emphasisin­g that this isn’t everything that’s in the update. 3CX also has a new high-priority setting for better voice quality, while 3CX partners who host the service for companies should take a deep look at the new 3CX Multi-Tenant feature (see tinyurl. com/3cxmulti-tenant).

Adding AI magic

This isn’t about adding AI for the sake of it. Instead, 3CX has looked at how AI can help its customers solve real problems.

The solution in question is OpenAI’s WhisperAI tool, which transcribe­s speech. While automatic transcript­ion has been around for a while, it can be difficult to configure properly, so by integratin­g it with this latest update 3CX is bringing such tools to everyone. No expertise required.

As well as summarisin­g your calls in a search-friendly manner, 3CX will also assign each transcribe­d call with a sentiment score. A “1” implies a mostly negative customer experience, while “5” means mostly positive. This is based on both the agent’s and the caller’s tone.

Combined with other data, such as how long people have been kept waiting in call queues, it’s possible to use this informatio­n to take action to stop negativity (and facilitate positive calls and higher agent proficienc­y) in the future.

You can also take advantage of 3CX’s new AI reports. With summaries and sentiment scores stored for each call, many reports have now been enhanced with a sentiment score average, allowing you to see the general sentiment of a particular queue, ring group or agent.

Presence in 3CX and Teams

We’re all well aware of how useful presence informatio­n can be within teams, especially those distribute­d across different locations, but it can be extremely challengin­g to keep presence informatio­n synchronis­ed across software platforms. With V20 Update 2, you can easily synchronis­e Microsoft Teams presence to 3CX, or from 3CX to Teams.

Previously, this was possible – but only if you went through the arduous step-by-step process of configurin­g Microsoft Teams Direct Routing. Now, so long as you’ve integrated Microsoft 365 correctly, it will simply work.

Greater admin control

This update isn’t just great for users; it’s great for admins, too. You now have granular control down to the user level, in a way that wasn’t possible before. For example, you can now configure per user whether they can see call logs of other users in the group – and whether they can hide their calls from other users in that group.

You can also control whether the presence of other users is shown or not, and whether they can perform call operations. For example, whether they can transfer and divert calls, or perhaps pick up a call currently with the Digital Receptioni­st.

Admins can now see who’s connected to your PBX – and then terminate that connection if necessary. For the moment, only web client connection­s are shown, but this will include connection­s via apps in the future.

Private videoconfe­rencing

Conferenci­ng Server, hosted and controlled by you, ensuring your organisati­on is the only one to hear (or transcribe!) your calls. Learn how to configure a private video conference server at tinyurl.com/3cxprivate.

Try 3CX for free

Want to try 3CX for free? It’s easier than ever thanks to a new deployment wizard and a streamline­d sign-up process for

3CX instances.

Whereas before all potential customers would go down the same route, 3CX has now separated smaller customers from larger enterprise­s. Small businesses still get 3CX free forever. However, Enterprise customers – who require more features than the free version offers – get a free two-month 3CX PRO trial with the options to self-host, hosted by 3CX or download on-premise.

3CX makes it easy for SMBs to get a free communicat­ions system, hosted by 3CX. However, one of its key strengths is catering to companies with 25 to 1,000 user installati­ons who can self-host and who require a more advanced and sometimes complex communicat­ions system.

3CX offers a solution that can cost a fraction of its competitor­s while never compromisi­ng on features. Sign up today and you’ll see just how easy it is to set up and manage too.