Cyprus based company 3CX offers an IP PBX phone system.
$1.08
per user/per month
Zendesk Chat
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) is a live chat tool developed by the Singaporean company also called Zopim, acquired by Zendesk in April 2014.
$11.20
per month
Pricing
3CX
Zendesk Chat
Editions & Modules
Pro
$1.08
per user/per month
Enterprise
$1.31
per user/per month
Standard
Free
Lite
$0
per user
Basic
$14
per user
Advanced
$25
per user
Premium
$55
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
3CX
Zendesk Chat
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
Price displayed is based on 25 users.
3CX pricing is based on the number of simultaneous calls your business requires or in other words, how many calls your system needs to support at once. Unlike other PBX vendors there is no per extension cost.
The pricing above is price per user per month. You will get a discount when you opt for annual payment.
In many scenarios decision is driven by budget and compared to other solutions at the time of purchase [3CX] was simply the cheapest solution for what it has to offer. If you are looking for integrations, extensibility, and advanced functionalities, this might not be a solution for you. At the time of use (and this may have changed by now), there was a lack of APIs, CLI commands, and similar so nothing could be automated with the system. There are ways of importing data through CSV but automation would solve us so much time and support calls if we were able to connect with other systems.
Zendesk Chat is suited for all the support teams that provide real-time assistance. Like if someone wants to block the debit/credit card, it is a high-priority case that needs real-time assistance. Whereas issues like close my account, and invoice request doesn't need real-time assistance, where Zendesk tickets support will be perfect.
Simplicity: Using a single 3CX interface we can manage every phone and extension used throughout our company.
Flexibility: There are a wide variety of options to configure each extension and phone. Changing anything after the hardware is deployed is very easy.
Portability: Phones with 3CX can be easily moved or repurposed within an office or at remote locations, including users' homes. The mobile app allows users to use their office extension anywhere without exposing their cell number.
Due to staffing issues, we have temporarily stopped offering chat as an available channel. We're also interested in the best ways to integrate chat with our FAQs and AI to provide quick responses, either during off-hours or prior to speaking with a live agent. I've also found that reporting is rather limited where some of the interesting and useful data made available and visible during the chat cannot be pulled post-chat; it would be great to pull a high-level report so we can analyze this data.
The 3CX Phone System is only a five because while they provide set-up/how-to/Q and A documents to help your district or company get started, they do not offer support for free. The documents provided, though, are good enough for you to get you up and running. We also found a good source of help through a sip trunk provider, which was a 3CX reseller provider.
Getting assistance and/or troubleshooting anything with Zendesk can be quite frustrating. In my years of experience with Zednesk, I have almost never found the answer to my question without going through multiple articles, ultimately getting frustrated and reaching out to our contact for more assistance. So for a consumer, the support is not as relieving as Zendesk Chat is to our customers in getting the questions answered by us.
The main differences between 8x8, Inc. and 3CX is pricing and ease of use in my opinion. The 3CX system uses annual based pricing plans based on of simultaneous calls your company needs, not the number of extensions/users and offers a free plan. 8x8, Inc. charges per extension with different plans. We currently have 19 extensions so the 3CX system makes more sense for us, however, if your company only has a few extensions you may want to throughly consider both options. In my experience, it was difficult to add new extensions and phones with 8x8 because at least at that time we had 8x8 I could not add anything on the web admin. I had to call a sales rep which took a lot more time. Also, if you didn't purchase a phone and/or headset directly from 8x8 at a usually higher price than Amazon for example then you would have to spend anywhere from 30 minutes to hours on the phone with 8x8 tech support to program the phone to work with the 8x8 system so adding a new extension could turn into a long ordeal. I can easily add new extensions on 3CX directly in the web cpanel. Granted, if you are actually adding a new phone number you would need to purchase that number from a company like ATT first before adding it to 3CX. The difference between a phone number and an extension would be a phone number allows a customer to call in directly using that number. The extension would require the customer to call the main business number then be transferred to the extension. 3CX provides a list of supported phone models on their website
I prefer Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) over Talkdesk, as it provides customers with written proof of their conversation and customers are able to rate the conversation once it is done. Also, it's easier to find a previous conversation in Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) than in Talkdesk.
3CX has a lot to offer for a very low cost as its business model is based on simultaneous calls and not per device. It's very cost effective and very affordable.
As the 3CX server does not require a high-performance server to run, with the Public Cloud option, it might allow even further savings.
Positive impact - Compared to our old system, this newly updated system provides features and functionality that has increased our agent productivity and provided customer insight like we've never had before. This has resulted in fewer hold times and higher customer satisfaction.
Negative impact - Our reporting team still struggles with obtaining the right information from time to time with the chats. This leads to loss of productivity and more resources dedicated to reporting.
Positive impact - Due to Zopim's embed, we are able to more successfully place them on the appropriate self-service portals and pages, reaching a larger audience, and being more readily available to answer our client's questions. This has resulted in an increase in our self-service portal usage, driving down the phone and email support channels, which in turn reduces support costs.
