Freshdesk Contact Center ( Formerly Freshcaller) is a call center software for startups and small teams. Fresh Contact Center aims to enable businesses / teams set-up and run a call center without spending a lot of time and money. It is suited for phone teams of size 1- 30. Users can create custom greeting texts based on specific call scenarios. The nested Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system allows the user to provide a detailed set of options to callers. The call queues…
$0
per agent/per month
OpenPhone
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
OpenPhone, a business phone service from the company of the same name in San Francisco, adds work phone numbers to existing devices. No new hardware required; all that's required is an app. Extended services include a lightweight contact management CRM, and customer service team management (e.g. shared inbox) features.
One scenario where Freshdesk Contact Center is well suited is when we have a lot of parents calling in with requests about student transcripts, and or grades, we can better interact with each caller and not have a lot of people on hold waiting for a long time. One scenario where Freshdesk might not be well suited is when callers get the chatbot more often than talking to an actual person.
If you have more than 2 people in your organization, then this will save you so much time. Delegation is the key to starting a business. Even when you're a 1 person show, being able to present to your user base the differentiation of options for client communications is critical. As a founder, feeling compelled to be always on is something I strive not to be. OpenPhone gives you that flexibility. I have found it to be less appropriate in complex HIPPA compliant areas, but that is it. OpenPhone really does seem to suit an open array of use cases.
Cost - the system was felt to be way overpriced for the feature-set it provided. For the cost of 10 support agents, I could engage with a full-blown VoIP UCaaS provider to support 20-30 users.
The system was dependent on the Amazon Web Services system, which was prone to outages, and as it was outsourced by Freshworks to Amazon, resolution time did not have clear SLAs.
Non-US support - any issues encountered with the system would go through international channels which decreased resolution time depending on when the development team was available.
Call reliability was questionable - sometimes agents would have ringing devices that would have no one on the other end - other times calls would be dropped without explanation.
It's a really simple and affordable software solution if you're looking to upgrade your system or processes to a softphone. The service has been fantastic for both our outbound sales team and our inbound customer service team. As a manager, I'm really grateful I found FreshCaller early on in the process of evaluating companies to go to for a softphone.
In my experience, App features are buggy and confusing, and they often don't match the descriptions and screenshots in their documentation. In fact, many of their help links go to 404 "page not found" errors. In my experience, there are frequent outages and quality issues. My customers prefer to talk to me on a different line, because they find it difficult to understand me on OpenPhone.
Freshcaller support is great. They will respond very quickly once I submit a ticket. On occasion, they are unable to answer a question and require a deep dive on some research for random questions but that's completely understandable. Overall, great service, great quality, and very accommodating. This is one of the better support groups, in my opinion.
In my experience, their support feels like the opposite of support. They send you in circles, never directly answer questions, provide vague suggestions with unwanted platitudes, and they often take days between responses to provide that. For me, it's a frustrating experience that leaves you with a net loss of time and energy versus before you reached out to them. In my opinion, you definitely don't get "support".
After multiple checks and constant research we found Freshdesk is one of the leading product service providers and the best at it too. We used to have PSTIN hard phones which caused a lot of drops and customer discontent. After Freshdesk, it has been a cakewalk. Really happy with it.
OpenPhone has an easier user interface than Grasshopper. Years ago when I was using Grasshopper, I recall that their user interface looked antiquated and full of complications. They would also update the interface just as everyone was getting used to using it. OpenPhone has many more functions. Grasshopper's app did not offer basic functions such as in-app texting between team members, and its call transfer function was incredibly complicated to use. In my opinion, Grasshopper was an inferior service/product in almost every way.
In my experience, Billing lacks transparency, and they have made billing errors (overcharging me) since I started using them. I think the "trust registration" is an insane ripoff charging around $20 for every attempt. Crazy.