Likelihood to Recommend Well suited for businesses of all sizes. HOWEVER, I would say keep the chat groups limited at the departmental level, ensure that your moderator or the individual responsible for the group keeps it on topic, and have your IT team monitor it from time to time. Google Chat gets used so much in our organization that we have rules and regs in our Employee Handbook regarding its proper use (and when used PROPERLY, it can be very effective).
Read full review Zoho Cliq has allowed our office to be remote-worker friendly since onboarding. Teams are able to meet throughout the day with ease. Completing "@" messages allow for inter-office communication in a semi-public space (i.e. on our #Sales channel, a sales team member can "@" me to ask a question, and if I don't answer, a teammate can reply first). And having the audio/screen share capability allows "parking lot" conversations to not derail the chat. The only caveat really is your available screen real estate to manage multiple conversations at once. Honestly, as a product, it feels as potent as Slack or Discord (minus silly bots). I don't have a single complaint about the platform.
Read full review Pros Google Hangouts Chat allows you to send and receive messages real time with emoticons that can help you express your mood. You can download and upload image file that can be use for business process and more. Google Hangouts Chat also allows you to make a calls to reach other users.What I like the most is the awesome screen sharing while on call. Read full review Its interface is really simple to use so you don't need to spend a lot of time training your people to manage incoming contacts. The visitor tracking is excellent. It will provide a lot of very useful data for your team to see what works on your site and what doesn't. It integrates really well with other Zoho apps. Their support is excellent. We got useful, informative responses from them when we had to contact them. Read full review Cons I wish it was easier to turn the sound off, I hate being in meetings and my chat is blowing up. Needing to "accept" a chat invite from someone within my org seems counter-intuitive. Some people have trouble getting their notifications before midnight, somehow? Prior to downloading the app, group messages didn't come up for me on my computer. Read full review Not missing functionality as such but would be useful to record audio chats Zoho not as widely adopted than other Chat clients like Hangouts/Skype Read full review Likelihood to Renew The updates, support, general reviews on Google Chat are great everywhere. The development of the features is ongoing and this adds a great value to Google as a big company in the market. Other applications are limiting communication while Google Chat is allowing communication to grow. It is very easy to use it and teach others how to use Google Chat.
Read full review Zoho Cliq has become an integral part of our daily business. Every single member of our team who has a job involving a computer has an active Zoho Cliq license and uses the tool continuously throughout the day. It cuts down on meetings and allows the team to feel very connected to one-another even though we are distributed geographically.
Read full review Usability It's not perfect. There are occasional glitches, drop-outs, and it takes a bit to get everything loaded and working. But it is significantly better than Zoom or
GoToMeeting when you're in instructional settings. I know my teacher friends here like it and the administrators and parents seem to be satisfied too.
Read full review Ease of use! It's easy enough to open chat, start audio sessions, screen shares, or even sending files. The fact that individual "emojis" can be applied to normal chats is wonderful. Allows to "acknowledge" without lengthy back-and-forths. Automation via CRM turns Cliq into a productivity tool beyond communication. Simply put, I don't how you could improve the system (save for a few UI boosts). As it stands, it's a powerful tool that is easy to pick up and play with.
Read full review Support Rating I have not needed to contact the support folks for Google Hangouts Chat, so I can't speak to this with any accuracy. The online instructions are fairly clearly written, so it is fairly intuitive to start with. I did not feel the need to use the support people anyway.
Read full review Any time that I have had an issue, and there haven't been many user support jumps right on and helps me right away.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Prior to Google Hangouts, our company used Spark. Spark was not integrated into our email, therefore it couldn't be easily accessed in the same browser. With Spark we also couldn't search our emails for keywords in a conversation, searching had to be done manually. The one feature I enjoyed about Spark was a request to get a user's attention: If I had an urgent question and I wanted to ensure the recipient saw my message/question, I would request their attention and the message screen would pop up on their screen.
Read full review We selected Zoho because it was already a part of the Zoho toolset we were using. They offered a free trial which was a big help in our purchasing decision. Our team looked at one other alternative but we weren't satisfied with the pricing quote we got from them and the fact that we were already using other Zoho apps made our decision easier.
Read full review Return on Investment In my work it allows us to report troubles that may cost loss of investment thru Google Hangouts Chat we were able to communicate on how to fix it. I hope we can make it on our own choice of colors to heightened workers vibe It is connected to your email Read full review Positive - Easier Comms with specific Clients. Encouraging more to use it to engage with me Negative - Yet another comms channel to manage would like to have less. But see previous positive Positive - Came as part of my Zoho One subscription so low cost Has a wealth of options still to investigate as part of Cliq Read full review ScreenShots