Grasshopper vs. Simplify360 vs. Skype (discontinued)

Grasshopper is well suited for basic needs of texting in and out as well as calling out if you would like to avoid using your personal line. It also eliminates the need to have a dedicated land land in your office or business. You can obtain a vanity number and forward calls through grasshopper.

Incentivized

To talk directly to the Simplify 360 management and take a call post that. One of the key aspects of investing in any enterprise software is how easy the implementation is and how much support that a company can get in the early implementation process. We have had a quick ramp up learning the tool and had constant interactions with the team at Simplify to better understand and manage issues or get questions answered

Having interacted with a new replacement tool, Microsoft Teams, it is challenging to recommend Skype, as it lacks some essential features, such as being less equipped with the latest updates, and it is not platform-independent, causing issues on PCs and phones, as well as during calls that might hinder work.

Incentivized

• I like that there are differing voicemails for each extension, to keep up with the image of calling a separate line.
• I love the voicemail text emails. I believe we pay a little extra, but worth every penny for those urgent calls while I am in a meeting.
• The cost is very reasonable for the value added to our company.

Incentivized

• BeFirst publishes to multiple social channels for clients. The publishing module makes publishing very easy and effective.
• Workflow allows our team to handle customer service requests and brand management issues very quickly to maintain a company's reputation.
• The ease of set up in the listening module, makes brand reputation very effective.
• The platform does offer platform provide sentiment analysis, and it works great. The team has found that is very easy to keep up conversations and answer customer for clients or forward the infomation to said client.

• The instant chat function is great. Very straightforward, easy to use, easy to learn, no technical issues.
• Video calls are pretty easy also, user friendly and a mostly stable connection with no issues.
• Voice calls are easy also, eliminates the need for an external landline or the need to use your cell phone. Clear connections, not really any dropped calls.

Incentivized

• It would be nice to have the ability to transfer some calls to another Grasshopper IVR, for those customers who mistakenly dial the wrong number (we have two incoming numbers, one for corporate and one for sales).
• Likewise, it would be nice to have the ability to forward to a toll-free number, which would have allowed us to work around the inability to transfer between IVRs (see above).
• Lastly, it would be great to have an 'emergency' switch setting (default off but could be toggled on) that would let us override all IVR settings and transfer all incoming calls elsewhere (either to a direct dial or toll free number) for those rare times when we cannot take any calls (such as a weather emergency OR the one time each year we take all of our staff on a retreat) - that would allow us to send all calls to a backup answering service rather than just voicemail.

Incentivized

• I will like to see some improvement in the intuitiveness of the system. There are some great features hidden behind the curtains.

• Skype is a RESOURCE hog. People who have limited bandwidth will have poor call quality.
• It is hard to figure out how to use emojis and upload images in the chat.
• The background images do not fool anybody....it is clearly not your real background.

Incentivized

We have a great relationship with the Simplify team and anyone in our team is able to reach out to them and get answers to questions is a wonderful benefit of working with them. Also we have collaborated with the team to enhance the product, which again is a very welcome gesture from a company that sells a product that helps enterprises listen in to people and support them.

I have given this rating as this need to give more than that as it's very helpful for us and makes our work more efficient and fast.

The admin functions are kind of confusing in the old interface which was my most recent experience on the admin side.

Incentivized

Skype is not as good as Facetime in terms of ease to glance at it and figure out how it works. I think that's a result of Skype trying to be too many things at once. A lot of the menu and UI could be streamlined, and I would jettison some of the additional functions that have been tacked on over the years to simplify. That being said, while some options are slightly hard to find, they all work flawlessly once found.

Incentivized

When I was setting up my account I contacted support a couple of times. They were also very professional, personable, and helpful. Their response is prompt and thorough. I'm confident I can get any question answered as well as help with any issue I might have. That's pretty important to me.

Incentivized

I am not aware of the current support level for Skype for business, as I have never used even though I have the product. However, the support for Skype's personal paid users is not where it could be. Users who pay for Skype features do not have a clear path to reach out to support. So, rating 6, can be better as soon as I need to use Skype for business support and get a good experience. I will say that I will renew Skype for Business subscription, which is a significant inconsistency on my end. The explanation is that Skype for Business comes bundled with Office for Business, with no additional cost, so why not.

Incentivized

It can be used on the phone via mobile application as well as on the desktop by logging in to the website. Easily installed and ready to use.

Incentivized

I have not used any other phone services like Grasshopper. I know that there is another option out there called Ruby, which is more like a virtual receptionist but since I did not try it out I cannot compare the two. When I started my company I found the services that Grasshopper offers to be perfect. It still works for us and we have no need to change to anything else right now.

Incentivized

In side by side analysis, Simplify 360 was much easier to set up teams, work flow and the brand monitoring was quite a bit more accurate

We use Skype in combination with Grasshopper. While Grasshopper acts as a routing toll free number with extensions, if we are making calls directly, we do it through Skype. Skype's desktop and mobile apps are easier to use, and provide unlimited local calls at a flat, affordable rate. Allowing our team to use their existing mobile or desktop devices without additional hardware for business office phone calls is important, and Skype makes that possible

Incentivized

The service provided is up to date, as discussed before buying.

• It's allowed us to keep cost down. Other phone systems can seriously get outrageous in implementation and monthly fees!
• It's allowed our team the confidence to work in locations outside of the office and still be seen as professionals.
• It's decreased the amount of time spent on unwanted sales calls via the call screening application.

Incentivized

• Reduction of weekly and monthly report building time by over 70%
• Lead generation increased by over 30%.
• Online brand negativity neutralized by over 80%.

• Skype made keeping in touch with an advisor in Mexico very easy. The initiative there resulted in 5 new partnerships.
• Skype has helped me with account management for at least 3 customers in LATAM--usually it's a fast way to answer a question about a support renewal.
• For about 9 months Skype helped me stay in touch with a colleague in Prague. We would meet once a week to go over sales activities.

Incentivized