Item: Webex Calling
Rating: 8
Author: Erron Jones

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are selling Webex as an option for Unified Comms to our customers.

Pros and Cons

Calling for retail especially DECT phone options, probably best in market.
It's a robust system with easy to manage routing as required by customers.
The app is easy to use for setting up meetings and keeping in touch.

The admin side can be a bit daunting for customers so we tend to do it for them.
Setting up new users is not as easy as it should be, there just seems to be something not working all the time there.
There needs to be a low-cost license option that can have voicemail, customers don't always need all the features set on all the licences, but the voice mail is something that should be on all lines.

Return on Investment

Very good in terms of ROI. Although it took us a while to get to market, the uptake has been impressive.
There is a real push from our customers to replace their current "telephony" system whatever that is, and Webex is a good option in most cases.
With a selectable feature set, it would be better as this is something our customers would like, for example, a workspace license with voicemail.

Currently, we are just starting up, but have so far looked at Dubber. This is great to have as a standard in the professional license, and with the transcription, we would put it to customers as a great extra feature.

Security

Webex Calling is a great product to sell. The best thing is that there are constant upgrades always coming out, with new features, and fixes to bugs. With the investment behind it that Cisco has this helps to sell it as an "always new" product.

Alternatives Considered

Dialpad Contact Center, Dialpad Meetings (formerly UberConference), Dialpad Sell, Dialpad Talk and Microsoft Teams

In our market, Dialpad Meetings is a higher cost option due to call bundling. The app itself is great in that it comes with live transcription for all calls as standard. This is something we find lawyers and recruiting agents like a lot. Teams is more like something that is easy to implement as Covid forced companies to get something quick, and Teams was there. So although it doesn't really stack up, it is EVERYWHERE.

Key Insights

Do you think Webex Calling delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Webex Calling's feature set?

Did Webex Calling live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Webex Calling go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Webex Calling again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued), Microsoft Excel

Likelihood to Recommend

Webex Calling seems very well suited to retail outlets and small workshops. Whenever we have a requirement for a DECT solution we push Webex ahead of the others as the solution is sound particularly with the new option of being able to pass from one base station to another. This was very much sought after by our customers and as soon as it was released we had another sign up with Webex and a load of DECT phones Webex just doesn't fit where customers don't want features, but do want voicemail. This seems to be a solution that is un-addressable for the Webex deployment. It is also not shining as much as it could in the soft phone only scenario, however, it still works in this environment, there are some other soft phone clients that seem to be ahead.

Webex is all good

Overall Satisfaction with Webex Calling