Going into 2023, two of the most prominent trends among consumers appear to be cloud adoption and cybersecurity. After three years of business communication processes being accelerated by the pandemic, these focus areas seem quite natural.
One of the business communication platforms targeting the full range of customer requirements in this rapidly evolving landscape is the cloud-native business phone system 3CX. The system, which essentially functions as an intuitive, state-of-the-art cloud contact center, is delivered by Fuse 2 as a Titanium partner, and hosted within their independent, carrier-grade network.
I chatted with Tyler Sutcliffe, Technical Support Engineer / Billing Analyst at Fuse 2 to learn some more about the benefits of 3CX in general, as well as Fuse 2’s particular way of deploying it.
3CX: Comprehensive, User Friendly, Easy to Use
3CX is a comprehensive cloud call center solution offering all the must-have features such as omni-channel functionalities and a choice between web, desktop, and mobile. However, these are hardly the only reasons why users like it.
“We got many positive comments when rolling out 3CX to users,” shares Sutcliffe.
“It’s extremely user-friendly, intuitive, and easy to use, which customers seem to love.”
One feature making the solution particularly friendly to users is the option to control one’s own call flows if they’re interested in doing so. This includes monitoring and routing inbound calls, setting up queues, and creating ring groups.
“Potential use cases where this capability can come in handy is if the company has internal IT, or simply someone within the organization who wants to have a bit more control,” Sutcliffe notes.
The system also keeps its own call data records and contains inbuilt reporting tools allowing one to schedule reports based on that data.
“For instance, we have many customers that schedule a regular report for Monday at 8:00 AM with all the calls that happened on their support queue. It’s also quite easy to export data if you’re interested in doing additional things with it.”
Another useful feature that today’s contact centers cannot afford to go without is call recording, which is critical not just for CX but also for security purposes. 3CX doesn’t only include a built-in recording capability but also allows to customize it according to the customer’s specific needs.
“You can choose from multiple options for the type of calls being recorded, for example, inbound or outbound calls only. The enterprise variant of the license also allows to start and stop recordings live, which can be very helpful in a scenario where the caller refuses to be recorded, for example.”
Speaking of security – 3CX also has a unique blacklisting feature. This means that if IPs are flagged from multiple systems, it adds those IPs to a global blacklist, which is automatically rolled out across all systems.
“It’s also possible to adjust which destinations each system is allowed to call,” Sutcliffe explains. “So, within 3CX itself, you can block different calls to different destinations.”
The Fuse 2 Way
If a company is interested in deploying 3CX for business communication, there are two main possibilities: doing it through Fuse 2 or doing it themselves. What are the pros and cons?
“Self-deployment, in this case, would mean either going for your own VM, or your own on-premises box that you manage yourself, which can be a valid option,” Sutcliffe says.
“The thing is, if you encounter any problems, you will have to reach out to 3CX themselves, which can be rather costly if you’re not a partner.”
The alternative would be deploying the solution through Fuse 2, which seems to offer a significantly smoother ride.
“When we host the solution for the customer, we manage it, get the system live, make sure the servers are running, take care of the security aspect,” he explains. “If anything goes wrong, our team of dedicated engineers is here to fix it.”
“Additionally, if there’s a need to reach out to 3CX with any issues, our partner status allows us to submit as many requests as necessary without additional cost, and our queries are pushed forward and answered before anyone else’s,” he adds.
Purchasing 3CX through Fuse 2 also includes some other perks like a fixed monthly price, call bundles, and preferred Fuse 2 SIP trunks. For more information, feel free to visit their website.
