Looking for an Unbiased 3CX Live Chat Review? Don’t Worry I got you covered.
Let’s examine the several advantages of the 3CX live chat plugin for WordPress. However, before we begin, let’s define what live chat for WordPress genuinely is.
What Is Live Chat For WordPress
If you’re a digital company hell-bent on providing your clients with a more easy and efficient method of connecting, using 3CX Live Chat is a no-brainer.
The plugin easily integrates with your WordPress website, as described in the next section, and enables you to chat with your audience in real-time to answer their questions.
In general, live chat software is ideal for all organizations since it enables them to get up close and personal with their audience, identify the issues they’re experiencing, and resolve them to increase brand loyalty, credibility, and satisfaction scores.
Even if there are dozens of plugins to choose from, I’ll recommend the best one (3CX) so you can get started immediately. Below are some of the most impressive features of this plugin:
- Through 3CX communications solution, you can easily switch from online chat to call (or video call) when live chat isn’t enough to resolve an issue or you want to close a sale.
- Live chats can also be answered from 3CX mobile or desktop Apps (iOS or Android).
- Chats can be assigned to a particular agent or a group of agents can answer them.
- The same interface can be used to reply to both live chat and Facebook messages
In addition, 3CX has more than 1.9 million downloads worldwide, and the full communications program 3CX FREE is available without any subscription fees.
Now that you have a fantastic live chat plugin for WordPress, let’s return to the subject at hand.
The Importance Of A Live Chat Plugin
Live chat capability is crucial in today’s market, and given that every brand is competing to provide the best customer experience to their audience, you must have live chat to stand out.
Aside from being a fun feature, live chat provides businesses with a number of substantial and indispensable benefits. Live chat, for instance, develops a culture of interactions and involvement and distinguishes a business.
. Your brand’s customer experience will be greatly enhanced by this feature. However, live chat provides you with the following benefits beyond that:
- This WordPress conversion plugin increases customer engagement.
- Enhances the customer experience
- Acquires and onboards customers
- Create a relationship between your agents and your customers
- Your customers will spend less time repeating themselves
- Boosts the productivity of your customer service team
- Support available 24/7
- Enhance your competitive edge
Considering the aforementioned benefits, I am certain that the majority of the entrepreneurial audience is eager to get their hands on this plugin, so here is everything they need to know to acquire it for their company.
What Is 3CX All About?
3CX is all about seamless customer communication, improving your lead count, engaging your consumers, simple integration, and effortlessly bridging the gap between the audience and the brand.
Consider a consumer who needs rapid access to your brand for support with a product or service he recently purchased.
The plugin will play a crucial part in linking this user to your sales representative, customer service representative, or whoever is responsible for managing such complaints.
Moreover, if the internal staff is unable to resolve a customer’s question via chat, the plugin provides efficient assistance for initiating an audio or video call with the customer to address his/her concern in greater depth.
In addition, the configuration and installation of this excellent plugin elevate the integration procedure to an entirely new level.
An Overview of the Features of 3CX Live Chat
In 2019, 3CX acquired the previous WP Live Chat Support plugin and it is now 3CX Live Chat.
One of the things that most distinguishes 3CX Live Chat from other live chat providers is the ability to convert a live chat into a call or video chat with the full 3CX service and it comes at absolutely no cost. The customer can click on the call option directly from the chat box, and the call will be placed through the web, resulting in no additional charges. it comes at absolutely no cost.
You will also have a great deal of flexibility in how you communicate with your customers. For instance, if you use Facebook messages or business SMS, you may include them into your 3CX system so that you can centralize all of your communication channels through one single interface.
There are additional options allowing agents to be assigned to various groups and incoming chats to be directed to particular agents or groups.
There are also several smaller options, such as the ability to customize the appearance of your chat box and choose which pages to display it on.
OTHER CHAT FEATURES
- Fully customizable chat box
- Full anonymity for your visitors
- Create custom offline message forms & store messages offline
- Access historical live chat records
- View missed live chats
- Compatible with all caching plugins (live chat window loaded via Ajax)
- Enable/Disable sound when a new live chat message is received
- Ban visitors from chatting to you based on IP Address
- Quick responses (insert a predefined response to your live chat box) : Coming soon
- Add your company logo to the live chat window
- Add your photo to the live chat window
- Include/exclude the live chat from appearing on certain pages
- Choose when to accept chats
Hands-On With 3CX Live Chat
It’s time to try out the 3CX Live Chat plugin, and I will show you what it’s like to use it.
1. Sign up for 3CX StartUP
- Let’s get started! Firstly, sign up for your free StartUP account and fill out the account details.
- The next step is to add your users or agents that you will want to have access to the system to answer your chat messages and use the other features on offer. Use the roles drop-down selection to make other users managers, receptionists, or standard users.
- Now choose if you want to connect a SIP Trunk. This would be used for making inbound and outbound calls. If you are just using the system for internal communication and Live Chat, simply click ‘Next’
- Now you can start setting up your live chat by choosing the option ‘Yes’ and selecting if you have a WordPress website or not. Enter your website URL and click ‘Set’
- Download the WordPress plugin and then copy the 3CX Talk URL and save it for a later stage. The 3CX Talk link is what is used to link your website to your StartUP account. It creates the bridge that carries the chats, calls and video calls. All this from users browsers meaning there is no need for a telephone number to call. Click ‘Next’
- That’s it! You’re signed up. Use the ‘Login’ button to log into your dedicated 3CX Web Client, which is where all your customization and chat messages will be located.
2. Customize your Live Chat
Now you can configure the settings of the plugin to determine how it will behave on your website.
Your 3CX Live Chat bubble and functionality can be edited and customized directly from the Web Client. Changes made take effect immediately, so updating your preferences at a later date is quick and easy.
- To set up live chat so that calls and messages can be answered from the Web Client, go to “Office Settings > Voice & Chat” and click on the pencil icon.
- Your website address will already be populated from the wizard process, but you can amend this if required.
- The “Destination” field shows where live chat messages or calls will be sent. To amend the “Destination”, navigate to “Office Settings > Call Routing” and choose your destination. By default, the live chat will route to a ring group. For more information on ring groups, check out the getting started guide.
- Under the “Chat Options” section, use the drop-down selection to choose what information visitors need to provide you with.
- Use the radio buttons to choose if you want to allow “Chat Only”, “Phone and Chat”, or “Video, Phone, and Chat”.
- If you want the option for “Call Us” to be displayed immediately on the chat bubble, use the radio button to show or hide the option.
- Under “Style Options” choose from one of the 3 pre-defined themes or select “Customize”. For the last option, click on each of the color tiles and use the pop-up color picker or enter your RGB numbers.
- Use the preview of the chat bubble to interact and test the functionality. If you are happy, click “Save” at the top of the page.
3. Enable Live Chat on your website
- Log in to the admin panel of your WordPress website
- Navigate to “Plugins” and click “Add New” at the top of the page
- Click on “Upload Plugin” at the top and choose the file you downloaded during the sign-up process. You can also get this from the Web Client in “Office Settings > Voice & Chat” and click the ‘i’ icon next to the pencil icon. Then click “Install Now”
- Once installed, click on “3CX Live Chat NextGen” in the sidebar
- Paste the URL you copied earlier. It can be found again in the Web Client in “Office Settings > Voice & Chat” under the “Information” field or within the email sent during the setup process.
- Either tick the box to show the chat on all pages or use the tick boxes below to select individual pages. Finally, click “Save Changes”.
Note: Currently, the WordPress plugin will support only one live chat URL per website. Multi-chat bubble support will be released soon. In the meantime, if multiple live chat options are required, simply paste the different code snippets into the pages you require.
4. Responding to Chats
Whether you use 3CX or just your WordPress site will determine how you respond to chats. 3CX, however, offers several options:
- You can manage chats and voice/video calls from your browser using this web app (outside your WordPress dashboard) on your hosted 3CX instance
- Android and iOS apps
- A desktop application for Windows
5. Web Client
The 3CX Web Client is easy to use and combines all the features you need to efficiently communicate, collaborate and connect with colleagues, partners and customers, straight from your browser or from the native Windows and macOS desktop app. From this one interface, you can easily make calls, view the status of colleagues, hold a video conference, and communicate with customers via voice, live chat, Facebook messaging and SMS/ MMS.
- Go to the “Your User Account on your New 3CX System” email.
- Click on your web client URL, e.g. https://mycompany.3cx.com/webclient/
- Log in using the credentials in your email or with your Google account.
If you’ve lost your Welcome Email you can have it re-sent via the smartphone app (iOS or Android).
6. Mobile Apps
Chats can be answered on the go using mobile apps. Installation is simple – you just have to download the app, then scan the QR code from the web client.
You’ll then be able to manage your chats on the go (and your phone calls – more on that later).
7. Elevating Live Chats to Call or Video
As I indicated previously, one of the unique features is the ability to integrate the 3CX Phone System, allowing you to convert a live chat into a call or video chat.
Using the top buttons, your visitors will be able to do so immediately from the chat window.
Then, agents will be able to respond immediately from the online application or the mobile applications.
This is quite cool because it allows you to begin a call or video chat quickly using only your Internet connection and without requiring visitors to install the software (visitors just need to give their web browser access to their microphone and camera).
3CX Live Chat Pricing
The 3CX Live Chat plugin is free for an unlimited number of chats, which is quite generous in the WordPress live chat area.
3CX StartUP is free and elevating the calls is also free. There is always a free version of 3CX available for free and at the moment they are switching from Standard 4SC being free to another offering called 3CX FREE.
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Final Thoughts on 3CX Live Chat Review 2023
Overall, 3CX Live Chat is one of the most adaptable live chat solutions for WordPress that I have tried. In contrast to SaaS tools, you receive your own hosted instance. Or, you can host it yourself on-site or in the cloud.
This allows for a great deal of freedom and ownership, as well as advanced capabilities such as upgrading live chat sessions to phone or call.
3CX really provides you with your own communications server, which contributes to a portion of this complexity.
Having said that, the setup procedure is not very complicated, and once I understood what was going on, I had it operational within half an hour.
Overall, if you desire extra flexibility and support for phone and video chats, you should investigate 3CX Live Chat.
