Yes, you’re right about that. Communication is changing and it’s very nice 3CX is also evolving with WhatsApp, Live Chat, SMS. I really do hope Facebook Messenger can make a comeback soon as well though, it’s nice to offer all-in-one. Perhaps even Google messages could be integrated if that’s even possible.
Another program we use in this context is Missive. It’s not a competitor to 3CX at all, it’s an entirely different program, but it has some good concepts in place regarding maintaining overview of which agent is handling which chat/sms/WA/e-mail etc.
But on topic:
I just built a very simple WA-bot on Twilio and it works sort-of, but it can indeed never transfer to a human agent. I also don’t see the option for that in Twilio.
So indeed, it would be really great if there would be an option for SMS/WA but also even perhaps the live chat, to have a simple digital receptionist. It could even be the existing receptionist you have configured- you already upload a WAV-file, besides those fields would only need to be a text field where you could enter the text that is sent back on WA.
If WA honors the business hours, which it already does, we can have chats come in on receptionist 1 during business hours (‘for support, answer 1, for sales, answer 2’).
After business hours, a different receptionist can be assigned which informs the client of the opening hours of WA and can take a message or something.
Something along these lines would be great, in that it doesn’t matter if a ‘call’ is voice or text-based, it can go through exactly the same 3CX flows… but it’s very easily said of course and a lot harder to make and it also depends which direction 3CX is going to focus on for version18.5/19.
But it’s nice to see all the additions and improvements!
