Let artificial intelligence transform the tone of your customer service

The days of pressing 1 for sales, 2 for support and 3 if you know the extension number of the person you are calling are finally over. Instead, your AI-powered receptionist – available to all 3CX customers with the upcoming 3CX V20 Update 8 – will automatically handle calls exactly as a human receptionist would.

Key to this all is OpenAI. All you need is an active OpenAI account, which you then connect to from within 3CX. In a few short steps you can create and configure multiple AI agents, each with their own name, voice style and language decided by you.

Then, when a call comes in, the AI agent will answer. The best bit is that you’re in charge of the AI agent’s traits, behaviours, tone, workflows, business knowledge and reasoning abilities. For example, if a caller says “I get a 404 not found when I access your page” then the AI recognises this as a technical support issue and knows to forward the call to a certain extension. Likewise, if a caller says “transfer me to Georgina Harris”, if the AI recognises the name it will transfer the call straight through.

You can even automatically block spam callers, with the AI trained to recognise familiar annoyances such as scammers pretending to be from Microsoft support.

And if you’re worried about hostile or abusive callers, fear not: the AI agent can detect these and act accordingly based on your choices, such as instantly escalating the call to a manager.

Local, secure transcription

3CX has included AI transcription services for some time, but with the release of update 8 you have more options than ever. In particular, users of the Enterprise/AI licence of 3CX (32 simultaneous callers and above) might choose to host their own 3CX Transcription Engine Server on-premise or in the cloud. Choosing the former reduces ongoing costs and also ensures that any records are kept locally.

Don’t forget that Enterprise/AI licence holders benefit from transcriptions of all conversations, call summaries and analysis of call sentiment. This makes it far easier to spot sales opportunities and those customers who express frustration.

One more thing: thanks to stereo recording, the 3CX Transcription Engine can now work out exactly who said what during a conversation by separating the tracks into two. Other transcription services waste resources to figure this out and are less accurate.

AI transcription is free for all Enterprise/AI licence holders, while Pro licences include voicemail transcription using Google or OpenAI. For obvious reasons, transcription isn’t bundled as part of the SMB Free package.

Beefed up features

3CX V20 Update 8 includes a heap of other new features too. For example, human receptionists can now see more extensions and inbound calls simultaneously thanks to a compact view. They can even drag and drop calls to automatically transfer them.

Or perhaps you have an unsupported VoIP provider that you absolutely must use. Update 8 includes the VoIP Provider Checker, a built-in tool for testing and validating SIP trunk configurations that instantly verifies the compatibility of new or existing VoIP providers. The checker will run all important tests checking if the provider will work with 3CX or not, and shows which tests have failed to allow you to escalate this to the provider.

The final feature we want to cover found in Update 8 is the new Power BI dashboards. These analyse call data exported to a Microsoft SQL Server or Azure SQL using the 3CX Data Connectors, at which point you can use the Power BI Desktop templates to easily connect and visualise your data. For example, see at a glance the average call duration, the top most dialled numbers and extensions that keep missing calls.

What about Update 7?

So far we’ve concentrated on Update 8, which is available to try now as an Alpha version. But in early October 3CX released the final version of Update 7, which itself comes with a heap of new features.

First up, 3CX System Watcher is now built into the platform, continuously monitoring the health of the PBX. This checks core services in real-time, and if one fails then it’s automatically restarted to minimise downtime. System Watcher also tracks system resources – CPU, memory, disk and network usage – and raises alerts when thresholds are exceeded.

And it’s now even easier to use Amazon AWS S3 for remote storage (alongside Google Cloud Storage and Microsoft SharePoint). Admins can configure multiple AWS regions and buckets directly from the Admin Console, making it simple to store and find backups, voicemails, recordings, chats and faxes.

Then there are the improvements to simply make life easier and slicker for admins. There’s a new Supervisor role to provide better oversight for call centres and department heads, much improved reporting and analytics, not to mention faster backups and restores. For full details, click here.

Try 3CX free

Despite all these improvements, there’s one thing that doesn’t change about 3CX: you can try 3CX Pro for free. No credit card required, no strings attached. And you get to choose whether you host it on your own hardware, in the cloud via a partner or get 3CX to host it for you. What’s more, if you have less than ten users then you can use 3CX free.

Remember, you’re not just getting a phone system. 3CX includes video conferencing, live chat integration for your website, and a choice of hardware or software phones – with feature- rich clients on Android, iPhone and Windows. Simply use the link below to get started.