When we describe our 3CX phone system, we are often asked … “Is it like Skype?”
Yes – 3CX and Skype share some similarities (they are both VoIP), but were designed for different tasks. In general, Skype has been used for point-to-point communications between one PC & another, and uses those PC’s – along with others on the Internet – to connect the parties in the call. 3CX is a business phone system designed to allow a caller to connect with all the members of an organisation, through Internet & public telephone networks, and through calling strategies that include many call handling features, such as – ringing at multiple extensions, and the ability to transfer answered calls.
Skype has become well established, and can fill a valuable role in enabling customers and staff to make zero-cost calls back into your business from remote locations, via the Internet – even from other countries! It can also enable the use of ‘Skype Buttons’ on websites, so that calls can be made into your business by a potential customer browsing your site & wanting your services.
‘Skype Connect’ includes subscriptions to Internet SIP trunk lines, which can be connected to 3CX and act like any other trunk line. They can be allocated ‘Skype numbers’ which means that you can publish a number that enables you to be called by any land-line or mobile – and they can be linked with Skype business accounts so that a customer using Skype to call that account name, calls into your business as though they dialed from a land-line or mobile. The big advantage to your customers and staff is that, when they call you this way, no matter where they are in the world, the call is free! The advantage to you is that you don’t have to have Skype loaded on every PC in your company …
An incoming Skype Connect call can be presented to one or many ‘standard’ phone extensions in your company. It can be queued at – for example, a help desk, and once answered transferred on to somebody else to help the caller further. So while your caller is sitting in front of their PC with their headphones, you can be answering the call on your desk phone like any other.
You might want to use different Skype buttons on different web pages, to call in to different people or groups of people in your company. That way your caller is connecting with the person or department who is going to be able to best assist them with the product or service that they are currently looking at on your website.
Foxhall Solutions have assisted companies to set up Skype for different applications, ranging from IT support help-desks, through to enabling Missionaries working in remote parts of Africa to call their headquarters here in the UK. If you sell or advertise your product or service on your website, and you want to make it easy for your customers to contact you – then you really need to take a look at this facility …
3CX can enhance Skype for your business, using its following features;
- 3CX is a Skype Connect certified platform.
- 3CX terminates Skype connect as a SIP trunk for call routing & distribution through your business.
- 3CX can present the incoming Skype caller to particular extensions, or groups of extensions – and transfer the caller to other extensions as required.
Contact us to talk more about how 3CX can open new and innovative ways for you to keep in touch with your staff, partners and customers.
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