Is rocketchat a good choice for client team communications?

Description

This is a broad question, but I wanted to double-check my use case for rocket chat before investing too deeply for this particular requirement.

I run a small consulting group, which has a growing number of small clients under engagements we refer to as “microconsulting”. Clients message in using their preferred method, email, whatsapp, or rocket chat direct, we have one or more consultants assigned to their project who sorts out their need quickly.

Goals-

  • Solid visibility into client history, with search
  • Isolate each client “team.” Clients cannot see each other, not even names / group names, consultants generally only have access to the teams they’re assigned to.
  • Easy text, sharing of links, lots of Loom shares ( sep. post on this topic ).
  • Audio and video recording built-in, and 2-way chat, are a bonus, I think we’d likely use both and ditch the Google Meet links.
  • Easy access, ideally I’d be able to access RC from any of my computers easily and phone as well, when needed. Alerts, configurable, would be great, certain clients are high priority.

Secondary goals-

  • Public chat initiation from various websites, to drop enquiries in that then become leads.

Approach-

  • I’m guessing the right way to do this is to use the Teams feature, setup my consulting team as internal staff, invite them to the right teams.
  • Then clients would be invited in an identical way, using a team-level invite link?

Main questions-

  • Is this the right approach and is Rocket Chat the right solution for what I’m attempting?
  • For private client invites, I’m seeing them also added to #general which would be a problem if clients can post there or see each other.
  • What is the contact center for? I can add people but can’t seem to initiate outbound messaging. So far the team invite link is the only way I’ve found to connect to a new person.

Server Setup Information

  • Version of Rocket.Chat Server:
  • Operating System:
  • Deployment Method:
  • Number of Running Instances:
  • DB Replicaset Oplog:
  • NodeJS Version:
  • MongoDB Version:
  • Proxy:
  • Firewalls involved:

Any additional Information

Hi!

I believe you can accomplish that in some different ways using Rocket.Chat

You can have your clients as a user inside Rocket.Chat. However, you would need to change some permissions to do not allow them to create rooms or teams or do direct messages, and maybe hide the directory from them, so they will not be able to see the users on the UI (however, they could still get their usernames from API)

For Audio and Vídeo, you can setup a jitsi, and configure it as you like.

You also can, for your secondary goal, use Rocket.Chat for receiving your leads from website (and also from whatsapp, telegram, email, etc)

Your approach is good, having all clients inside a team, and creating channels inside the teams in order to organize it. You can remove general as a default channel, so they don’t get added there, or remove the #general channel altogether.

The contact center will hold all the visitors, that comes from the Omnichannel connectors such as email, whatsapp, facebook, etc.

Sorry for the delay here. Let me know if there is any other doubts you might have, and feel free to join us at our Community Channel, or our monthly Community Open Call:

Thanks!

Thanks so much, if I can kick the Loom oembed issue we’re going to roll this out and adapt as we go.

I mentioned that thread/feature request to a colleague, the almighty @hugocosta and I believe he will bring us some good news soon :wink: