8x8 Makes It Easier for Organizations to Engage, Work, and Manage Interactions Between Employees and Customers
January 28 2021 - 8:00AM
Business Wire
Winter 2021 Release Delivers New Customer
Engagement and Cloud Communications Enhancements Across Integrated
Platform
8x8, Inc. (NYSE:EGHT), a leading integrated cloud communications
platform provider, today announced new contact center, voice
communications, chat, meetings and Communications Platform as a
Service (CPaaS) product enhancements to optimize employee and
customer engagement. The latest 8x8 updates highlight the benefits
organizations gain by having an integrated contact center and
communications solution from a single provider, making it easy to
engage, work, and manage interactions between employees and
customers.
Easy to Engage
8x8’s innovative customer engagement products help organizations
exceed customer experience and growth objectives. According to
Metrigy Research, companies integrating cloud communications and
contact center with a single provider saw substantial benefits when
compared to those using multiple providers. Using a single
provider, companies reported increases in customer ratings (37
percent vs. 29 percent) and a dramatic rise in revenue (54 percent
vs. 26 percent) versus their multiple-vendor counterparts.
The Winter 2021 Release adds new features and functionality, key
partnerships and integrations that offer customers the ability
to:
- Make and receive calls with 8x8 Contact Center and Microsoft
Teams - 8x8 Contact Center is now included in Microsoft's
Connected Contact Center for Microsoft Teams Certification program,
integrating seamlessly with 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams direct
routing capabilities. Contact center agents, knowledge workers and
supervisors can make and receive PSTN calls using the native
Microsoft Teams app as the preferred endpoint. Learn more about the
Top Microsoft Teams Trends in 2021 in the upcoming 8x8
webinar.
- Drive customer engagement and sales success - Customers
can now utilize 8x8 Quality Management for both inbound and
outbound voice. The closed-loop workflow now includes automated
notification, acknowledgement, feedback and reporting for more
effective coaching. Combined with 8x8 Speech Analytics, 8x8
customers can easily mine, gather and share specific contextual
examples of interactions with teams and individuals to improve
NPS/CSAT, upsell, cross-sell and objection-handling training
without exhaustive manual processing.
- Improve overall effectiveness of outbound campaigns -
Enhancements to 8x8 Auto Dialer, like expanded monitoring
statistics, help customers more effectively monitor, adjust and
optimize campaign performance. To maximize call connection rates,
expanded Sequential Dialing functionality now supports up to 22
numbers, making it easier to identify, select, and establish the
order in which phone numbers will be contacted. High-volume and
blended inbound/outbound sales teams can save time and experience
greater productivity with enhanced support of auto-retry for
abandoned and non-answered calls, busy tones, and answering machine
detection.
- Expand workforce management functionality with Verint Monet
and Verint Enterprise - 8x8 and Verint recently announced a
partnership, bringing additional cloud workforce management
applications integrated with 8x8 Contact Center. Tight
synchronization of historical and real-time interaction data and
agent information from 8x8 Contact Center with Verint Monet or
Verint Enterprise is out of the box without the need for
professional services, allowing mid-market and enterprise
businesses to optimize customer engagement operations by making it
even easier to plan, forecast, and schedule contact center agent
workloads.
- Build customer trust - With Google Verified SMS, which
is now available to 8x8 business customers through the 8x8 SMS
API.
- Expand global customer reach - With the addition of
KakaoTalk, a mobile messaging app with over 52 million monthly
active users in South Korea. The 8x8 Chat Apps API now allows
companies to reach customers across seven different services,
including WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook Messenger.
“We've seen tremendous results in using the 8x8 Auto Dialer,”
said Dominic McDonald, Managing Director, italk telecom. “Increased
agent productivity, simplified management, and overall improved
visibility into our campaigns has made a significant impact in how
we proactively connect with our customers. The user experiences for
admins and agents alike is so simple that proactive outreach is an
effortless part of our daily operations."
Easy to Work
The 8x8 Work app, which includes voice, video meetings and team
chat, allows users to connect and collaborate securely with
customers and colleagues from anywhere, using any device. New
enhancements make it easier to:
- Manage settings directly from Microsoft Teams - With 8x8
Voice for Microsoft Teams, users can simply log into their
Microsoft Teams app to view and update 8x8 calling configurations,
including voicemail and call forwarding, as well as log in and out
of call queues.
- Decide who runs video meetings - Advanced moderator
settings allow meeting owners and administrators to designate a
single moderator and elevate other participants to the moderator
role at any time during the meeting.
- Ensure the highest level of meeting security - In
addition to 8x8’s unparalleled standards-based end-to-end
encryption, moderators can lock the meeting once it is underway,
requiring new participants to request access in a lobby before
joining.
- Message multimedia files for faster collaboration -
Provides richer, more personalized and efficient media exchange
with MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) support for multimedia
attachments in external communications.
- Stay connected without interruption - The Flip Call
banner allows users to immediately change devices without any loss
of connection, while quick-reply messages allow users to decline
incoming calls but stay engaged with colleagues, partners and
customers.
Easy to Manage
The integrated 8x8 cloud communications and contact center
platform allows organizations with distributed offices and
workforce to reduce total cost of ownership, providing a single
vendor for support and a central management portal for
administration. Winter 2021 Release enhancements include:
- Support for compliance initiatives - 8x8 Nomadic E911
helps customers meet US regulations set forth by Kari’s Law and RAY
BAUM’s Act by providing company notifications of emergency calls
and accurate, dynamic user location information for emergency
callers.
- Ability to customize cost centers - Supports payment
methods and expense allocation allowing IT to chargeback service
costs through the easy set up of independent and site-based cost
centers using company locations, sites, and teams.
“The 8x8 single-vendor cloud platform was purpose-built to
eliminate silos, facilitate dynamic collaboration and engage both
customers and employees through highly personalized experiences,”
said Dejan Deklich, Chief Product Officer at 8x8, Inc. “Our global
cloud approach enables us to rapidly inject new, innovative
capabilities into our integrated contact center, voice
communications, chat, meetings, and APIs product. We are proud to
support organizations’ digital transformation efforts with a
platform that delivers everything they need to meet unique business
requirements, and thrive in the new operate-from-anywhere
model.”
8x8 Webinars
Register for the upcoming Winter 2021 Release webinar on
February 2, 2021, at 8 am PT / 11 am ET to learn about the latest
8x8 contact center, voice communications, chat, meetings and CPaaS
product enhancements.
8x8 will also host the 2021 Customer Experience Trends to Watch
Webinar, on February 17, 2021 with R "Ray" Wang, Principal Analyst,
Founder, and Chairman of Constellation Research, Inc, and 8x8 Vice
President of Product Marketing Janice Rapp to discuss key trends
impacting customer experience and the contact center in 2021 and
beyond. Register for the webinar at 2021 Customer Experience Trends
to Watch.
8x8 and Gartner Magic Quadrant
Recently, 8x8 was named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic
Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide1. This
is the ninth consecutive year 8x8 has been recognized as a Leader
in this report. 8x8 was also recognized as a Challenger in the 2020
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service2.
[1] Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a
Service, Worldwide, Rafael Benitez, Megan Fernandez, Daniel
O'Connell, Christopher Trueman, Pankil Sheith, November 12, 2020.
This Magic Quadrant report name has changed from 2015 onwards-
2015-2020: Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service,
Worldwide, 2014: Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a
Service, North America With Additional Regional Presence,
2012-2013: Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service,
North America.
[2] Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service,
Steve Blood, Drew Kraus, Pri Rathnayake, November 9, 2020.
About 8x8, Inc.
8x8, Inc. (NYSE: EGHT) is transforming the future of business
communications as a leading Software-as-a-Service provider of
contact center, voice communications, video, chat and API solutions
powered by one global cloud communications platform. 8x8 empowers
workforces worldwide to connect individuals and teams so they can
collaborate faster and work smarter. Real-time business analytics
and intelligence provide businesses unique insights across all
interactions and channels so they can delight end-customers and
accelerate their business. For additional information, visit
www.8x8.com, or follow 8x8 on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
8x8® and 8x8 X Series™ are trademarks of 8x8, Inc.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210128005353/en/
8x8, Inc. Contacts:
Media: John Sun, 1-408-692-7054
john.sun@8x8.com
Investor Relations: Victoria Hyde-Dunn, 1-669-333-5200
victoria.hyde-dunn@8x8.com
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