8×8, Inc., a leading provider in business communications, customer experience (CX), and Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), has recently introduced significant enhancements to its cloud platform, aiming to drive superior customer and employee engagement through improved AI capabilities, enhanced call quality, and extended functionalities across its contact center solutions. These advancements not only meet the immediate needs of businesses but also anticipate future demands, positioning 8×8 as a proactive and forward-thinking leader in the industry. This article delves into the key innovations unveiled by 8×8 and examines their implications for the market.
Enhancing AI Capabilities for Superior Customer Engagement
8×8 has made substantial strides in integrating AI within their contact center, introducing highly accurate AI-powered transcriptions that leverage the latest OpenAI Whisper model. By adopting this model, 8×8 has significantly enhanced language support and real-time transcription accuracy for a variety of languages and accents. Such technology facilitates more seamless multilingual interactions via live web chats, doubling the number of supported languages and broadening the scope of their service offerings. The expanded text-to-speech capabilities now accommodate over 40 languages, enabling diverse users to drive increased efficiency, boost productivity, and elevate customer satisfaction.
One of the noteworthy features introduced is 8×8 Contact Center Video Elevation. This innovative solution allows agents to utilize one-way video capabilities within the contact center setting. Customers can share their mobile camera views, enabling agents to visually assess and troubleshoot issues more effectively. This feature is particularly useful in overcoming language barriers or geographical uncertainties, allowing agents to pinpoint exact locations and capture screenshots of the visuals being shared by customers. By utilizing these enhanced AI tools and features, businesses can improve communication and ensure a more tailored and effective customer engagement strategy, thus catering to a global audience more effectively.
Optimizing Contact Center Performance
The 8×8 Supervisor Workspace has been extended, featuring a customizable and intuitive user interface designed to enhance contact center performance. This advanced workspace, accessible on both desktops and mobile devices, provides centralized visibility and actions, offering real-time insights, assistance, and guidance. The Supervisor Workspace empowers contact center leaders to efficiently monitor and manage agent and queue activities, ultimately improving operational efficiency and overall user experience. By providing these tools, 8×8 ensures that contact center leaders can deliver exceptional customer service through timely insights and high-quality communications.
In an effort to improve call quality for users operating within Azure virtual desktop environments, 8×8 Work for both desktop and web has been integrated with Azure. This optimization is tailored specifically for telephony users, ensuring higher audio call quality and consistent communication clarity. By addressing the specific needs of telephony users, 8×8 guarantees that communication remains effective, regardless of the platform being used. These enhancements reflect 8×8’s commitment to offering tools that not only improve operational efficiency but also enhance the overall user experience.
Broadening Communication and Management Capabilities
8×8 has introduced new features aimed at specific industry needs, such as bulk messaging support. This feature enables SMS messages to be sent to up to 50 numbers or contacts simultaneously through 8×8 Work, proving particularly beneficial for sectors like recruiting where mass communication is often required. Additionally, a bulk SMS message room is created, providing details on when and to whom each message was sent, along with managing responses individually. These capabilities streamline communication processes, ensuring prompt and effective mass communication.
Further enhancing their offering, 8×8 has also launched a new Public API for call queue management. This development provides team leaders with access to real-time and historical analytics data directly within 8×8 Work, enabling prompt and proactive user support. By equipping businesses with these tools, 8×8 ensures effective communication management and timely responses to customer needs. 8×8’s CPaaS integration with Descope CIAM—a drag-and-drop customer identity and access management platform—further extends their capabilities, allowing businesses to enhance security measures, outsmart fraudulent activities, and create frictionless user experiences. By utilizing Descope’s no-code visual workflows, businesses can effortlessly customize user journeys and integrate robust authentication, authorization, and identity management into any application, effectively preventing fraud and bot attacks.
Streamlining Business Operations with Voice Bots
Additionally, the incorporation of voice bots for billing and payments highlights 8×8’s commitment to streamlining business operations. These voice bots automate numerous processes, including payment reminders and debt negotiations, significantly reducing manual labor and enhancing organizational efficiency. Features like number anonymization, SMS follow-ups, and comprehensive interaction recording with speech recognition capabilities further enhance the functionality of these voice bots. By automating routine tasks, 8×8 allows businesses to focus on more strategic activities, ultimately driving productivity and efficiency.
The use of voice bots not only reduces the workload on employees but also ensures that customers receive timely and accurate information regarding their billing and payments. This automation leads to enhanced customer satisfaction and streamlined operations, demonstrating 8×8’s innovative approach to integrating advanced technologies within business processes.
Market Impact and Industry Recognition
The Metrigy report titled "Customer Experience Optimization 2024-25" underscores the positive impact of AI on business metrics, highlighting improvements such as a 17.9% increase in revenue, a 22.3% rise in customer ratings, and a 21.8% boost in agent efficiency. The report also notes that AI is currently resolving approximately 20% of customer interactions, reflecting the significant role that AI-driven solutions play in enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency. These findings illustrate the overarching trend and consensus within the industry regarding the benefits of AI integration.
Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8×8, highlights the company’s unwavering commitment to innovation, emphasizing that 8×8 is not just responding to market demands but is proactively anticipating them. The continuous investment in AI-driven tools underscores 8×8’s strategy to bridge CX gaps and empower businesses to achieve successful engagement and outcomes across the entire customer journey. 8×8’s position as a leading provider of unified communications and contact center solutions is further reinforced by its recognition in the Gartner Magic Quadrant reports. 8×8 has been named a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service for the thirteenth consecutive year and in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service for the tenth consecutive year. This consistent recognition highlights 8×8’s industry leadership and dedication to delivering robust and reliable solutions.
Conclusion
8×8, Inc., a prominent player in business communications, customer experience (CX), and Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), has recently unveiled significant enhancements to its cloud platform. These upgrades aim to boost both customer and employee engagement by leveraging advanced AI capabilities, improved call quality, and expanded functionalities within its contact center solutions. By addressing the immediate needs of businesses and anticipating future demands, 8×8 positions itself as a proactive and forward-thinking industry leader. This article explores the key innovations introduced by 8×8 and assesses their impact on the market.
These new features underscore 8×8’s commitment to delivering a superior communications experience. Enhanced AI capabilities can streamline customer interactions, making them more efficient and personalized. Improved call quality ensures clear and reliable communication, which is essential for both customer satisfaction and employee productivity. The expanded functionalities of the contact center solutions allow businesses to tailor their communications infrastructure to meet specific needs, ensuring a competitive edge in the ever-changing business landscape.