The News: 8×8 announced several artificial intelligence driven enhancements to its XCaaS platform in addition to a new partner program. The new enhancements help support increased productivity and efficiencies for a more positive customer and employee experience.
More information on the product enhancements can be found in this release on the 8×8 website as well as this release. Details on the partner-related announcement can be found here.
8×8’s XCaaS AI Capabilities Deepen and New Partner Program Launched
Analyst Take: 2023 was a year of CCaaS and UCaaS vendors layering in artificial intelligence in ways that help support productivity and efficiency. A trickle-down effect to these enhancements is supporting the user experience by making their jobs easier and removing mundane tasks.
Contact Center Updates Focus on Integrations and Workspaces
The Futurum Group spoke with 8×8 last fall, and the company reported that deepening its contact center solutions was a top priority and this has been evident with the latest announcements.
Many of the new solutions center around supporting agent and supervisor productivity and efficiency. For agents, 8×8 has enhanced its Agent Workspace with a directory search user interface that helps agents get to contact information they need quickly, more easily revisit previously done searches, and have access to queue and ring groups in the contact directory. Agents will also benefit by being able to manage emails right from the control panel that is used for chats and phone interactions, helping to support a smoother workflow for themselves and an omnichannel experience for customers. Omnichannel is further supported by agents now having the ability to reply to SMS and WhatsApp messages, start SMS, and receive appropriate information via a screen for these channels while using the 8×8 for Salesforce or 8×8 for Microsoft Dynamics Integrations.
For supervisors, the Supervisor Workspace added support for seven different languages which match the language selected in the 8×8 Contact Center admin settings. There is also enhanced filtering, allowing different media types to be selected so that only the queues of inbound phone, outbound phone, voicemail, chat or email can be chosen, simplifying what is otherwise a complex view of interactions.
8×8 has started a limited beta of AI-driven summarization for clients who are using 8×8 call Speech Analytics. This functionality will automatically take out key information from calls and then send a smart summary and recorded interaction right into certain types of CRM systems.
UCaaS Announcements Include Transcriptions, Summaries, and User Experience Improvements
8×8 has introduced a few new AI-driven capabilities into its platform that focus on removing some of the more painful parts of video meeting wrap-up. New features introduced include real-time meeting transcriptions and smart summarizations.
Meeting summaries have been around for a while in the CCaaS/UCaaS space, but the introduction of artificial intelligence brings the ability to generate insights, further extending benefits. The capability 8×8 offers provides video meeting highlights and snapshots, but also next steps and action items. The ability to share information asynchronously has also been enhanced.
The real-time AI transcription functionality offers the table stakes of note-taking and provides insights and the ability to quickly identify speakers. 8×8 also noted the benefit of putting all meeting-related items into a CRM so they can be more easily found, tracked, and reported.
Additionally, the user experience received increased attention with improvements being made to the admin console, Success Center navigation and a new analytics dashboard that provides IT admin with a better view into meetings and performance metrics.
New Tier Introduced to the 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem
8×8 also announced some changes to its 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem, introducing a new, and more exclusive tier known as SellWith8. This tier is invite-only and companies are chosen for their fit for certain use cases, capabilities and security features. SellWith8 members can sell directly with 8×8 and have closer connection to the 8×8 product and marketing teams.
Concluding Thoughts
This past year saw a lot of similar AI-related rollouts of these types of features for both CCaaS and UCaaS, so it’s good to see 8×8 deepen its capabilities in this area. An often overlooked part of an employee’s experience is the day-to-day grind of mundane and time-consuming organizational tasks. Layered on to that is the often mismatched expectations of workers who, as consumers, interact daily with many technologies that are much more advanced than what they have access to in their workplace. Workers, just like consumers, want a seamless, friction-free experience in their workplace.
8×8 has had a busy year with a strong focus on thoughtful artificial intelligence additions for its contact center and unified communications solutions. There was a steady stream of announcements regarding its XCaaS solution, which brings together a cloud contact center, business phone, video meetings, team chat, and SMS capabilities. In addition, in recent months, other meeting and workflow improvements have boosted 8×8’s Unified Communications solution. The company announced a beta program for a new large audience event solution (10,000 meeting participants) as well as deeper native integrations with Microsoft Teams. Enhancements to Agent Workspace, AI-driven self-service, and deepened capabilities with video all rolled out, adding up to a more robust offering. These latest additions track with the company’s goal of smoothing out communication, engagement, and collaboration for both employees and customers.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
Sales Assist Launched by 8×8 to Support Retailers with CX Challenges
New Video Capability Brought Into 8×8 Contact Center
8×8 Adds Voice to AI Self-Service Capabilities
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
