New 8x8 Partner Ecosystem Promises AI-Driven Enhanced Customer Experiences

8×8 has unveiled its 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem. It’s a new program that aims to improve the customer experience by embedding artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and other technologies into the 8×8 platform to bolster business intelligence, insights and analytics.

The 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem “democratizes” seamless, next-generation, native integrations for organizations of all sizes without requiring complex, custom development or exorbitant overhead costs that have traditionally only been feasible for the largest enterprises, 8×8 said.

8×8’s Hunter Middleton

Hunter Middleton, chief product officer at 8×8, said a one-size-fits-all approach no longer works.

“Organizations expect their technology solutions and providers to innovate, adapt and evolve to meet their current and future business and customer needs,” Middleton said. “We are thrilled to announce the 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem, and even more excited to partner with so many industry-leading, innovative CX vendors. The program complements our native AI-driven 8×8 XCaaS platform capabilities, giving enterprises the flexibility to build the right solutions to meet and exceed their customer experience goals.”

8×8 XCaaS is an integrated cloud contact center and unified communications platform, which includes cloud contact center, business phone, video meetings, team chat, and SMS capabilities in a single-vendor solution. 8×8 XCaaS is a resilient, secure, and compliant platform, which offers the highest levels of reliability with a financially backed, platform-wide 99.999% uptime SLA across an integrated cloud UCaaS and CCaaS solution.

8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem Easily ‘Plugs In’ the Right AI Solutions

Venture capitalists are pumping billions of dollars into thousands of startups. This is rapidly accelerating the pace of innovation in AI, noted Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research.

ZK Research’s Zeus Kerravala

“This is leading to revolutionary advancements, especially in the area of improving the customer experience,” Kerravala said. “Getting locked into a single communications provider’s AI technology is holding back organizations from truly benefitting from the phenomenal rate of innovation taking place. 8×8’s new Technology Partner Ecosystem allows enterprises to easily plug in the right AI solutions that best meet their business needs and transform the contact center and customer engagement.”

Built on the 8×8 XCaaS platform open architecture, the new program nurtures an ecosystem of technology partners that encourages innovation and provides enterprises with the solutions they need for their customers. With the 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem, 8×8 says its customers can break down data barriers, enabling organizations to surface data across a variety of apps and interfaces and ensure conversational context is maintained during any handoffs between the 8×8 XCaaS platform and the partner integration.

Additionally, they can access next-generation technology and explore new integration categories through an open platform. Partners can eliminate the need for expensive custom development or excessive overhead costs by creating tailored solutions using readily available technologies, the company said.

Finally, partners can experience “seamless” integrations that are carefully curated from a select group of trusted industry CX partners.

When it comes to program benefits, 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem members can collaborate on joint go-to-market strategies, including promotional support, sales enablement, joint field engagements and lead sharing. They also can discover and address new customer use cases through an open, ecosystem-first platform. 8×8’s partners can maximize the power of platform-wide data to unlock the full potential of AI integrations; this, in turn, will pioneer transformative customer experience solutions, 8×8 said.