Bringing employee and customer communications together helps organizations meet new work requirements.

Buffy Naylor, Managing Editor

May 18, 2021

3 Min Read
SaaS provider
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8×8 has introduced experience communications-as-a-service (XCaaS). The cloud deployment model erases the boundary between unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and contact center as a service (CCaaS). This enables organizations to support employees’ communications requirements as they work together delivering differentiated customer experiences.

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8×8’s Dave Sipes

“As is in other markets, such as CRM and ERP, when organizations transitioned from legacy, on-premises systems to SaaS and cloud deployment models, fragmentation occurred resulting in multiple disparate solutions across the enterprise,” said 8×8 CEO Dave Sipes. “XCaaS eliminates communications silos, brings the employee experience and customer experience back together, and helps drive the cloud communications industry forward significantly.”

Sipes made his comments at the 8×8 Analyst Summit.

The work environment is evolving and becoming increasingly complex. IT, CX and line-of-business leaders are challenged in their ability to deliver effective solutions. Getting a 360-degree view of both employees and customers is critical for overall organizational effectiveness and long-term business success, 8×8 said.

The company cited findings from Metrigy. The research firm found that companies enjoy success when they integrate their contact center with UC. Those that use an integrated cloud UC and contact center solution from a single vendor report nearly 100% revenue improvement. They also get a 14% cost decrease, a 57% customer experience rating improvement and a 37% agent efficiency improvement.

8×8 XCaaS delivers a single platform for both employee and customer experience. This includes fully integrated, cloud-native contact centervoice, team chat, meetings and communications platform-as-a-service  (CPaaS) capabilities. It is built on a resilient, secure and compliant cloud platform. According to 8×8, XCaaS offers the highest levels of reliability. They back it with what they say is the industry’s only UCaaS and CCaaS platform-wide 99.99% uptime SLA.

Flexibility and Resilience

Brian Himstedt is senior director of technology for The Kansas City Royals.

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“8×8’s integrated cloud communications and contact center platform provides us the flexibility and resilience to quickly manage all employee and customer interactions from any location or device,” he said. “With XCaaS, it’s not just the operational value when it comes to the platform. It’s the data insights and the ability to which you can make those insights readily available across the organization to help us provide a better customer and fan experience.”

8×8 XCaaS addresses today’s dynamic, critical workplace requirements, according to the company. A high-availability platform ensures consistent global delivery across all employee and customer communications. Companywide collaboration offers one directory for the entire organization, shared real-time presence and seamless contextual transfers. Unified administration provides a single provisioning and configuration console for all employee communications. Shared integrations deliver a single integration framework for more than 50 third-party apps across contact and cloud communications. And cross-platform analytics provide relatable, cross-platform data sets that deliver real-time insights from every transaction.

Andrew Halliwell is product director for Virgin Media Business.

“This past year has highlighted that the siloed, inflexible communications bundles of the past will not be sufficient for the future of work,” he said. “8×8’s open cloud platform with a full complement of integrated, modular capabilities allows us to deliver a highly differentiated solution to the market that advances the communications, collaboration and engagement needs of our customers.” 

Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Buffy Naylor or connect with her on LinkedIn.

 

About the Author(s)

Buffy Naylor

Managing Editor, Channel Futures

Buffy Naylor is managing editor of Channel Futures. Prior to joining Informa (then VIRGO) in 2008, she was an award-winning copywriter and editor, then senior manager of corporate communications for an international leisure travel corporation and, before that, in charge of creative development and copywriting for a boutique marketing and public relations agency.

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