8×8 on Monday announced Virtual Office Meetings, a cloud-based video conferencing and collaboration service, and next-generation capabilities for its Virtual Contact Center (VCC) platform.

Virtual Office Meetings is built into 8×8’s Virtual Office (VO) desktop experience and allows users to schedule meetings, initiate instant collaboration and transition IM conversations into a meeting from one VO desktop app. In addition, it gives users access to their corporate directory for easy engagement, and eliminates the need for users and IT to manage multiple logins and passwords, according to 8×8.

The new VCC platform capabilities “enable enterprises of all sizes to better manage their global contact centers, increasing agent productivity and personalizing every customer interaction,” according to 8×8.

Carlos Roman, 8×8’s senior director of channel marketing, tells Channel Partners that the company’s partners can now differentiate themselves with Virtual Office Meetings by offering a “single solution to solve all of their customers’ communications needs.”

“Partners can truly act as ‘trusted advisors’ by reducing the existing complexity within customers’ environment,” he said. “Consolidating separate services, including audio conferencing, IM/chat/presence, video conferencing and Web collaboration from multiple different providers into one single solution will allow partners to offer a unique value proposition to customers. Customers will enjoy the enhanced user experience and significant costs reductions, all due to these integrated services coming from a single provider.”{ad}

Virtual Office Meetings will allow partners to increase their “share of wallet” with both existing and new customers, Roman said. Partners can expand their portfolio to now include Web and video conferencing services, he said.

“Customers have been asking for these types of solutions and now an 8×8 partner will be able to solve customer challenges while growing their own business,” he said. “Many existing Web and video conferencing services are only sold as annual and prepaid services. Virtual Office Meetings is offered with monthly invoicing along with the rest of the 8×8 portfolio. By adding the service as a cross-sell/up-sell offering, partners can grow their average revenue per user and increase the entanglement or ‘stickiness’ of their customer relationship. The more services a partner can provide to any customer, the less likely the customer will churn or cancel services.”

The new VCC capabilities enable …

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… “even the smallest of contact centers to enjoy customer experience and agent productivity benefits that were previously available only to large contact centers at a much higher cost,” according to 8×8.

“Partners can expand and build on their existing contact-center practices with the next generation VCC from 8×8,” Roman said. “Offering a cloud-based virtual contact center to those customers who may not have the budget or staff to procure and deploy an on-premises solution will allow the partner who works with 8×8 to win the business.”

The partner ecosystem is crucial to the success of 8×8 and is viewed as an extended sales team for its offerings, Roman said.

“Ensuring that partners have early access to Virtual Office Meetings, and put their sales and marketing motion in place will be critical,” he said. “Partners will be able to accelerate and drive adoption of Virtual Office Meetings starting by adding the new service to existing customers. By teaming together, 8×8 and our partners can jointly sell to net-new customers and take market share in this rapidly growing arena.”