8×8 has announced contact center, voice communications, chat and meetings product enhancements.
8×8, a leading integrated cloud communications platform provider, has announced contact center, voice communications, chat and meetings product enhancements, including the new 8×8 Work for Web as well as the industry’s only platform-wide SLA, to help organizations enable hybrid work.
According to research commissioned by 8×8, 82% of organizations plan to offer a mix of office and remote work, and the newest 8×8 capabilities enable employees to stay productive wherever and however they work.
New hybrid work capabilities
The Spring 2021 release of the 8×8 integrated cloud contact center and communications product allows organizations to support the ‘next new’ hybrid workforce, delivering everything needed to:
Communicate and collaborate from anywhere on any device
● Access voice communications, team chat, video meetings and other capabilities directly from a web browser: 8×8 Work for Web (beta) provides a secure, unified communications and collaboration experience across almost any device and operating system, such as Linux and Chrome OS. 8×8 Work for Web offers the same functionality and user experience as the 8×8 Work app in a Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browser.
● Start or join video meetings from a mobile browser: Meeting participants can easily use 8×8 Meet in Safari or Chrome browsers on iOS or Android devices without needing to download a mobile app.
● Customize video meeting backgrounds: Enables participants to select an image or blur their background during meetings for maximum privacy control.
● Respond to specific team chat messages: Delivers inline messaging, making it easier to follow conversations, and conveniently read and reply to specific messages without interrupting the current discussion.
● Silence incoming calls during video meetings: Call notifications appear silently so meeting audio is not interrupted or disturbed.
● Take the guesswork out of audio quality: The new Call Quality Indicator provides real-time connectivity status and additional call quality metrics during an active phone call.
● Use Machine Learning and AI for Smart Administration: The 8×8 Otto bot is now available in the 8×8 Admin Console helping administrators perform system changes and get real-time support on frequent operations.
Connect every agent and employee for faster customer resolution
● Leverage Microsoft Teams direct routing to improve customer and employee experience: Certified by Microsoft, 8×8 Contact Center for Microsoft Teams allows sales, service and support agents to quickly connect and collaborate with other Teams-enabled experts to resolve issues faster. The 8×8 Voice for Microsoft Teams app is now generally available, allowing users to access 8×8 features and settings directly in Teams such as voicemail, call forwarding, login and logout of call queues and more.
● Make communication and engagement fast and easy with 8×8 for Salesforce: The new 8×8 for Salesforce FastTrack deployment enables organizations to quickly and cost-effectively customize their most popular screen pop workflows with a variety of Salesforce objects in one integration across the 8×8 cloud contact center and communications product.
● Capture the voice of the customer and deliver holistic coaching: 8×8 further optimizes contact center performance across voice and digital channels with the ability to review and deliver comprehensive agent evaluations and coaching for chat, SMS and social interactions.
Ensure peace of mind for enterprises on a global scale
● Industry-leading SLA: 8×8’s secure, highly available, global cloud technology platform delivers superior international reach, four levels of redundancy, full transparency, and the industry’s only platform-wide, financially-backed SLA across an integrated cloud Contact Center as a Service and Unified Communications as a Service system.
● Trust and transparency: The 8×8 Trust Center shares security measures, compliance standards, reliability and uptime guarantees as well as detailed current status transparency for monitoring the latest network and service conditions. This public site reports real-time availability of 8×8 services by region, application and capability.
● Expanded global coverage: Offers enhanced in-region data residency compliance with operations in new geographic regions, including Australia, India, Germany and the broader European Union. With the addition of Argentina, 8×8 Global Reach expands Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) services and global calling plans to 43 countries.
“Organizations across the globe are adopting a hybrid work model, which is transforming the way employees and customers communicate, collaborate and engage,” said Dejan Deklich, Chief Product Officer at 8×8, Inc. “The 8×8 Customer First, Product First, Team First culture drives our commitment to innovate on the integrated cloud contact center and communications platform, allowing organizations and their employees to work and engage from anywhere, on any device in the app of their choice.”
