8×8 continues to innovate as it fills out its contact centre portfolio with a new collection of capabilities for its platform that are enriched with artificial intelligence (AI).

The enhancements help agents deliver a positive customer experience and raise customer satisfaction.

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AI technology has become an integral component of contact centres. Since the onset of the pandemic, contact centres have become permeated with AI, and of 8×8’s latest group of enhancements reflects that trend. AI is leveraged to provide a customer experience marked by the provision of self-service capabilities and the proactive recognition of customer needs to resolve issues within their preferred channels of engagement.

AI also feeds the agent experience, reserving agents’ time for addressing complex customer inquiries and equipping them with the knowledge required to fulfill those inquiries. In addition, AI is foundational to the emergence of digital-first strategies, the hallmark of which is delivering data-driven customer experiences.

8×8 is capitalising on a second contact centre trend

Through the new enhancements, 8×8 is also capitalising on a second fundamental contact centre trend.

Contact centres have been undergoing a profound transformation with the concept of a ‘contact centre’ yielding to the broader concept of ‘customer experience.’ Contact centres are converting from agent-centric to including self-service, from reactive to proactive, from transaction-oriented to relationship-oriented, and from generic to deeply personalised. Vendors such as 8×8, Cisco, and Zoom have introduced a range of capabilities to help organisations make the transition.

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Although jointly the new features mark a meaningful step forward for 8×8’s AI capabilities in the contact centre, they provide limited competitive differentiation. Rivals have either already introduced the same features or have them on their near-term roadmaps.

Bumps in the road

While 8×8 has won the speed-to-market game here, it has stumbled on its own timeline with respect to two features.

Voice support for 8×8 Intelligent Customer Assistant was expected for Q3 2023, making its arrival now roughly one year overdue.

Integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) systems that aid contact centre agents were introduced in 2023, thus making the launch of a capability to access call summaries within CRM systems far from prompt.

Missed introduction dates are to be expected periodically but 8×8 has missed the mark by such a wide margin on these two features that it risked leaving the door open to competitors to introduce the features first.

When CEO Samuel Wilson came onboard at the end of 2022, he set out to implement a ‘contact centre-first’ approach and lead with contact centre by cross-selling into the unified communications base. 8×8 will need to execute more quickly if it is to satisfy that vision.