8x8 aims to transform XCaaS customer engagement with AI

Noting that transforming into an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered contact centre is now a necessity for those that want to deliver “stellar” customer experience, cloud communications provider 8x8 has unveiled AI-driven enhancements to its core platform designed to transform business and contact centre performance through enhanced customer experiences.

The new capabilities include 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant and 8x8 Supervisor Workspace for 8x8 Contact Centre, as well as integration with OpenAI. By deploying deeper AI and machine learning, natural language understanding models, and performance capabilities into its contact centre, 8x8 said it can enable customer-oriented organisations to build “exceptional” customer journeys, enhance team productivity and empower leaders with real-time insights.

Robin Gareiss, CEO and principal analyst at research firm Metrigy, said: “Our research clearly shows that investing in AI, platform integration and more efficient operational processes delivers results. For example, conversational AI alone improves revenue by 20.7%, customer ratings by 26.7% and agent productivity by 22.7%. Companies with such success rates invest 92.2% more than unsuccessful companies on CX [customer experience] technologies.”

8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant is a conversational AI service designed to enable businesses to create simple to complex self-service experiences across all channels. Part of 8x8 Contact Centre, it provides graphical orchestration capabilities intended to allow enterprises to build scalable, always-available, consistent experiences across multiple regions and languages.

With the service, organisations are said to be able to deliver smart self-service to automatically handle customer requests through natural, conversational experiences. Users can deploy graphical scripting tools, enabling a single chatbot to be deployed across channels such as SMS, WhatsApp and web chat.

It has capability to build conversation flows that can be applied to any channel, in more than 100 languages, and capture actionable insights for performance optimisation via a built-in analytics offering. It can also be used to eliminate blind transfers with customer context and bot interaction details delivered to a live agent, empowering them to deliver what 8x8 said will be more “personalised, frictionless” experiences.

The purpose-built 8x8 Supervisor Workspace blends analytics, performance management and team admin capabilities into a single interface. A design-led user interface provides a performance-centric management space for contact centre leaders. Key features include AI-driven decision intelligence, as well as guidance presenting supervisors with coaching and performance recommendations.

It will also use turnkey integrations with CRM systems and other enterprise applications or connect with leading generative AI engines such as OpenAI, all accessible from a simple app ecosystem.

“Customers are turning to cloud-first environments because they offer fast, personalised offerings that then allow them to operate in the way, and across the channels, that make the most sense for their business – there is no one-size-fits-all in enterprise,” said Hunter Middleton, chief product officer at 8x8.

“These AI-driven innovations to the 8x8 XCaaS platform provide our customers with the easily designable tools they need to meet their customers whenever, and wherever, to deliver the most consistent experience possible,” he added. “Whether it’s conversational AI and a highly effective self-service product, a highly composable, personalised contact centre experience for supervisors, or accurate and dynamic intelligence across the entire platform, 8x8 XCaaS delivers a modern platform to meet their present and future business requirements.”

Rohena Sharma at Brent Council said: “An unexpected challenge of supervising a contact centre team is simply managing the multiple applications that are needed for task management, team overview, and metrics and analytics.

“8x8 Supervisor Workspace removes that challenge, allowing me to view and manage the teams, and all related information, in a single screen,” she said. “It’s amazing how much time is saved, and how much more productive I can be, when I’m not switching between a dozen different applications.”