If there’s one major trend sweeping across Cloud Communications providers currently, it has to be the consolidation of solutions into one single, integrated platform. The global cloud communications and customer engagement solution provider 8×8 is the latest to follow suite in introducing a seamlessly integrated platform, combining everything from Enterprise VoIP together under one roof, including call, collaboration, conferencing and contact center solutions.

Labeled X Series, this new platform is 8×8’s latest push into a connected, cloud first portfolio. With everything under one roof, 8×8 provides organizations with the tools and platform they need to revolutionize their customer experience, by revolutionizing the way teams collaborate and work to solve customer inquiries.

A Connect Platform

The main selling point of 8×8’s new platform, X Series, is the integrated nature of the solution. By combining together everything your business needs under one roof, it enables teams to work together closely, and solve issues much faster than ever before. 8×8 recognizes that the customer experience is currently an incredibly critical aspect of just about any organization, in just about any industry. Businesses need to deliver the best possible experience to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, keeping them coming back.

In order to arm businesses with the tools they need to provide the best customer experience possible, 8×8’s new X Series includes:

  • Robust VoIP and calling capabilities
  • Real-time collaboration
  • Conferencing capabilities
  • Contact Center functionality

By joining all of these features under one integrated roof, 8×8’s X Series provides the foundation that any business can utilize to leverage real-time customer data along with real-time communications. This can revolutionize the way your business handles customer contacts. For example, agents can now reach out to other agents or supervisors when they require assistance with an inquiry.

A Seamless Experience

Through the intersection and combination of these different technologies, 8×8 is arming businesses with the tools they need to react to the customer’s needs at a moment’s notice. This single platform provides businesses with one single set of data, one workflow engine, and one analytics engine all inside the same integrated platform, along with voice, meeting, team collaboration and contact center functions.

This unique marriage of solutions enables agents to find they information they need at a moment’s notice. Instead of flipping through multiple applications, or attempting to link two together with an integration, agents are given every single piece of data and context, including client history, right within the same exact application they use to track tickets, and even answer the phone call.

“Customer-obsessed companies are looking for a communications infrastructure that helps them transform their employee and customer experience,” said Vik Verma, chief executive officer at 8×8. “X Series is designed to radically change how companies deliver unparalleled customer experience by providing intelligent interactions between their employees and customers.”

With one system of engagement built to deliver a superior customer experience, companies can now take advantage of:

  • Context-Rich Engagements: 8×8 X Series arms contact center agents and employees with complete context before they start a conversation. X Series has native CRM built-in and also integrates with third-party solutions like Google G-Suite, Salesforce, Zendesk and NetSuite to provide rich contextual insights such as previous engagements and preferences.
  • Collaborative Contact Center: X Series allows businesses to harness the collective insights of the organization through real-time collaboration with peers and instant access to subject matter experts. Companies can significantly increase performance by empowering their employees to move from chat to voice to video to web conferencing with one click.
  • Advanced Customer Journey Analytics: Instead of piecing together data from multiple systems, X Series provides the enterprise with a view of the customer journey from the moment they reach the contact center through to issue resolution. In addition, X Series offers advanced analytics based on a single data-set for all employee and customer interactions that enable the enterprise to continuously improve the customer experience.

The Bottom Line

Right within their announcement, 8×8 mentions that 72% of business agree that improving the customer experience is a top priority, but the provider argues that “few have built their communications infrastructure to enable the interactions that drive world-class customer experience.” And that’s exactly what 8×8 set out to do here with their new X Series platform, create a world-class communications and collaboration platform that enables your business to provide world-class service.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a move we are starting to see across the industry, with RingCentral just last week also introducing a new integrated collaborative contact center. It’s interesting to see how these new platforms will take off, and if this new paradigm is here to stay. What’s also interesting to see is Vonage CEO Alan Masarek’s prediction come true, now with not only one but two providers offering a solution that bridges the gap between internal and external communications.

With such a heavy focus being placed on the customer experience, not only by businesses but also by the customers themselves, it makes sense that we would see these new integrated platforms emerge. What I am curious to see is how they will continue to evolve over time, and what else providers will look to integrate together.