8×8 has announced a 35 percent year-over-year (YoY) spike in CCaaS deals with midmarket enterprises that have 250 contact center agents or more.
Additionally, the vendor hiked its total contact center customers by nine percent while the total number of agents leveraging the 8×8 Contact Center is up eight percent YoY.
The news comes after 8×8 made the switch last year to lead with CCaaS, not UCaaS, bringing on board the likes of evangelist Justin Robbins to help navigate that switch.
Now, 8×8 appears to have found its groove in the midmarket, a segment underserved over the years by many CCaaS vendors.
Why? Because these companies typically have to either enter into a big CCaaS ecosystem and use a fraction of what they pay for or integrate a series of point solutions with their CRM or UCaaS system.
By making a play here – like RingCentral and UJET are also doing – 8×8 is engaging this disillusioned market segment and seizing a new business opportunity.
Samuel Wilson, CEO of 8×8, believes that the CCaaS growth in this segment and beyond is a promising sign, as the vendor aims to reinvigorate total revenues after a three percent YoY drop last quarter.
“Our continuing drive to transform 8×8’s business and pace of innovation around all things CX has accelerated over the past year as we’ve made tremendous strides,” said the CEO.
As we help organizations exceed expectations and deliver business success, we are seeing increased customer adoption of our contact center.
“Underscoring 8×8’s CX transformation, we are continuing to grow 8×8’s multi-product CX cloud platform and enhance it with new capabilities.”
Indeed, 8×8 has unveiled several release waves for the 8×8 Contact Center over recent months. Notable new features include a conversational AI solution, conversation summaries for external CRMs, and a mobile workspace for supervisors.
Interestingly, it has also accelerated its sector-specific innovation. For instance, it launched a proactive outreach tool for housing associations last month.
Doubling down on verticals beyond the big three that every CX vendor seems to target – healthcare, finance, and retail – could also prove a positive growth strategy.
Yet, first and foremost, 8×8 leverages customer feedback to direct its innovation. That approach could have been a significant factor in the vendor increasing the number of existing CCaaS customers that added CX products to their installations by ten percent YoY.
Other handpicked statistics from 8×8 include a 14 percent YoY surge in digital customer interactions handled across its platform.
Then, there is a 150 percent YoY increase in agents escalating customer interactions to video within the 8×8 Workspace. Yet, as that functionality only became generally available in October 2023, that statistic seems slightly misleading.
Nevertheless, 8×8’s momentum in the CCaaS – particularly in the midmarket – is encouraging, especially as the vendor faces a new rival in the UCaaS space: NICE.
On that move, Wilson didn’t mince his words during a recent earnings call, criticizing “vendors with subpar products that they like to talk about a lot using price.”
However, he did signal that the announcement has had an early impact on the market. “We saw NICE making a marketing splash for the $5 UCaaS offering,” he said. “These solutions are typically feature-light and unintegrated, but the announcements have served to disrupt and extend sales cycles in some cases.”
“Light and unintegrated” is a bit harsh, but it is perhaps a taste of his own medicine for NICE CEO Barak Eilam after he offered a pointed rebuttal of Microsoft’s entrance into CCaaS.
Whatever the case, the claws seem to be out in the enterprise communications space.
