8×8 has unveiled its new partner program that aims to improve customer experiences with AI, insights, and analytics capabilities.
The 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem, as it is called, optimizes customer experiences and engagement through the democratization of native integrations for any sized business.
As a result, its customers will not need to create custom developments or pay the high overhead costs, which were previously only feasible for large organizations.
Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8×8, said: “A one size fits all approach no longer works. Instead, organizations expect their technology solutions and providers to innovate, adapt and evolve to meet their current and future business and customer needs.
We are thrilled to announce the 8×8 Technology Partner Ecosystem, and even more excited to partner with so many industry-leading, innovative CX vendors.
“The program complements our native AI-driven 8×8 XCaaS platform capabilities, giving enterprises the flexibility to build the right solutions to meet and exceed their customer experience goals.”
8×8 XCaaS (eXperience Communications as a Service) is the platform architecture upon which the partner program brings together leading technology solution providers in the industry.
The partner program already consists of over 30 partners, including Avoira, Cognigy, Converse360, Cresta, Engage Hub, LogicDialog, Roboyo, Syndeo, and more.
Moreover, its new ecosystem enables customers to surface data from various apps and interfaces and maintain conversational context during handoffs between the XCaaS platform and partner integrations.
It also provides a means of locating new integration categories and creating bespoke solutions through a catalog of technologies.
As such, customers can enjoy the seamless integrations that follow when selecting one of its technology partners.
8×8’s partner members benefit from collaborations on joint strategies, such as promotional support, sales enablement, lead sharing, and more.
Members will be exposed to new customer use cases and have access to AI integrations.
Finally, of course, they will be able to connect with new customers for increased revenue streams.
Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, commented: “Billions of dollars of venture-backed investments in thousands of start-ups are helping to rapidly accelerate the pace of innovation in the AI space.
“This is leading to revolutionary advancements, especially in the area of improving the customer experience.
“Getting locked into a single communications provider’s AI technology is holding back organizations from truly benefitting from the phenomenal rate of innovation taking place.
8×8’s new Technology Partner Ecosystem allows enterprises to easily plug in the right AI solutions that best meet their business needs and transform the contact centre and customer engagement.
8×8 Targets CCaaS
It is not unusual to see 8×8 talking about CCaaS; after all, it represents an essential component of its XCaaS offering.
Historically, however, 8×8 would have chosen to angle a release such as this toward the UCaaS marketplace and then upsell them on its CCaaS portfolio.
In March this year, it announced its decision to lead with CCaaS instead, and it has created a new tagline to reflect this shift in focus: “Communications for the Customer Obsessed”.
Reasons for this switch include that the CCaaS market is less mature and saturated, 8×8 is highly rated for CCaaS, and it will be easier to sell XCaaS off the back of CCaaS than UCaaS.
8×8 is still at the center of rumors that it could merge with RingCentral, which various analysts reflected on recently.
