8x8

As the ubiquity of the internet is increasing worldwide, businesses and households are vehemently cutting the chord, bidding goodbye to traditional phone services. The rise of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) surmises the current radical shift in enterprise networking, customer engagement, and communication processes. For instance, iCruise.com, one of the largest sellers of cruises, with about 120 members in its workforce carried out nearly 80 percent of the booking processes through private branch exchange (PBCX) services. The company needed a total communications solution with both hosted phone service and a cloud contact centre to support its business growth. Being located in the storm prone Hurricane belt area, iCruise lost power multiple times that directly affected their conventional, on-site PBX, bringing their business to a halt. “As long as there is internet connection, organizations can plug in their phone system,” begins Vikram Verma, CEO, 8x8. “Organizations can operate a call centre; without having expensive hardware, that can often go down.” After deploying 8x8’s cloud-based system, iCruise was well-equipped to endure the inevitable storm. Now, when the clients’ office loses power, employees still have the convenience of carrying out their respective tasks and operations by using the 8x8 mobile app on their smartphones and tablets. Further, they are also given the option to switch to the “soft” 8x8 phone on laptops, or plug desk phones outside the office location.

Headquartered in San Jose, CA, 8x8 [NASDAQ:EGHT] is paving the way to innovation by providing secure and reliable enterprise cloud communications solutions that replaces traditional on-premises PBX hardware and software-based systems for augmented level of productivity. With an industry presence of over two decades, 8x8’s cloud-based business communications solutions are affordable, easy to use, and advanced to cater to the networking and communication needs of businesses. The company helps firms to serve their customers better, work smarter and also conduct business anywhere, anytime. From hosted VoIP business phone service to unified communications, 8x8’s services are proven and reliable. “These days, companies start out being global. At 8x8, we have built the ability to provide global companies with all four digit dialing round the world with local support,” says Verma. “To sum it up, we allow global companies to act local.”

8x8’s cloud communications allows customers to move with speed, agility, and ease in a highly competitive world. The company’s enterprise-ready solutions enable mobility and global connectivity, collaborating effortlessly across distributed locations and offices. Further, 8x8’s business VoIP offers more than just making phone calls—mobile apps web conferencing, chat, and the added benefit of a customer contact center. The company ensures high reliability and business continuity by delivering its cloud-based communications through the use of secure, fully redundant and SSAE 16 certified data centers that are placed in geographically diverse locations around the world.

Smart Business Phone Systems

With the cloud-based VoIP capabilities of 8X8 Virtual Office and business phone system, organizations can communicate more profitably using dozens of great features like extension dialing, auto attendant, ring groups, call recording, and internet faxing.

As long as there is internet connection, organizations can plug in their phone system

The extension dialing helps in fast call transfers, make calls, and connect with employees who are geographically dispersed. The auto attendant is a powerful automated VoIP business service that replaces the need for a receptionist and can route calls efficiently with the customizing ability for different hours. In a nutshell, the 8x8 Virtual Office business phone solution is a hosted PBX that provides all of the phone services with one business solution, helping enterprises significantly cut monthly costs significantly. Further, 8x8 Virtual Office is also available in a Pro edition and provides the same advanced phone features as Virtual Office with benefits of taking business to the next level by adding web conferencing, call recording, and Internet Fax capabilities.

8x8 Virtual Contact Center proffers everything an organization needs to cultivate more rewarding customer connections, improve agent performance, and enhance contact center operations. The cloud-based contact center solution can seamlessly connect with an organization’s international agents over a single platform with integrated presence, multi-lingual chat with added automatic translation, call routing, reporting, and management. The 8x8 virtual contact center delivers great customer service with features like skills-based routing and real-time monitoring and solutions for telesales, help desk, and other scenarios. The virtual contact center connects with customers using the multi-channel methods that they prefer—phone, email, chat, and web callback. Moreover, it brings the best local, remote, and home-based agents together in one virtual call center and turbo charges the results by controlling costs with high-octane workforce optimization. In addition, it helps generate more predictable schedules with workforce management to augment the level of agent performance. The 8x8 Virtual Contact Center Analytics provide industry-leading insights on the performance of company specific contact centers. Alongside the data, the 8x8 Analytics bring powerful graphical tools that reveal actionable business insights with highly visual and intuitive dashboards, bestowing organizations with instant understanding of call center performance. The powerful tools accompanying the solution provide details on the pain points that the clients need to focus their resources for improvement.

In addition, 8x8 products comply with the most complete set of security and privacy regulations in the industry, including FISMA, HIPPA, and PCI-DSS and easily connect all locations, branches, co-workers, remote staff, and road warriors. “At, 8x8, security has always been the key element of our product,” states Verma.

Enterprise Communication as a Service

The Enterprise Communications as a Service (ECaaS) from 8x8, assures seamless communication across an organization’s workforce through various devices and lines of business.

The company’s 100 percent cloud solution handles everything— integrated voice, collaboration, contact center, and communications analytics. With no on-premises equipment or maintenance required, as well as fewer vendors, bills, and apps to manage and provision, 8x8 helps clients outpace competition.

Since its inception, 8x8 has been focused on providing best of breed solutions to its clients. Once, Shimano American Corp., the U.S. division of the international bicycle manufacturer, assessed its operations and the management realized the need to improve the speed and dexterity of its communications to stay ahead in the market. Shimano wanted scalability and features that would help them internally for extension dialing to reduce inter-office calls, internal video conferencing and messaging, federated email servers, and the ability to bring all of those systems together. By making a quick research, the company settled down on cloud-based VoIP-hosted, collaborative solution of 8x8 to gain remarkable level of flexibility. 8x8’s VoIP not only helped Shimano get rid of the on-premises equipment, but also avail the latest features while alleviating complexities in all the day-to-day hardware management. 8x8’s flexibility even extended to the number of lines in use. It enabled Shimano to enjoy a flat rate per month with added top-notch features.

"The 8x8 Virtual Office business phone solution is a hosted PBX that provides all of the phone services with one business solution, helping enterprises cut monthly costs significantly"

Collaboration—The Key Element to Success

An ardent fan of the Beatles song, ‘With a Little Help from My Friends,’ Verma believes the team collaboration at 8x8 manifests in the form of enterprise’s work culture and innovative spirit. Emphasizing further on the importance of brainstorming for ideas and identifying core competencies, the firm operates on the philosophy of aligning capacities of its work force and customer feedback—both positive and negative and driving it forward with the same shared values. “I often ask customers to tell us ten things they dislike about the company. It’s never easy to hear you didn’t do something well, but you’ll never get better until you do,” says Verma.

Forging ahead, 8x8 plans to focus on the mid-market at the distributed enterprise. Down the road, 8x8 will continue to demonstrate the effectiveness of its global and multi-channel growth strategies, capturing larger customers, and demonstrating leadership in the fast-growing UCaaS industry. “I am extremely pleased with how our team is executing across the board, from the increasing productivity of our sales organization to the dedication and success of our global deployment teams,” concludes Verma.