8x8 Unifies Telephony, UC, and Contact Center Users with Single Sign-on and Shared Presence

8x8, a provider of cloud-based unified communications and contact center solutions, has released a cloud communications solution that amalgamates telephony, unified communications (UC), and contact center users across the enterprise with single sign on and shared presence over a common underlying platform.

With the integrated 8x8 Virtual Office and Virtual Contact Center solution, companies can free up additional IT resources to focus on core business objectives by not having to manage disparate telephony and contact center services. Call center agents have ready access to company experts outside of the call center, and non-call center employees can now reach the call center using common presence information and click-to-dial, just as they would for anyone on the 8x8 UC service.

"By integrating core business telephony and contact center functionality onto a single cloud-based platform with single sign-on and shared presence, 8x8 has not only simplified the communications infrastructure that burdens so many businesses today, it has enhanced the value businesses derive from its solution set by providing a path to improved customer engagement," said Keith Dawson, practice leader for customer engagement at Ovum, in a statement. "The ability for a call center agent to tap into the company's expertise when interacting with customers can have a dramatic effect on first call resolution and overall customer satisfaction."

The 8x8 Virtual Office/Virtual Contact Center solution offers the following:

• Shared Presence: Agents have visibility into the status of anyone within the company to handle customer issues in real time. Any UC user in the company can also see the agent's status and reach out to the agent once they have the information that is being requested. All corporate and contact center directories are integrated.
• Single Sign-On: Allows all users to sign on a single time and have access across all appropriate tools for system administration of the call center, the UC service, agent desktops, meetings, switchboards, and mobile clients.
• Extension-to-Extension Dialing: On-net, extension-to-extension, click-to-call dialing, and call transfers/processing between contact center users and any other users in the enterprise organization, regardless of location or endpoint.
• Call Center Agent Hardware Endpoints: Agents who regularly use a non-softphone solution as part of their agent duties (such as a remote IP phone) can make this device part of the contact center call flows and reporting analytics.
• Streamlined Administration: The breadth of system functionality, combined with the simplicity of cloud-based communications tools, significantly reduces the amount of time required to manage the service.

"The elimination of the gap between traditional contact center agents and regular employees will result in better customer service and improved productivity by enabling all employees within a business to interact with a customer in real time," said 8x8 CEO Vik Verma in a statement. "This latest product release shows how 8x8 is innovating in the cloud communications space. The combination of these historically separate components will enable us to launch new features and capabilities that are not available in solutions that treat these technologies as separate, distinct platforms."