Summary Bullets:
• Context is a new currency among vendors for measuring the value of their customer experience (CX) platforms.
• 8×8 is reinforcing its CX capabilities at a time when rivals continue to aggressively enhance and promote their CX features and functionality.
8×8 has recently made enhancements to its ‘8×8 Platform for CX’ that makes context accessible in additional interfaces where conversations between customers and human and AI agents happen. The interfaces include Customer 360, 8×8 AI Studio, 8×8 Journey IQ, and the 8×8 for Salesforce Chrome Extension. The interfaces in turn collectively span multiple communication channels such as voice, SMS, and WhatsApp.
Context, which the 8×8 enhancements make more widely accessible, is defined as information gleaned from past interactions with a customer that informs a current interaction with the customer. Context is a new currency among vendors for measuring the value of their CX platforms. The richer the context captured, the more valuable the platform. From a competitive standpoint, 8×8 is wise to improve the ability of the 8×8 Platform for CX to capture context as rivals are also making context a priority for their respective CX platforms.
8×8’s new capabilities translate into richer conversations. From richer conversations comes richer intelligence about those conversations. Conversation intelligence is grounded in the belief that conversations are where decisions are made. Those conversations can take place in arenas such as meetings, calls, and chats between any two parties, such as contact center agents and customers. The central benefit that conversation intelligence brings is using AI to uncover insights, trends, and patterns that would otherwise go ‘missing in action’. In the contact center, those insights can help enrich the customer experience and raise customer satisfaction and retention.
As with context features, the presence of tools on CX platforms that can generate conversation intelligence is a measure of platform value. If the announced enhancements are 8×8’s answer to the rising importance of context, then its answer to the rising importance of conversation intelligence is its existing ‘8×8 Pulse’ feature. This marks a second avenue in which 8×8 is staying abreast of competitors as they too have invested in conversation intelligence tools.
8×8 is reinforcing its CX capabilities at an opportune time. Vendors continue to aggressively enhance and promote their CX features and functionality, attempting to satiate organizations’ seemingly bottomless appetites for improving their CX. This latest round of CX enhancements coupled with 8×8 Pulse and other existing offers such as 8×8 Contact Center, 8×8 Agent Assist, and 8×8 AI Routing represent a strong portfolio for 8×8 to take to market in that effort.