8×8 risks confusing the market

GlobalData Technology

Fri, May 16, 2025, 12:28 AM 2 min read

8x8 has precocious undertaken a foundational pivot, shifting from a institution with connection and collaboration astatine its halfway to 1 with lawsuit acquisition making up its cardinal identity.

Concurrently, 8x8’s ‘XCaaS’ level – lodging an integrated premix of unified communication, lawsuit experience, and Communications Platform arsenic a Service (CPaaS) capabilities – has been renamed the ‘8x8 Platform for Customer Experience (CX)’.

Given the value of lawsuit acquisition successful the market, some the pivot and the caller sanction marque sense. Organisations are nether aggravated unit from customers to forge deeper connections. To conscionable that demand, interaction centres person been undergoing a profound translation with the conception of a ‘contact centre’ yielding to the broader conception of ‘customer experience’. Contact centres are converting from agent-centric to including self-service, from reactive to proactive, from transaction-oriented to relationship-oriented, and from generic to profoundly personalised.

To assistance organisations marque the transition, 8x8 and rivals specified arsenic Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom person been rolling retired a dependable watercourse of capabilities. 8x8 has been precise engaged precocious with caller rounds of level enhancements that are intrinsic to its makeover.

A illustration of noteworthy features includes: an AI adjunct for composing chat messages; the quality for employees extracurricular the interaction halfway to prosecute with customers via integer channels; the instauration of JourneyIQ, which gives businesses the capableness to optimise the lawsuit travel crossed each channels, departments, and touchpoints; and the announcement of AI Orchestrator which enables enactment betwixt bots from antithetic vendors and supports hand-offs betwixt bots and quality agents.

However, 8x8’s alteration successful absorption comes with a cost. The 8x8 Platform for CX houses the aforesaid trio of capabilities antecedently recovered connected the XCaaS platform. The caller level statement on with 8x8’s metamorphosis into a lawsuit acquisition institution could pb immoderate successful the marketplace to judge that 8x8 is present solely focused connected lawsuit experience. The positioning that 8x8 took truthful agelong to physique – arsenic a supplier of integrated unified communication, lawsuit experience, and CPaas – is astatine hazard of getting lost.

In an perfect world, 8x8 would simply reverse people and instrumentality to the onshore of ‘XCaaS’. But that is of people unrealistic fixed the complexities of a rebranding and repositioning of the size 8x8 has executed. Instead, 8x8 needs to pass large and wide – and repeatedly – that successful summation to lawsuit experience, it inactive provides unified connection and CPaaS and delivers those features successful an integrated package. The sooner, the better.