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BCStrategies

Expert analysis, insights, and opinions

8x8 – On the Offense

Updated: Apr 9

The messages at the 8x8 Analyst Summit in Southampton, U.K. were almost as loud as the Southampton Football Club fans when the Saints scored a goal. During the summit, analysts heard from 8x8 execs and product leaders about the company’s vision, strategy, and product updates, and were also treated to a Premier League football (soccer) game at the event venue, St. Mary’s Stadium, the home of 8x8 customer, the Southampton Football Club.

 

We heard several key messages, including:

  • 8x8 is on the offense, focusing on continued innovation and next steps. With the Fuze acquisition and customer migration in the rear-view mirror, 8x8 is now in a position where it can be more aggressive.

  • 8x8 is delivering AI-powered CX. As part of its recent rebranding and repositioning, the company moved away from the XCaaS brand and is leading with AI-powered CX and its 8x8 Platform for CX. 


  • Customer success and customer retention are key priorities. 8x8 made it clear that the company puts customers at the center of everything it does, while focusing on customer retention and helping its customers retain their customers.

  • It’s all about outcomes, not features. 8x8 CEO Sam Wilson noted that software companies like 8x8 can’t win based on features, and 8x8 is focused on selling business outcomes (more on this below).

  • 8x8’s primary differentiation is based on its single platform for UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS.

  • Leverage technology partnerships where it makes sense, rather then inventing everything in-house. Wilson explained that while the AI world is changing with lightning speed, those who invested early in developing certain tools or supporting one specific LLM are now falling behind as newer, faster, and better AI tools and models are developed (re: The Innovator’s Dilemma). As Chief Product Officer Hunter Middleton explained, “We’re not hiring 500 data scientists, and we don’t need to be first to market with AI capabilities. Instead, we want to make sure our customers are successful.” To that end, the company is partnering with best-of-breed AI vendors such as Cognigy, Balto, Cresta, and others. 8x8’s partner ecosystem includes vendor offerings for Agentic AI, WFM, Security, Compliance, CRM, Payments, Social listening, and more.

  • Interaction Data is key. 8x8’s Communications Intelligence provides AI-driven communication insights, based on the 8x8 Customer Interaction Data Platform (CIDP). CIDP provides a unified company-wide interaction repository with common processing and open access.

  • Transparency – while this wasn’t called out, most analysts agreed that Wilson, along with CMO Bruno Bertini, were extremely open and transparent, sharing both the good and the bad, and acknowledging what could be better.


Good Momentum

8x8 has seen significant growth in the past few years, especially for its AI and CPaaS offerings. Wilson provided some data points to back up his claims about the company’s growth and acceleration, noting 84% AI-powered CX growth and 160% Voice AI interaction growth.


New Announcements

8x8 made several announcements at the event, including:

 

  • Expanded availability of digital channels for 8×8 Engage. 8x8 Engage now supports video and SMS interactions, with support for Viber, WhatsApp, email, and RCS Business Messaging coming shortly. This lets customer-facing employees outside the contact center deliver personalized interactions in the customer’s preferred channel.

  • 8×8 JourneyIQ, enabling businesses to seamlessly track, predict, and optimize the customer journey across all channels, departments, and touchpoints. JourneyIQ is powered by 8x8’s Customer Interaction Data Initiative, delivering real-time AI-powered customer journey intelligence.

  • RCS (Rich Communication Services) Business Messaging support for 8×8 Contact Center lets organizations leverage two-way omnichannel engagement. Using RCS, organizations can provide customers with engaging, dynamic content through shared texts, images, videos, carousels, and CTAs

  • 8×8 AI Orchestrator, allowing organizations to create seamless decision flows and orchestration across multiple bots and vendor solutions to better manage AI capabilities across multiple vendors and allow for seamless transitions between bots and humans.


In this video, Dhwani Soni (GVP, Product Management and Design) discusses the new announcements, as well as some use cases for 8x8 Engage and various personas that can use Engage.


 

In this video, Chrissy Calabrese, Director, Product Marketing and Lisa Orford (VP, Product Management) discuss key messages from the event and expand on these announcements. Orford also provides information on how Engage can be used to help organizations.


Two things resonated the most with me at the event: 8x8 Engage, and the company’s focus on selling business outcomes.

 

8x8 Engage 

At last year’s analyst event, 8x8 introduced 8x8 Engage, aimed at customer-facing employees outside of the contact center, offering features such as queuing, AI Bots, Quality Monitoring, and more, enabling non-agents to deliver exceptional CX. As mentioned, this year, 8x8 announced the addition of digital channels for Engage that are fully optimized for mobile devices allowing for omnichannel support.

 

I’m particularly intrigued by 8x8 Engage and how 8x8 recognizes that customer experience is an organization-wide responsibility and is everyone’s job. I’ve been talking and writing about this for years, noting that workers in human resources, marketing, finance, and even engineering, as well as retail workers, nurses, and others, often engage with customers and need the right tools for routing, queueing, recording, reporting, analytics, quality management, and more. The challenge is helping customers identify the right use cases for Engage. 8x8 and its partners will need to help organizations recognize the various personas that can benefit from this solution and where this type of solution makes the most sense.

  

Outcome-Based Packages 


8x8 created several outcome-based solutions that package together various products to provide specific outcomes, including:

  • FastPay, which includes 8x8’s contact center + SecurePay + Intelligent Customer Assistant (ICA) + Proactive Outreach to automate payments, cutting collection costs

  • Remote Fix, which includes UC + CC + Video Elevation/CPaaS to provide real-time expert support, reducing service delays

  • Aftersale Assist, combining UC + CC + ICA for better post-sale engagement and retention


Chief Product Officer Hunter Middleton claimed that they expect to have approximately 40 outcome-based packages, including more vertical packages.

 

I love this approach, as it highlights the benefit of 8x8’s single platform approach for UC, CC, and CPaaS, as well as making it easier for customers to purchase solutions rather than point products. It also makes it easier for salespeople and channel partners to sell solutions that solve customer pain points.

  

Closing Thoughts

There aren’t many conferences where I walk away feeling, “Wow – this is a different company than in the past,” but that’s exactly what happened at the 8x8 Analyst Summit. 8x8 has repositioned and rebranded itself, added some new leadership including Joel Neeb as Chief Transformation and Business Operations Officer, and is being more aggressive than in the past. The company is now a CX company, leading with 8x8 Platform for CX and focused on customers’ business outcomes and success.


Of course, we’ll have to see how the company executes and delivers on its promises. Wilson, alo Bertini, and others laid out a strong and clear message. Hopefully the company can keep up its momentum.

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