8×8’s new AI routing plans to remove the queues from call routing.
Currently, call routing often involves a form of queueing, usually as a call is routed to the next available agent, and often the next available agent either might not be available as they have forgotten to update their status, or they may not be the best suited to handle the callers specific reason for calling.
When the right expert sits outside the contact centre, in billing, customer success, or a technical team, the customer gets bounced, transferred again, or lost entirely.
8×8 AI Routing
8×8, Inc. is introducing 8×8 AI Routing, an organisation-wide intelligent routing engine that dynamically matches every customer to the best available resource, regardless of where they sit, in real time.
8×8 AI Routing functions as a platform-level service, designed to identify the right resource for each interaction, whether that’s a contact centre agent on 8×8 Contact Center, a subject matter expert on 8×8 Engage, or a back-office employee on 8×8 Work, 8×8 AI Routing delivers across any channel, at scale, through a single customer interaction routing layer.
“AI-powered routing has long promised a lot, but vendors have largely failed to address one key challenge: automatically assigning and maintaining agent skills and proficiency levels. Using interaction transcripts, previous history, sentiment and other real-time factors, 8×8 AI Routing analyses data, suggests skills and skill levels for each agent, and lets administrators accept or adjust those assignments. The routing engine reanalyses the data to recommend additional skill or level changes based on the agent’s actual work, again for admin review,” said Sheila McGee-Smith, founder and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics. “What is even more powerful is that 8×8 can evaluate each inbound interaction and determine who — across the entire enterprise, not just the contact centre — is best equipped to resolve the customer’s intent.”
Automatic Action
Every interaction is evaluated across several real-time factors and matched to the right resource instantly, so that the system adjusts automatically, keeping customers moving forward without transfers, delays, or dead ends.
8×8 AI Routing puts supervisors in control from day one.
Teams can pilot on a single queue before full rollout, expanding at their own pace and shaping how the system works as confidence grows. All decisions are on the record: supervisors can pull exportable audit trails showing exactly why each interaction went to each resource, including confidence scores and complete rationale across all factors.
One-click setup
Most interaction routing deployments take months to configure and require ongoing maintenance just to stay accurate as the business evolves. 8×8 AI Routing eliminates that burden. By analysing rich interaction data, including transcripts, sentiment, and historical patterns, AI builds and suggests skill configurations automatically, manages automated skill profiles as teams and needs change, detects customer intent without manual interactive voice response (IVR) mapping, and gets teams delivering value from day one, not months from now.
Connects to existing infrastructure, adapts as the business evolves
8×8 AI Routing connects to 8×8 Intelligent Customer Assistant, 8×8 AI Studio, IVRs, and third-party bots, routing interactions from any entry point to the right person at the right moment, however the stack is built. As new channels, tools, and teams are added, the routing layer grows with them.
Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8×8, explains:
“The routing problem has always been about architecture. The best person for a given customer interaction might sit anywhere in the business, but most systems were never designed to look beyond their own boundaries. 8×8 AI Routing was built differently, spanning all teams and boundaries in the business simultaneously and evaluating the full range of available resources in real time. That’s a challenge point solutions fundamentally struggle to solve, and exactly the kind a true platform is built for.”
8×8 AI Routing is available now for select 8×8 customers, who can contact their 8×8 Account Manager or Customer Success Manager to get started.
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