8×8 is a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of cloud-based communication solutions, including voice, video, chat, contact center, and enterprise-class API solutions, all integrated into a global cloud communications platform. In April 2025, it just got better.
The best advantage of installing an 8×8 communication system is its unified cloud-based platform, which seamlessly integrates voice, video, chat, and contact center features. This all-in-one solution enhances productivity by simplifying communication processes, reducing the need for multiple tools, and enabling employees to collaborate effectively from any device, anywhere, with minimal hardware investment.
8×8 focuses on transforming business communications by unifying customer experience (CX) and IT operations, and leveraging AI (artificial intelligence) to drive efficiency and collaboration. It’s designed for scalability, security, and ease of use, making it ideal for small to large businesses aiming to streamline communication and enhance customer engagement.
8×8 are known for enabling businesses to have unlimited calling to multiple countries, call recording, and auto-attendants, and the platform supports HD video meetings with up to 500 participants, including tools like screen sharing, digital whiteboards and breakout rooms. Businesses can embed voice, video, and chat into existing applications with integrations for Salesforce, monday.com, Google Workspace and more.
Constant Innovation
Since 1996 8×8’s vision to revolutionise business communications through cloud-based technology holds true today, and breakthroughs happen so frequently that 8×8 has been recognised as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) for 13 consecutive years, from 2012 to 2024.
8×8 first announced AI-integrated products in March 2022, with the introduction of 8×8 Conversation IQ, which extends contact center capabilities like speech analytics to all employees, not just agents, by leveraging conversational AI for improved team performance and customer engagement. The tool’s ability to transcribe and evaluate conversations, identify sentiment, and provide actionable feedback has proven valuable for organisations aiming to improve customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, all the while reducing associated phone costs.
Taking Customer Engagement to New Levels
In April 2025 8×8 has made not one, but four major product announcements, enhancing its core offering, providing instant benefits and delivering an even more impactful customer experience for its clients.
Key updates include:
1: 8×8 RCS (Rich Communication Services) support for 8×8 Contact Center, enabling organisations to leverage two-way omnichannel engagement and deliver hyper personalised customer experiences.
2: AI-powered tool 8×8 JourneyIQ, giving businesses the ability to seamlessly track, predict, and optimise every step of the customer journey across all channels, departments and touchpoints.
3: 8×8 AI Orchestrator which allows organisations to create seamless decision flows and orchestration across multiple bots and vendor solutions to supercharge their digital transformation and future-proof AI investments.
4: 8×8 announced expanded availability for digital channels with 8×8 Engage: Video and SMS interactions with support for Viber, WhatsApp and email, with more to follow.
8×8 RCS
8×8 is one of the first cloud contact center vendors to support RCS natively, allowing organisations to seamlessly connect with customers across preferred platforms for rich, highly engaging and trusted communications, such as high-resolution images and videos. 8×8 RCS provides flexible, cost-effective omnichannel messaging capabilities that is solution agnostic and adapts to the business’ and customers’ preference.
SMS is not sufficient enough for businesses entering the modern era. Businesses using SMS only as a way to communicate with employees, customers and partners will soon find they are outpaced by their rivals using branded creative and cohesive content, such as including their brand’s logo, and colours, with verified sender status. With secure, media-rich two-way messaging, 8×8’s customers can transform how they engage, with all context tracked across all touchpoints, taking CX to a higher level than ever before.
Additionally, 8×8 is launching new RCS Business Messaging (RBM) services. With RBM services and an RCS-enabled 8×8 Contact Center, organisations can now utilize comprehensive in-bound and outbound messaging leveraging RCS, one of the fastest growing messaging services globally, with an estimated 2.5 billion monthly active users at the end of 2024.
Dave Michels, an industry analyst at TalkingPointz, commented, “RBM is already becoming a preferred channel for outbound brand communications, but receiving replies and new RCS engagements has been difficult. 8×8 customers are among the first to enjoy the effectiveness of RBM coupled with a powerful RCS-enabled omnichannel CCaaS from a single provider.”
RCS Use Cases
RCS is integrated into 8×8 Contact Center and 8×8 Engage platforms and is particularly useful for industries like retail, financial services, and other consumer-facing sectors.
For example, a retail sales agent using RCS can proactively reach out to customers about new promotions, providing product images and videos, with an optionable “buy now” or schedule an appointment button. Based on the response, either a bot can handle the two-way RCS interaction and/or it can transition to an agent via 8×8 Contact Center. Real-time insights on the customer’s history, sentiment and across the entire interaction will allow the retail organisation to deliver a consistent, personalised experience and resolve issues faster.
Another example use case of 8×8 RCS could be that of a customer messaging a company ‘Where’s my order?’. Instead of a basic SMS response with a tracking number, organisations can use RCS to send a rich interactive message with a live map to track the order and buttons to reschedule the delivery, call an agent for help, or even apply a coupon to purchase a complementary product or service. These enhanced messaging capabilities provide an engaging and secure experience for both businesses and customers. Sharing real-time updates such as delivery tracking, appointment reminders, or flight updates with dynamic links and feedback buttons is valuable to customers, and tremendously enhances CX, and brand loyalty.
“Customers today expect hyper-personalisation because they’re constantly interacting with brands that remember their preferences, anticipate their needs, and provide seamless experiences,” said Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8×8, Inc. “However an organisation interacts with their customers, with RCS support for the 8×8 Platform for CX they are empowered to provide the next level of trusted, personalised and rich experiences that their customers expect, driving customer satisfaction and business growth.”
8×8 JourneyIQ
8×8 JourneyIQ is an AI-powered solution designed to enhance CX by providing real-time, integrated customer journey intelligence across an organisation. It’s designed to track, predict, and optimise every step of the customer journey across all channels, departments, and touchpoints, addressing the challenge of fragmented data and siloed interactions.
Sheila McGee-Smith, principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics, notes, “Businesses often complain about having too much data but no way to synthesise the information into actionable intelligence. Customers find themselves interacting with multiple departments across an organisation but typically these individual moments are not combined to provide a complete picture of the journey in order to identify opportunities for. 8×8 JourneyIQ allows organisations to cut through all the complexity and unify every customer touchpoint, both inside and outside of the contact center, to provide a single, real-time view. It’s no longer enough to react after a poor customer experience, organisations need the intelligence and ability to proactively identify and prevent issues to transform the customer journey.”
In essence, 8×8 JourneyIQ provides real-time insights that let teams act before problems escalate. It responds to a common business pain point: having vast amounts of customer data but lacking the tools to turn it into actionable insights.
This article originally appeared in UC Advanced magazine Issue#17
