8x8 has launched a new package of customer communication capabilities, which companies can now access from within Microsoft Teams.
Among other features, users of the new 8x8 XT offering may access business messaging, conversational AI, and advanced analytics applications.
Other prominent capabilities available within the bundle include:
- Interoperability between all 8x8 X Series features
- Direct Inward Dialing (DID) capabilities and flexible calling plans
- Purpose-built apps for Microsoft Teams devices and apps
- A custom-built direct routing solution
- Unlimited, metered, and prepaid calling options
The launch of 8x8 XT marks the next evolution of the 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams solution and seizes upon the trend of brands integrating CCaaS and UCaaS platforms.
Underlining this trend, Gartner recently predicted that 20 percent of Teams users will adopt telephony services for external Teams calling by 2024.
However, Microsoft does not yet boast the native CCaaS capabilities of stalwart vendors, such as 8x8. Indeed, as prominent industry analyst Zeus Karravala, Founder and Principal Analyst, ZK Research, recently told CX Today:
Teams is a really good chat product, it’s an okay meetings product, [but] the telephony is substandard, which is why so many UC partners have the Microsoft "operate and connect" type of offering where you can add telephony features.
While Microsoft has promised to "aggressively innovate" in the CCaaS space and – of course – has the resources to short-circuit the innovation curve through acquisition, many vendors are seizing the opportunity to fill the telephony gap.
8x8 XT is the latest example of this, and the provider is grabbing the bull by the horns, also releasing its 8x8 Microsoft Partner Program.