8x8, a provider of cloud communications and computing solutions, recently demonstrated its cloud-based call center, hosted PBX and unified communications services, at Call Center Week Expo.
The 8x8 VirtualContactCenter is a SaaS call center application and is available as a standalone offering or an integrated component of the 8x8 Virtual Office business phone service. Customers subscribing to 8x8 Virtual Contact Center can be provisioned using their own standalone telephony from any carrier or they can subscribe to 8x8's hosted VoIP phone service, eliminating the need to bridge together two PSTN legs. The result is higher call quality, reduced latency and reduced cost due to the fact there is only one PSTN leg per call, the company said.
Later this year, 8x8 will introduce a more deeply integrated call center/telephony solution, available to existing customers at no additional charge, which will include a common dialing plan that will enable Virtual Contact Center agents to call Virtual Office users by their extension number (and vice versa). Agents and users will also be able to see presence across both platforms and the entire system will be provisioned automatically from a single interface, reducing time to deployment and virtually eliminating human error.
“Virtual call centers can help SMBs avoid the often daunting costs associated with on-premises, hardware-based call centers—such as the space required to host a physical presence, phone lines and PBX hardware—which until recently was the way that most call centers were run," said 8x8 senior product manager Rob Townsend. "The new, virtual call centers are run by hosted VoIP providers that give you the telecommunications capabilities you need to run your own call center. Your sales or support agents can be located on-premises or even work out of their homes, but to your customers, it will seem as if everyone's onsite at the same place—even if the agents are scattered across the country.”