[February 06, 2014]

8×8 Partners with Zendesk to Deliver a Cloud-Based, Out-of-the-Box Customer Service Contact Center Solution

8×8 (News – Alert), Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT), a provider of cloud-based unified communications, contact center and collaboration solutions, today announced it has partnered with Zendesk, the leading cloud-based customer service platform used by more than 40,000 customers, to develop a bundled cloud contact center solution. The solution tightly weaves the functionality of both applications to improve the responsiveness, efficiency and management of contact centers.

8×8 Virtual Contact Center (VCC) and Zendesk function as a single SaaS (News – Alert) instance with reporting and runtime data integrations, enabling contact centers to increase first call resolution rates, shorten call handle times, and extract the right metrics needed to maximize the efficiencies of the contact center. Zendesk provides the software for agents to track customer issues, tie inquiries to a single customer record and drive agents to a solution. 8×8 manages customer interactions across voice, chat and other channels to ensure customers are connected with the agent who is best prepared to help them. With the combined 8×8 Virtual Contact Center/Zendesk solution, organizations can provide the highest quality customer service experience to increase satisfaction and build loyalty while saving money through greater efficiency.

“The 8×8 and Zendesk product development teams have worked diligently to create a powerful, yet easy to use, cloud-based solution for call center organizations that place a premium on delivering outstanding customer service,” said 8×8 Senior Vice President of Business Development Huw Rees. “We are extremely pleased with the result of these efforts and look forward to continuing to work with Zendesk to bring this compelling solution to market.”

In contrast to existing integrations between contact center services and customer service applications, the 8×8/Zendesk integration provides significant value out-of-the-box with no customization required. This minimizes the cost and delays conact centers generally face when implementing new software integrations. Additionally, the tight integration between the two solutions leads to greater efficiencies within the contact center for both agents and supervisors.

“Technology should never get in the way of delivering a great experience to customers,” said Conan Reidy, Vice President of Business Development at Zendesk. “The integration of 8×8’s Virtual Contact Center with Zendesk means that customer support teams can focus on their relationship with customers by leveraging technology to make agents more knowledgeable and more efficient.”

Highlights of the 8×8 VCC/Zendesk integration include:

• A combined 8×8 and Zendesk single screen SaaS environment
• A fully functioning multi channel contact center supporting phone calls and chat interactions with multiple queues, skills, and routing rules
• The ability to use the number someone is calling from (ANI) to look up tickets in the Zendesk database and “screen pop” ticket information to an agent’s desk when the call arrives
• The ability to automatically identify outstanding tickets and deliver relevant customer information to an agent’s desktop with each customer interaction
• Consolidated reporting and administrative information – allows organizations to use the Zendesk and 8×8 reporting capabilities to gain visibility into the entire customer experience

“Customers are increasingly drawn to web customer service, making it vital for enterprises to link their web support tools with voice, case management and agent desktop solutions,” said Aphrodite Brinsmead, Senior Analyst at Ovum (News – Alert). “The 8×8 and Zendesk integration makes it possible for enterprises to combine these capabilities in the cloud. It will allow agents to gain better visibility into customer needs, while managers can more easily track behavior across channels and staff their contact centers accordingly.”

The 8×8 Virtual Contact Center solution is highly redundant, reliable and secure, offering compliance with many data security standards including FISMA, HIPAA HITECH, PCI (News – Alert)-DSS and CPNI. 8×8’s unique platform architecture allows for media servers to be hosted in different regions around the world to give every caller a regional telephone connection while providing centralized access to the system for a single point of reporting, management and control for all customer interactions.

To learn more about 8×8 Virtual Contact Center and Zendesk integration, visit: https://business.8×8.com/OL-ZenDesk-VCC-Integration.html?source=TP-ZenDesk-VCC-Integration. Existing Zendesk customers can install the Virtual Contact Center App from the Zendesk app store at: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/8×8-contact-center

About 8×8, Inc.

8×8, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT) is a provider of cloud-based unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions to small and medium businesses and mid-market and distributed enterprises. The company delivers a broad suite of UCC services to in-office and mobile devices spanning cloud business phone service, virtual meeting, cloud contact center software and virtual desktop through our proprietary unified software as a service, or SaaS, platform. For additional information, visit www.8×8.com, or connect with 8×8 on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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