8x8, Inc. announced the latest 8x8 XCaaS?? (Experience Communications as a Service??) integrated cloud contact center and unified communications platform innovations for enhanced customer and employee experiences, including AI-powered voice conversational self-service and the ability to elevate contact center interactions to video, further integrations with Microsoft Teams, and 8x8 video meeting enhancements. New generally available updates for 8x8 Contact Center include: AI-powered Voice Self-Service Enhances Customer Experiences: Recently announced, voice self-service is now available for 8x8's conversational AI solution, 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant.

The addition of voice expands 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant's powerful, user-friendly AI self-service capabilities that enable businesses to create simple to complex experiences across digital and voice channels that help minimize wait times, and provide instant access to highly personalized, natural interactions. 8x8 Agent Workspace Enhancements & Video Elevated Customer Support: Contact center agents can now elevate customer interactions to video directly within 8x8 Agent Workspace, allowing customers to visually help agents troubleshoot issues through their mobile devices. The new solution embeds 8x8 secure video interaction capabilities directly into 8x8 Contact Center, allowing organizations to easily and seamlessly add video for enhanced first contact resolution.

Further, call handling is now directly within 8x8 AgentWorkspace, without the need for an external hard phone or softphone. Technology partners provide integrations that feel native in 8x8 to enhance customer experiences through cutting-edge technologies with AI and persistent data. Deeper Salesforce Integration: Customers using 8x8 Contact Center and Salesforce are now able to set up, configure, route, initiate (SMS Only), and reply to SMS and WhatsApp messages within the 8x8 Integration for Salesforce.

8x8 Webchat Quick Replies: Using 8x8 scripting functions, admins can build out questions and quick replies to interact with customers; all of which can then be routed back to an agent providing the necessary context to begin the live conversation. Built on 8x8's direct routing service, it unlocks native calling functionality within Teams that is intuitive for users across devices, simple for IT to manage and deploy, and flexible for organizations to optimize licensing costs for business needs. 8x8 Video Enhancements: New beta program for up to 10,000 meeting participants, providing an optimized interface and customization options to support large audience events such as company-wide town halls, or for specific use cases such as auctions and other large audience events.

Additionally, 8x8 meetings now provide the option to turn off video hardware acceleration, resulting in improved shared content legibility and support for the modern AV1 video codec. Enhancements to 8x8 CPaaS communication APIs include: SMS Fraud Prevention: Recently introduced, the 8x8 Omni Shield solution allows enterprises to proactively safeguard their customers from fraudulent SMS activity. Zalo Notification Services: Now available as part of the 8x8 Chat Apps offering, the Zalo Notification Service (ZNS) enables businesses to send customer-centric and personalized notifications, such as real-time alerts, one-time passwords (OTPs), account updates, and more, to users in Vietnam.

8x8 Voice API Enhancements: 8x8 App to App Calling with automated fallback to Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for enhanced call reliability, access to comprehensive voice logs on 8x8 Connect, and the ability to create customer call flows while incorporating specific actions such as sending voice messages or text-to-speech.