Toy manufacturer Ty has partnered with 8×8 to leverage its XCaaS unified communications and contact centre platform.
Ty intends to deploy 8×8’s XCaaS platform to enhance its customer engagement, employee communication and collaboration, both internally and externally, generate more valuable data and insights, and minimise overall costs.
Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8×8, commented:
All of Ty’s product lines are associated with ‘fun,’ so it is critical that the company provides pleasant customer service engagements. With 8×8 XCaaS, Ty has been able to meet the specific metrics they had in mind, such as reducing cost and contact center wait times, while also improving their employee experiences and collaboration, all of which are the key ingredients to providing a great customer experience.”
Ty is the primary soft toy manufacturer globally, with licensed properties including Beanie Boos, Beanies Babies, and Beanie Bellies. The company has hundreds of full-time employees across various United States locations.
With the upcoming discontinuation of its communication system, Ty recognised the need for a fresh cloud contact centre and unified communications solution. It aimed to ensure improved experiences, fostering seamless connections among customers and employees, irrespective of location.
Ty chose the 8×8 XCaaS platform because of its holistic nature, encompassing cloud contact centre, business phone, video meetings, team chat, and SMS capabilities. Following the implementation of 8×8, Ty has experienced annual savings of $75,000, attributed to the transition to a cloud-based, single-vendor contact centre and unified communications platform. Ty introduced an improved customer experience by offering a callback option, a feature chosen by 91.7 percent of customers contacting the contact centre.
“Implementation was incredibly fast and efficient – taking just four weeks – allowing us to easily train our employees on the new system so they were able to hit the ground running serving our customers immediately,” added John Thomas, System Administrator at Ty. “Our previous system made it incredibly difficult to make even the smallest changes, but with 8×8, we’re able to be more flexible and can optimise the system for our real-time customer and employee needs.”
What Else Has 8×8 Been Up To Recently?
In November, CCaaS and CPaaS took centre stage for 8×8 in its FY24 Q2 earnings call, as it suggested it was “migrating” away from being “UC-led”.
8×8 met or exceeded estimates for total revenue for FY24 Q2 ($185 million), with Samuel Wilson, CEO at 8×8, saying that 8×8’s CPaaS business was “a significant driver of the quarter-on-quarter growth” for the company, highlighting its new Omni Shield product. Wilson also underlined that the adoption of 8×8’s recently launched CCaaS product portfolio continues to accelerate, emphasising the impact of its new AI-powered intelligent customer assistant.
In October, the company announced a series of new innovations to its XCaaS platform, including Microsoft Teams integrations and new meetings capabilities. The VoIP product vendor released its 8×8 Phone App for Microsoft Teams, a video meeting solution, work usability and interference enhancements, and more.
In August, 8×8 launched a “next-gen” version of its Phone App for Microsoft Teams, providing native calling experiences and enhanced user performance.
The 8×8 Phone App is built on the vendor’s direct routing service, connecting the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) with Teams to grant businesses the most cost-effective method to enable native calling in Teams without ancillary software, desktop plugins, mobile apps, or necessitating per user Teams Phone licenses.
