A staggering 98% of respondents in an 8×8 survey agreed that customer experience is an organization-wide initiative. This reflects a shift where customer interactions are no longer limited to dedicated contact center teams. Instead, departments such as accounting, customer success, sales, and marketing all play a role in shaping the customer experience.
Traditional UC is struggling to keep up and support this need for a collaborative approach. According to 8×8 Head of UK Product Marketing, Andy Rawll, UC alone is no longer sufficient to meet the evolving needs around customer experience, data integration, and employee empowerment. Organizations require a more holistic solution that bridges the gap between UC and CX.
The Expanding Role of Non-CX Employees
The research from 8×8 shows that 64% of business leaders report that between 20% to 60% of customer interactions occur outside of the contact center. This means non-CX employees must have quick access to CX tools to ensure a seamless, efficient handoff between departments.
This article explores the limitations of traditional UC solutions and how new technologies are enabling all employees to contribute to exceptional customer experiences.
The Limitations of Traditional UC
Traditional UC solutions were designed primarily for internal collaboration, but they lack seamless integration with customer-facing workflows. This leads to several challenges:
- Customer experience inconsistency: Information gets siloed between back-office UC users and front-line contact center agents, creating friction when handling customer issues.
- Inefficient call transfers: When a call is passed from a UC user to the contact center, agents often lack historical context, forcing customers to repeat information.
- Reduced agent productivity and engagement: Contact center agents handle a disproportionate share of repetitive inquiries, while UC users lack the tools to resolve customer issues effectively.
Bridging the Gap: A Unified Approach
Solutions like 8×8 Engage are blurring the lines between UC and CX, enabling organizations to deliver seamless customer experience while also improving employee productivity and satisfaction.
The key ways it does this are by:
1. Allowing UC users to log into contact center queues:
- UC users can log into contact center queues as an additional resource, without needing a full contact center agent license.
- This allows them to temporarily handle customer calls and queries when the main contact center team needs extra support.
- “The moment that they then are already willing and able to join a contact center call queue, that user can elect to log into a call queue and then they will be a resource that’s available to receive those primary calls that come in,” Andy Rawll told us.
2. Transferring context between back-office and front-line:
- When a call is transferred from a UC user to a contact center agent, the agent can see the full history and context of the interaction.
- This includes things like chat transcripts, customer information, and any actions already taken.
- This ensures customers never have to repeat themselves – improving their experience.
- As Andy Rawll explained: “The approach we take is that when you forward a call from one environment to the other, not only does the speech path or the media get transferred over, but also the history of that call.”
3. Providing UC users with contact center capabilities:
- 8×8 Engage gives UC users access to features like call queuing, multi-channel support, post-call surveys, and the ability to escalate to video.
- This empowers UC users to more effectively handle customer interactions without having to transfer them to a dedicated contact center.
4. Unified data and analytics:
- 8×8 Engage is part of the broader 8×8 platform, which provides a common set of data, workflows, and analytics.
- This allows supervisors and administrators to have visibility and control across both the UC and contact center environments.
Real-World Adoption
Organizations across various industries are already benefiting from 8×8 Engage, including:
- A UK utilities company improving customer service efficiency
- A North American insurance provider offering multilingual client support
- A US automotive parts manufacturer streamlining value chain service
- A US healthcare provider ensuring compliance and patient support
Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, wrote of 8×8 Engage:
“As customer experience becomes a way for companies to compete, they need tools that give contact center capabilities to non-contact center personnel. This offering is aimed at that business need. One of the challenges of scaling up customer-facing operations is that many workers only need a partial agent interface…. 8×8’s customizable interface allows the organization to streamline workflows as it simplifies the interface for the worker.”
The Future of Work and Customer Engagement
The rise of remote and hybrid work has blurred the lines between traditional back-office roles and customer-facing functions. Employees across all departments are now expected to engage directly with customers, placing new demands on UC solutions that were originally built for internal collaboration only.
As the nature of work evolves, platforms like 8×8 Engage will become increasingly critical in enabling organizations to deliver the personalized, efficient service that modern consumers expect.
By empowering employees across the business to engage with customers seamlessly, organizations can ensure they remain competitive, agile, and customer-focused in an ever-changing digital landscape.
Find out more at: https://www.8×8.com/products/8×8-engage
