8×8 has experienced significant growth in midmarket CCaaS deals, driven by its focus on customer-centric innovation and tailored solutions. The vendor has seen a 35% increase in deals with enterprises having 250+ contact center agents.
8×8 has announced a 35% year-over-year (YoY) spike in CCaaS deals with midmarket enterprises with 250 contact center agents or more.
Additionally, the vendor increased its total contact center customers by nine percent, and the total number of agents leveraging the 8×8 Contact Center is up eight percent yearly.
The news comes after 8×8 switched last year to lead with CCaaS, not UCaaS, bringing on board evangelist Justin Robbins to help navigate that switch.
Now, 8×8 appears to have found its niche in the midmarket, a segment many CCaaS vendors have underserved over the years.
Why? These companies typically have to either enter a big CCaaS ecosystem and use a fraction of what they pay for or integrate a series of point solutions with their CRM or UCaaS system.
By making a play here – like RingCentral and UJET are also doing – 8×8 is engaging this disillusioned market segment and seizing a new business opportunity.
Samuel Wilson, CEO of 8×8, believes that the CCaaS growth in this segment and beyond is a promising sign, as the vendor aims to reinvigorate total revenues after a three percent YoY drop last quarter.
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“Our continuing drive to transform 8×8’s business and pace of innovation around all things CX has accelerated over the past year as we’ve made tremendous strides,” said the CEO.
As we help organizations exceed expectations and deliver business success, we are seeing increased customer adoption of our contact center.
“Underscoring 8×8’s CX transformation, we are continuing to grow 8×8’s multi-product CX cloud platform and enhance it with new capabilities.”
Indeed, 8×8 has unveiled several release waves for the 8×8 Contact Center over recent months. Notable new features include a conversational AI solution, conversation summaries for external CRMs, and a mobile workspace for supervisors.
Interestingly, it has also accelerated its sector-specific innovation. For instance, last month, it launched a proactive outreach tool for housing associations.
Doubling down on verticals beyond the big three that every CX vendor seems to target – healthcare, finance, and retail – could prove a positive growth strategy.
Yet, first and foremost, 8×8 leverages customer feedback to direct its innovation. That approach could have been a significant factor in the vendor increasing the number of existing CCaaS customers that added CX products to their installations by ten percent year over year.
Other handpicked statistics from 8×8 include a 14 percent YoY surge in digital customer interactions handled across its platform.
Then, there is a 150 percent YoY increase in agents escalating customer interactions to video within the 8×8 Workspace. Yet, as that functionality only became generally available in October 2023, that statistic seems slightly misleading.
Nevertheless, 8×8’s momentum in the CCaaS – particularly in the midmarket – is encouraging, especially as the vendor faces a new rival in the UCaaS space: NICE.
On that move, Wilson didn’t mince his words during a recent earnings call, criticizing “vendors with subpar products that they like to talk about a lot using price.”
However, he did signal that the announcement had impacted the market early. “We saw NICE making a marketing splash for the $5 UCaaS offering,” he said. “These solutions are typically feature-light and unintegrated, but the announcements have served to disrupt and extend sales cycles in some cases.”
Also Read: How to Choose the Right CCaaS Solution for Your Business
“Light and unintegrated” is a bit harsh. Still, it is perhaps a taste of his own medicine for NICE CEO Barak Eilam after he offered a pointed rebuttal of Microsoft’s entrance into CCaaS.
Whatever the case, the claws seem out in the enterprise communications space.
