[January 21, 2014]

8x8 Launches Enhanced Cloud Contact Center Solution to Help Mid-Market Organizations Improve Customer Relationships Across the Globe

8x8 (News - Alert), Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT), a provider of cloud communications and collaboration solutions, today announced the completion of a significant upgrade to its Virtual Contact Center (VCC) cloud-based call center software offering, designed to improve an organization's customer relations, enhance the management and productivity of their call center agents and guarantee the security of the call center environment.

8x8's VCC service is available as a single point solution or as an integrated component of 8x8's Virtual Office cloud-based telephony and unified communications solutions. Mid-size and distributed enterprises worldwide are increasingly adopting cloud-based alternatives to traditional PBX (News - Alert) and call center systems and many, such as Merchant Warehouse and Replicon, are choosing to outsource both solutions from a single vendor, deploying business VoIP phone service throughout the organization and call center services in one or more departments. Organizations such as these appreciate the simple and powerful interfaces included with VCC that make agents productive quickly, giving them the fastest path to value in the industry.

"With VCC release 8.0, 8x8 continues to help contact centers provide new levels of service to their customers that can help differentiate their brand in the marketplace while reducing the costs associated with serving customers," says Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst, Customer Contact at Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert).

The first in a series of upcoming enhancements, VCC 8.0 is available immediately and includes the following key features:

• System Status Optimized for Mobile Devices - wallboard status information optimized for the iPad, iPhone (News - Alert) or Android devices enables mobile off-site administration of the call center, allowing supervisors to dynamically respond to changing conditios.
• Virtual Queuing - helps build customer loyalty by eliminating long hold times across all interactions. 8x8's Virtual Queuing capability allows customers to request a callback, eliminating their need to sit on hold while helping contact centers manage the peaks and valleys of their call loads.
• Increased Agent and Supervisor Productivity -
  • Reporting Wizards give supervisors better insight into the workings of the contact center.
  • Enhanced usability for agents make it even easier to turn novices into power users and to increase the productivity of experienced agents.
  • Contact Directories and Queue Lists now support favorites and recently accessed records.
  • Agent tools for recording and playing audio messages to reduce live agent talk time.
• Customizable SMTP Services - by default, VCC tenant's outbound email communications are routed via the pre-configured VCC internal SMTP servers. Now, 8x8 customers can use their own company's SMTP server as the source to control security and regulatory compliance.
• Local CRM Enhancements - Enhanced native Customer Relationship Management tool built into the platform (unique to Virtual Contact Center) features a new desktop view that consolidates agents' cases, customers and tasks into a convenient tabbed environment for easy switching and viewing. Automatic logging of activities has been added as well. Customers can also choose to have both local CRM and their own CRM turned on at the same time.
• Chat Interface - presents a better visual experience to the customer with additional customization options available through 8x8 Professional Services.
• Multi-Browser Support - now compatible with over 80% of browsers used by companies today through support of the latest browser versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer, running on Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS. With VCC, there are no plugins or codes to download.

Virtual Contact Center 8.0 is available today and has already been provided free of charge to existing customers of 8x8 Virtual Contact Center services. 8x8's cloud based infrastructure enables customers to receive the benefits of the upgrade process without any downtime, enabling complete business continuity. For additional information on 8x8 Virtual Contact Center, visit: http://www.8x8.com/CallCenter/ContactCenter.aspx

About 8x8, Inc.

8x8, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT) is a provider of unified communications and collaboration, or UCC, services in the cloud to small and medium businesses, or SMBs, 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, call center software and virtual desktop through our proprietary unified software as a service, or SaaS, platform. For additional information, visit www.8x8.com, or connect with 8x8 on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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