8x8 Frontdesk Empowers Receptionists in a New Hybrid Workforce

Today’s workplace landscape has altered dramatically as a result of the changes that happened during COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020. Now more than ever, businesses are embracing the ability to work remotely and many are coming back to the office with new plans for hybrid work schedules. With this type of flexibility also comes the need to offer better support tools and access to necessary solutions regardless of a user’s location.

To bring this to one of the most important functions in the office, the front desk, 8x8 has announced a new XCaaS (eXperience Communications as a Service) offering called Frontdesk that will help receptionists to increase productivity and deliver more powerful support within the new hybrid work environment.

Featuring high volume call handling, the offering delivers a new user interface and a tailored experience to blend traditional unified communications with contact center capabilities. That means organization-wide visibility into each employee's availability at the current moment and the ability to easily transfer callers as needed all from one dashboard. The “receptionist role” can also be transferred to any user at any time.

“Organizations don’t want cookie cutter, one-size-fits-all communications solutions for their distributed employees. They are looking for an agile solution that meets specific use cases, such as high volume call handling to easily connect customers, partners, and vendors with any employee at any time,” said Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research. “8x8 XCaaS and the 8x8 Frontdesk solution addresses the changing requirements of receptionists and front desk staff, especially as they shift to a hybrid workplace.”

With an easy to use interface, employee training costs are also reduced and because it is natively accessible from 8x8 Work, users can have access to voice, video meetings, team chat, all in a single application. The software solution also requires no specific console or deskphone hardware, so complex and costly multi-vendor solution issues are eliminated.

“Instead of needing to switch from application to application, 8x8 Frontdesk provides us with complete, uninterrupted functionality across all 8x8 capabilities all from a single interface,” said Andy Clark, IT Manager at Wansbroughs Solicitors, a modern commercial law practice in the UK. “8x8 XCaaS removes the silos our team was previously experiencing from disparate on-premises solutions, allowing them to work from anywhere, and 8x8 Frontdesk is very aligned with how our receptionist works.”

Edited by Luke Bellos