“Hybrid working” is one expression that I hear every day, more than any other right now (apart from: “Hey Fabio, you’re muted!”). Everyone is talking about it—in meetings, news articles, podcasts—it seems to be a strategic 2021 business priority for every organization around the world.

As teams return to the office post-pandemic, we see a situation where management needs to support the needs of employees who work from the office, from their home office, remotely, or a combination of these scenarios. To meet the requirements of this hybrid work environment, companies need to deliver a consistent collaboration experience for globally distributed employees and customers. To do so, collaboration tools must support work mobility and deep engagement, as well as extend across the entire enterprise.

The latest 8x8 Update Release in 2021 focuses on these key themes and accelerates hybrid working for any organization. We’re making large meetings easier with up to 500 active video meeting participants, increasing customer engagement with text analytics for webchat, and extending presence capabilities to Microsoft Teams. Let’s take a closer look at some of the features releasing this summer in more detail.

Empower your teams to do their best work

This quarter, we’ve focused on bringing key capabilities to the mobile experience, ensuring that all users can work from anywhere, whether they are at their company HQ or their home office.

Now, you can have up to 500 active meeting attendees for desktop users so that all of your teams can actively participate in video meetings, with full video, audio, screen sharing, and collaboration options. This is ideal when you want everyone to feel like full participants, for example during internal meetings, large classrooms, or lecture halls. You know that nothing takes center stage quite like the capacity to accommodate more participants and to host large meetings without purchasing additional licenses (unlike some of the other video meeting solutions today). Broadening access to meetings includes support for SIP devices to allow those organizations with legacy hardware to connect to 8x8’s video meetings. These features are also available with our JaaS video meeting platform for developers who build and deploy video solutions.

Updates to the 8x8 Work mobile app support employees who work from the office and anywhere with the following:

  • Screen sharing: allows participants to share content while accessing meetings via 8x8 Work’s mobile iOS and Android apps (video)

  • Inline replies: helps users respond more rapidly by supporting replies directly from the notification section without having to open the app.
  • Call quality indication: enables users to view audio quality details during calls

These updates show that we put mobility at the center of our platform to help you respond to your colleagues and collaborators who require more flexible communications experiences.

Engage your customers more effectively and boost CX

For a more engaged customer audience, 8x8 Contact Center released the following enhancements:

  • Text analytics for webchat, chat, and social media in 117+ languages: enables more effective customer interactions
  • New Voice API support for a dynamic IVR: allows businesses to manage common inquiries or address information requests in a timely manner
  • Automation API that augments the use of bots in workflows: allows users to set automation schedules with more granularity

These updates, along with improvements in campaign performance reporting, customer data visibility, and remote administration of agents, reflect our ongoing commitment to helping you facilitate valuable customer interactions and offer engaging customer experiences that build loyalty and drive revenue.

Extend communications workflows to popular business apps

8x8 extends the Microsoft Teams ecosystem across the organization with Presence synchronization. Users are now able to see the status of Teams-based colleagues in 8x8 Work and 8x8 Contact Center. Sharing presence across these platforms gives your users faster access to expertise and enables pre-call interactions even when colleagues are on Teams video meetings or internal phone calls.

In addition to supercharging Teams with extended presence, we also deliver integrated business messaging that allows users to send and receive SMS texts, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages, and faxes conveniently and securely from Teams using their existing 8x8 business number.

Learn more about the latest 8x8 release in 2021

This quarter, we continued our commitment to delivering flexibility and ease of use to improve customer communications and team collaboration. We are confident that our latest release will help our customers to further empower their teams and thrive in a hybrid workstyle environment.

Learn more about how the 8x8 Experience Communications PlatformTM can help your organization. Watch our on-demand webinar to hear 8x8 Product Marketing experts discuss how 8x8 is empowering organizations to succeed with modern communication experiences.

Want to see even more enhancements delivered with this release? Click here.