Introduction
8×8 Engage is designed for employees who communicate with customers as part of their role, but whose primary job isn’t necessarily working in a contact centre.
Rather than creating a separate environment for these employees, 8×8 Engage connects Contact Centre functionality with 8×8 Work.
In our last blog we looked at how 8×8 can work for your organisation. In this blog we are giving real world examples of the benefits.
So what does 8×8 Engage look like in the real world?
Example 1: A Multi-Site Motor Dealership
A customer phones a dealership asking about a commercial vehicle.
The call enters a central queue, but rather than simply being offered to a traditional call-handling team, it can be routed to available sales staff.
A salesperson working at another site, at home or on the move can potentially handle the call through 8×8 Work. The customer gets through to someone who understands the product, while the dealership makes better use of its sales team.
Example 2: A National Maintenance Company
A maintenance business has engineers spread across the UK. A customer reports a problem that requires technical expertise.
Instead of the contact centre taking the customer’s details and arranging a callback, the appropriate technical team can participate in the relevant queue.
The engineer can deal with the customer directly, potentially resolving the issue more quickly.
The same approach could be applied to installation teams, technical support or specialist service departments.
Example 3: An organisation with a small Contact Team
A growing business has a small customer service department. At peak times, calls start building up.
Rather than employing additional permanent contact centre staff, the business could potentially use employees from other customer-facing departments to provide additional capacity.
Sales, accounts or support teams could participate in designated queues when appropriate.
This creates a more flexible workforce without necessarily requiring every employee to become a full-time contact centre agent.
Beyond Voice
Customer communication isn’t limited to telephone calls. 8×8’s wider Engage offering supports digital interactions, with capabilities for managing channels such as web chat, SMS and social messaging. The Engage omni proposition brings voice and digital interactions together within a unified experience.
This is increasingly important as customers expect businesses to communicate through the channels they already use. A customer might start a conversation online, continue it through messaging and eventually need to speak to someone.
The objective should be to maintain the context of that conversation rather than making the customer start again every time they change channel.
Why Complete Voice & Data?
As an independent communications provider, we look at your existing communications infrastructure, understand how your teams work and then recommend the technology that makes the most sense for your organisation.
For some businesses, a traditional contact centre solution may be the right answer. For others, the challenge isn’t really the contact centre itself. It’s the hundreds of customer conversations happening outside it.
That’s where 8×8 Engage can be particularly powerful.
It gives businesses the opportunity to bring customer-facing employees into a more structured communications environment, while retaining the flexibility of a modern cloud communications platform.
Is 8×8 Engage right for your Business?
If you have customer-facing employees who aren’t traditional contact centre agents, it is worth considering whether your existing communications platform is giving them the tools they need.
Ask yourself:
- Do customer calls regularly need to be transferred between departments?
- Are customers waiting for specialist employees to call them back?
- Do your sales or service teams work across multiple locations?
- Do employees need to answer customer calls while working remotely?
- Do you have peaks in customer demand that put pressure on your contact centre?
- Are important customer conversations happening outside your contact centre?
- Are your teams using multiple applications to manage customer communications?
If the answer to several of these questions is yes, 8×8 Engage could be worth exploring.
Finally
At Complete Voice & Data, we can help you assess where Engage fits within your wider communications strategy and whether it is the right solution for your organisation.
And if it isn’t right for you, we’ll offer alternatives – all part of the benefit of being truly independent.