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8x8 (News - Alert), which has already been making inroads in the residential and business VoIP services spaces — including video calling with its Tango videophone — is now looking to penetrate even further into the business communications space with its new Packet8 Complete Contact Center, that combines IP-based contact center features with Packet8’s Virtual Office hosted IP PBX solution.

 

Targeting the SMB call center space — specifically those call centers with fewer than 100 seats — the integrated solution further expands the market for the Virtual Office service. Following the Virtual Office model, the Complete Contact Center solution brings enterprise class features to the SMB market, in a way that any business can adopt the solution, since it works with any broadband service. 

 

The hosted model has been steadily growing in popularity, particularly with small and mid-sized businesses because it affords them the luxuries of enterprise-class offerings without the requisite capital investment or maintenance — neither of which most SMBs can afford. Which is why the hosted contact center model now offered by Packet8 provides an opportunity for those business to enhance their communications and customer service capabilities without breaking their budgets.

 

As a completely hosted service, deploying Packet8 Complete Contact Center requires no specialized hardware or software, nor any new telecom equipment, making it an ideal solution for contact centers with in-house or off-site agents, or even multi-site establishments. In fact, agents, regardless of where they physically site, need merely a broadband connection, a Web browser, and a telephony endpoint to use the system.

 

“With the Packet8 Complete Contact Center solution, small businesses that need a professional, full featured call center solution can now subscribe to a pure hosted VoIP-based service and benefit from the associated lower costs and flexibility,” said 8x8 vice president of Sales and Marketing Huw Rees. “We have had many requests from existing and potential customers for this type of service.”

 

Once signed up and connected, businesses and their agents will enjoy the benefits of skills-based routing, multimedia management (including email, chat functions, voice mail, and of course, basic telephony), real-time and historical monitoring and reporting, call recording and storage, IVR, call queues, case management tools, and CRM integration with Salesforce.com (News - Alert) and NetSuite.

 

With the solution, customer calls are certain to be appropriately directed to not only the appropriate agent, but using the appropriate medium, creating a more efficient interaction — ultimately leading to a more pleasant customer experience. With its recording, call logging, and monitoring features, the system also ensures businesses have the tools effectively manage agents and their customer service capabilities.

 

Packet8 Compete Contact Center was developed with Contactual, which has a proven track record providing contact center solutions. With Packet8’s hosted VoIP solution, the contact center product brings businesses into the next generation of communications technology — with all the tools and features to maximize the customer experience, but without the time, expense, and effort of buying, installing, and maintaining additional equipment.