(EGHT) Extends Partnership With Zendesk

8×8, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT), a provider of cloud-based unified communications, contact center and collaboration solutions, today announced the availability of a new, out-of-the-box integration with Zendesk’s customer service platform that enhances the Customer Experience Management capabilities of the 8×8 Virtual Office cloud telephony and unified communications (UC) platform.

Businesses today need to provide better customer experiences in order to remain competitive. Inefficient customer interactions not only cost the business more money, they also erode customer relationships. The combined 8×8 and Zendesk solution tightly integrates business telephony and customer relationship functionality to enable organizations to provide more efficient and more personalized interactions with their customers.

“We are excited to be the first cloud UC provider to offer secure and reliable business telephony as well as contact center integration with Zendesk, enabling all companies to conduct better Customer Experience Management,” said 8×8 CEO Vik Verma. “Businesses today who are not optimizing the experience that occurs with each and every customer interaction will certainly enable their competition to be considered for that customer’s next call.”

“Customers expect to be able to reach companies at any time and across any channel or device,” said Sam Boonin, VP Product at Zendesk. “With 8×8 Virtual Office’s integration into Zendesk, the customer not only has these options, but they can also receive the high quality and personal service that they deserve.”

With the Virtual Office integration with Zendesk, incoming calls to a business through the 8×8 Virtual Office phone service instantly triggers a customer’s profile and ticket to appear on the user’s computer screen before the call is answered, allowing the employee to answer the call with all the relevant historical and account data.

The combined solution offers:

• Instant display of a customer profile based upon the Caller ID.
• Click to dial from Zendesk and the 8×8 Virtual Office directory.
• Fortune 500 telephony features and functionality.

“New channels of interaction have given consumers more power, control, and knowledge. Research has shown that customers turn first to the Web and their peers to get information and self-serve before they call into the company or its contact center, changing the balance of power between the agent and customer,” said Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst, Customer Contact, Frost & Sullivan. “As such, the ability to pull in, combine, and use customer interaction history is the future in providing the elevated level of customer experience new generations of consumers demand.”

The 8×8 Virtual Office cloud communications solution is highly redundant, reliable and secure, offering compliance with many data security standards including FISMA, HIPAA HITECH, PCI-DSS and CPNI.

To learn more about 8×8 Virtual Office and Zendesk integration, visit: http://www.8×8.com/VoIPBusinessPhoneServices/Features/zendeskintegration.aspx.

Existing Zendesk customers can install the Virtual Office App from the Zendesk app store at: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/8×8-virtual-office/.

About 8×8, Inc.

8×8, Inc. (NASDAQ:EGHT) is the trusted provider of secure and reliable cloud-based unified communications and virtual contact center solutions to more than 39,000 small, midsize and distributed enterprise organizations operating in over 40 countries across six continents. 8×8’s out-of-the-box cloud solutions replace traditional on-premise PBX hardware and software-based systems with a flexible and scalable Software as a Service (SaaS) alternative, encompassing cloud business phone service, contact center solutions, and web conferencing. For additional information, visit www.8×8.com, or www.8×8.com/UK or connect with 8×8 on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.