As the number of business VoIP providers to choose from continuously rises, it becomes increasingly important for each one to provide not just a robust product, but also superior customer experiences.
Growth in the user base always impacts the support team first because they’re the ones who deal with customers daily — and upset customers at that.
Every company has its method of dealing with traffic and ensuring that their customer support team doesn’t drown in tickets. Here are five of the ways that 8x8 Inc offers customer support.
1. 8x8 Support Pages
The actual support page is located at support.8x8.com. When you first navigate to the domain looking for 8x8 service and support, it will let you choose between a number of topics and subtopics including:
- Business phone
- Team messaging
- Contact center integrations
- Headsets
- CPaaS resources
- Billing
- Account management
There is also a search bar where 8x8 customers can search support articles by keyword. 8x8’s self-service chatbot, Otto, can also be easily accessed on the support page.
The knowledge base found at the 8x8 Inc support site is one of the stronger ones that we’ve seen. The homepage serves as a good index, making it easier for users to find information relevant to the issue at hand. There are manuals and user guides available in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, and French Canadian.
If a solution cannot be found in the manuals, customers have the option to submit a support request ticket online.
2. 8x8 Support Live Chat
When requesting a live chat on the main page, after agreeing to the terms and conditions, the website redirects the customer to the 8x8x support page. From here, you will need to interact with the 8x8 chatbot, Otto, before being connected to an expert.
You will be asked to give a name and 8x8 phone number, but the phone number is not needed to speak to a representative. All you have to do is enter N/A if you don’t have an 8x8 number yet.
This was a great relief to us since a live chat that’s limited to existing customers would’ve been a turnoff. After all, prospective customers tend to need more help with the technical side of software in comparison to those who have already been using the platform for years.
Our Customer Service Experience
The wait time to reach 8x8 customer service is minuscule in comparison to some of the slower customer support departments out there. It’s worth noting that a link to the knowledge base was also provided while we waited, giving us the option to read up on resources in the knowledge base if we wanted to self-solve.
The agent we spoke to was on his game, promptly responding to any questions that we sent his way with concise and relevant answers. Each response would never take longer than a minute to arrive.
3. 8x8’s Customer Service Phone Support
The phone numbers for live customer support are listed on the 8x8 support website but they are difficult to find:
- U.S. support from within the United States: 888-898-8733.
- U.S. support from outside of the United States: 408-687-4120
- Australia: +61 1300 088 917 (+61 1800 648 574)
- New Zealand: +64 (0)800 452 545
- UK: +44 207 096 6060
- France: +33 1 57 96 03 61
- Japan: +81 3-4578-9032
- Thailand: +66 2 026 8209
- Philippines: +63 2 8271 3494
- Singapore: +65 3158 8675
Wait times for customer phone support are negligible.
4. 8x8 Support via Social Media
When we got to the 8x8 Facebook page, there were quite a few recent posts, but after sending a message… nothing. Dead silence. There was no autoresponder rigged to inform us that an agent would respond shortly. An agent didn’t reply to our question either.
We thought that Twitter may be their preferred base of operations for social media support, so we decided to send a direct message there. Sadly, we were greeted by the same dead silence that we got on Facebook, leading us to believe that 8x8 doesn’t have social media support.
That doesn’t mean that they never will, but that at least tells you that they don’t support it at the time that we’re writing this. If social media is usually your preferred support method then you need to give some thought before going with 8x8.
5. 8x8 Community
All 8x8 customers have 24/7/365 access to a community page with discussion threads and Q&As, where customers can post questions or search topics and get advice from other 8x8 users.
8x8 Support Shortcomings
While we were generally impressed with the efficiency of 8x8’s live chat support along with the expansiveness of the knowledge base, we do have some critique.
- Lack of channels: 8x8 has no available assistance through social media and the support hotline is not listed on social channels.
- Bottleneck for live chat: By not fully supporting social media and phone support, 8x8 runs the risk of encountering a bottleneck as their user base grows.
Support phone number is difficult to find: The “Contact Us” button on the main site leads to a form to submit a support ticket and there is no support number on the main website, support page, or social media pages.
What Makes 8x8 Different?
We reached out to John Sun, the senior manager for public relations at 8x8 to see if he’d be willing to give us a statement on the company and what makes its support capabilities unique to that of competitors. He was gracious enough to give us some key information.
The first thing that he mentioned was the fact that 8x8 uses patented geo routing technology to ensure that the call quality remains top-notch even for transcontinental conversations. He also noted that 8x8 has five independent data center divisions.
This network is comprised of over 30 cloud communication data centers worldwide. This “global footprint”, as he puts it, ensures that there’ll always be data centers to fall back on should one or more fail.
“Regarding support channels, 8x8 technical support is available to our business customers 24 hours a day via the knowledge base, support portal, chat, and phone,” he noted.
John also informed us that 8x8 has eight separate contact centers across the globe to ensure that they can live up to the 24/7 guarantee with their “follow-the-sun” schedule of operation.
He also noted that the company seamlessly combined voice, video, and messaging into a single platform that features mix-and-match plans to ensure customer satisfaction. Lastly, John closed with a reminder that 8x8 takes pride in its ownership of all the technology used on the platform.
Is 8x8 Customer Service Sufficient?
8x8 has packages that range from $24/month for each user to $140/month for each user. Your cost of the PBX cloud solution will inevitably go up if you need more features. That said, the price for each tier does drop as you add more users.
If you want speedy live chat support, sufficient resources to solve problems yourself, and aren’t the type to reach out to companies over the phone anyway then you should be right at home with 8x8.
It’s also quite clear, based on John Sun’s statement, that 8x8 Inc places great value on consumer trust — hence their emphasis on global redundancies that guarantee reliability. With so many data and support centers around the world, downtime seems unlikely.
If you’re not satisfied with what 8x8 has to offer, you should review our coverage of the best business phone systems available right now. It covers all the best options and includes key information that’s crucial to serving your customers better.
