8x8 Contact Center vs. Aspect Unified IP

IMO, 8x8 is great in the mid-market space. Contact Centers with 25-1000 seats. Is it perfect? No, but none of them are (Ring, Nice, Five9, Talk) they're all going to have their defects. If you're a small or micro business, I don't know if If 8x8 is the place to be. Functionally, it will work fine, but the ROI isn't good for that sized org. And, you want get the support the same way the Mid and Enterprise customers will. Another things to consider is integrations - of which, 8x8 has many. Integrations and APIs is an areas where I have really seen 8x8 making a big push in the last few years. They have a powerful CPaaS product too, but I've not used it enough to be qualified to comment on it (yet).

Incentivized

The system is very complicated for the initial installations in the servers, which
requires highly qualified personnel for the start-up. It cost me the installation at the beginning but I knew it would be worth it because the use of an administrative control of calls is important and more when you have many service providers.

Incentivized

• Tracks all inbound and outbound calls from our organization.
• Gives us the ability to record and review calls.
• Gives the user the ability to receive phone call either via computer, cell phone, or polycom phone when in-house - all received from the same static number/extension.

Incentivized

• Integrates inbound and outbound call routing in one platform, allowing agents to work in a seamless blend mode between all call types (inbound, predictive, manual).
• Allows you to associate an account number with every agent phone call, the call type, and the reccording ID giving you the critical datapoints necessary to research, put together a customers experience from a telephony perspective, etc.
• Create agent templates to streamline agent setup reducing the potential for admins to configure an agent incorrectly, placing them in services they aren't skilled for and vice versa.

Incentivized

• Post-sale support through the online ticket system is painfully slow.
• It's hard to get in contact with people for license help and understanding why phone numbers are not properly distributed in your account. i.e. Our account has 48 free local numbers and we had to purchase 120 additional numbers. But for some reason only 25 of the 48 free numbers are being utilized, and there's no good way in the Admin UI to see which numbers are which, or reallocate paid numbers into those 'free' slots.
• The system has bugs which pop up from time to time such as when a user uses the 'Do Not Disturb' option in their app or on their phone - it does not always turn off on the back-end of the system, even though the phone or app shows the user as available. This causes inbound phone calls to be routed directly to Voicemail, and the only notice the user has is when someone reaches out by other means to say "Why is your phone going directly to voicemail?" - which initiates a service ticket for IT who cannot see this in the admin center. And unless 'flipping' DND on then off again fixes it, it requires a ticket with 8x8 which is, as mentioned before, slow.

Incentivized

• The reports are very basic.
• There may be a broader reporting line, perhaps with more detailed records.

Incentivized

8 x 8 is not an ordinary system, it works well for everyday business and assists in working efficiencies. So much is required for credentialing and re-credentialing. 8 x 8 takes out a lot of the extra steps by providing smarter working features that saves time and money. Also, when faxing, once the fax is complete, you receive an actual confirmation! Absolutely love this feature.

Incentivized

Aspect Unified IP is very competent to handle most customers' needs in the contact center and it delivers what is promised. The only negative aspect is the costs of services, maintenance and professional services, too expensive.

Incentivized

The system is flexible, adaptable and easy to use and research. Once again the reporting is fantastic and gives up the information we need to be successful and even make changes or tweaks. The 8x8 Contact Center team is there to assist with questions when needed or to help get through an issue. Charlie Knutson is the best!!

Incentivized

The only issue I have ran across was on getting the updated new version

Incentivized

Yes everything loads quickly and its ready for use

The initial live support person seems to be just collecting information and is outsourced. Sometimes it is difficult to communicate with them, but going through this process gets me to the right person and having my support ticket opened in order. It's usually very smooth thereafter.

Incentivized

Detailed training and good quality to provide our customers to achieve their needs and to give the best we can as far as information and technology and the best service we can to have the customers be satisfied with the technology and the best quality to get the best answers to their doubts.

its was with the best quality and the best performance we could have as far as detailed information for us to get the best training on how to get used of 8*8 and provide the best quality and technology to provide to our customers when they need and made us fell comforatble in how to use it

The transition from Mitel to 8 x 8 was smooth and no "hiccups". The support was one of the best that we had received. No surprises except what 8 x 8 is actually capable of doing! Support remained available throughout the transition! Co-workers were amazed at what they were able to do with having 8 x 8,

Incentivized

I prefer 8x8; it has the right number of features and modes for the communication I need. I much prefer 8x8 meetings to Zoom meetings, as it is much, much easier to transition between devices when I am on the road. 8x8 is also easier to manage across multiple modes of communication.

Incentivized

I have not spent any time recently doing a detailed analysis of other vendors to comfortably answer this question. I will say that the last time I checked, the ability to have all 3 call types (inbound,outbound,and manual) managed in one convenient seamless platform was not available which is very important to me.

Incentivized

It was implemented across the board in the company and has worked perfectly

Incentivized

• The callback queue was a big thing for a while. Still is to a point but we would have MANY duplicate callbacks & it was frustrating to both the customer & the agent.
• Support is my biggest negative for 8x8 Contact Center. Being able to communicate with someone is essential yet having MANY support agents have a language barrier has made it difficult on both ends to get things addressed/taken care of. Being able to follow the requests of the ticket is a big one as well. I talked about both of these points before, but if I request to communicate via email 9/10 times, I am being called to talk about the problem when it could have been an email. They also request information MANY many times that seems to be useless when I have provided what I think to be all the necessary information. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It has been a little bit since I have had to put anything in for support the last one I did it was substantially better so hopefully that continues.
• Being able to work solely on 8x8 work or 8x8 Contact Center would be a HUGE plus for agents & IT. I see other platforms that are able to do this, if 8x8 was able to do this it would make it 100x better for us so we don't have to work out of two things for an agent to be able to work.
• The last thing is the plans. Not offering an unlimited talking plan to me seems very weird. What we are paying for & the amount of minutes that agents are using doesn't make a lot of sense on a billing standpoint. Offering better pricing/unlimited plans for enterprise like other companies would be a HUGE plus as well.

Incentivized

• Aspect Unified IP has been a great investment for us, and we have been their customers for 10 years now
• Aspect is important for us in delivering WOW experiences for our customers

Incentivized