8x8 Work vs. HCL Sametime

I’ve found 8x8 Work to be a reliable and efficient communication solution for our business. It offers excellent call quality, easy management of call flows and departments, and seamless integration for both in-office and remote users. One feature we especially like is that it automatically searches for phone numbers on the web, which saves time and makes it easier to identify and reach contacts

Incentivized

Overall, Sametime is a great feature for global teams to communicate, since you can chat quickly and efficiently with Sametime. Also, the file transfer is really fast and it downloads to any folder you choose. The chat history is easy to use and it is easy to find keywords. The feature of creating "emoticons" sometimes can jeopardize the team's efficiency.

Incentivized

• Direct calls to the extensions.
• Callers were able to either talk to our individual staff members or leave a message.
• We loved having a record of every single call that came in for CRM purposes.
• We loved being able to collect our messages from the console.

Incentivized

• The license cost is comparatively low so almost all staff have it installed in our company. We can use it to contact all internal staff.
• It’s light and fast with almost no downtime. It also provides easy to use APIs for the user to build automation process on it. We have an internally built robot running on Sametime to answer frequently asked questions and do some repetitive tasks.
• Chat history can be saved as per user’s preference and it is easy to be searched.

Incentivized

• The auto attendant has built in text-to-speech, but this same engine should be put to use for individual and ring group voicemail messages.
• Call forwarding in the mobile app should be relocated for easier access. Instead it's buried somewhere under the generic "account settings"
• The default user template disables voicemail text transcription. Why???
• One fax number should be accessible by app for more than 1 user. Responsibility for faxes is usually distributed among a few people in a typical small office setting.
• Ability to receive and send SMS messages from a shared "main company number" would be awesome. Ability to assign this to certain users would rock!

Incentivized

• The mobile app is not that great for anything outside of straight up messaging.
• We tried video chatting within Sametime without any real success. There were connection issues and the app would crash quite often. We switched to another product and had no problems.
• IBM Sametime just looks outdated. The menus and contact list are not up to date from a UX perspective compared to many other popular chat apps.

Incentivized

Everyone at the company now have the experiance needed to make phone calls, meetings, video conferencing. It's easy to use is unmatched in the industry. It's been a solid product throughout. The phone tree was easy to setup with the implementation team and they guided us throughout the process

Incentivized

Sametime is now an embedded experience for our users. They know it, they like it, they use it, and they expect it to be wherever they are. Because it is pretty easy to use and NEVER goes down, users know they can rely on it and won't be frustrated by it. Sametime is right up with there with Microsoft Office in terms of user adoption and appreciation.

Incentivized

We never have problems working with 8x8, employees pickup quickly on how to use the system best for them. Calling out and receiving calls is simple, the ablility to click on a number and 8x8 dial it for you saves so much time when you are making high volume calls.

Incentivized

Just about everything works the way you expect it would and it's relatively easy for users to figure out. Sametime was one of those things that we started with only a few people as a "test" and before the test period was done we discovered a few hundred people had figured out how to log in and most got it working all on their own. Many of our users want to use Sametime and do so regularly; we do not have to create policies enforcing its usage. Users find it practical to use Sametime to do things like chat, transfer files, share their screen, and so forth.

Incentivized

In the time I have used 8x8 Virtual Office, the core system has been up and running almost flawlessly though we do have a slight performance degradation from time to time as is expected of cloud software. The one recurring issue for us is that the fax connection is not always functional for outbound messages. We usually have to retry three or four times to get the fax to connect reliably to the destination machine. Once connected, it's smooth sailing.

Incentivized

Typically if Sametime is not available, it's because Windows Updates were done on the servers and they were not rebooted. However, that's not a problem with Sametime -- in fact, if you have Linux you could probably run Sametime for years without any hiccups whatsoever. We have no internal Linux expertise.

Incentivized

No problems with performance, Pages load as they should. I can't answer on the reports side as only a handful of our Admins ( call center ) currently use that side of the software. It does intergrate very well with Office for meetings and conferences. Sometimes there is a slight lag or static when users are talking, but we found this to be a cause of a users computer had not restarted in a while, Once the user restarts thier computer the problem is resolved, So this is not an issue with 8x8

Incentivized

Generally very good. Occasionally AV or screen-sharing will stutter and every now and then I hear of it dropping out altogether, but in all cases it was easy to re-establish

Incentivized

We are a USA based organization. Support was refreshingly quick (callback via phone or email, online live agents). Agents are knowledgeable, thorough in their explanations, and extremely patient when dealing with end-users at various levels of the ICT knowledge spectrum.

Incentivized

I have to use support for many customers. However, support is generally quite responsive and continues to see an issue through to resolution and I would recommend using their knowledgeable and well-trained staff.

Incentivized

The person giving the training was very engaged, He also listened and answered all the questions. He created a video for our company while he was training in case we needed to reference it again in the future. The questions he could not answer were answered within 24 hours via an email to the IT support staff here so we could share the answers with the rest of the group

Incentivized

Good and Simple Training Module, also Certification is available.

Incentivized

We had a third party implement and set up the system the way we wanted it - after that I do all changes or additions. The vendor was very knowledgeable and had it up and running in less than an hour.

Incentivized

8x8 Work offers all we need in an easy-to-use format. Zoom seemed to have too many features that are not required and can be overwhelming to Users who are not the most Tech-Savvy. The price point of 8x8 is great, too. Get everything we need at a low cost.

Incentivized

Text chat is text chat. It's not a technically hard problem to solve. It's when you try and move out of text chat into more fully featured applications that allow for audio or video calling, transcripts, etc, it becomes apparent that the developers on Sametime gave up a long time ago. In my organization, Slack has nearly completely replaced Sametime for any and all purposes that Sametime used to fulfill.

Incentivized

The only issue was adding licences was not via a button click but through your account admin which seems bad practice in a SaaS world as the user should be able to sign up, amend and close their account with ease

Incentivized

Sametime is rock solid. It runs on WebSphere, DB2 and other related IBM technologies. This does mean the back-end is highly complex and very difficult to learn and get comfortable with, however.

Incentivized

• Moving to 8x8 Work helped us consolidate our soft phone and IVR needs with our contact center platform and save thousands in the first year alone.
• All of the 8x8 Work products I've worked with have great integration options from CRMs like Zoho/Salesforce to Google and Microsoft Office.

Incentivized

• HCL Sametime is affordable thus it is cost-efficient for instant messaging compared to costs of phone calls, especially overseas calls.
• As Sametime is integrated with Lotus Notes it is convenient to use both of these together without separately using them.
• Still need to pay for other apps for effective video conferencing and webinar.

Incentivized