Name: Analyst Outlook 2026: Empowering Frontline Teams Beyond the Contact Center
Start: 2026-01-22T16:00:00Z
End: 2026-01-22T16:00:30.000Z
Location: BrightTALK

8x8, Inc. (NASDAQ: EGHT) is transforming the future of business communications as a leading Software-as-a-Service provider of voice, video, chat, contact center and enterprise-class API solutions powered by one global cloud communications platform. 8x8 empowers workforces worldwide to connect individuals and teams so they can collaborate faster and work smarter. Real-time business analytics and intelligence provide businesses unique insights across all interactions and channels so they can delight end-customers and accelerate their business.

Today’s customers expect seamless, personalised interactions across every channel — voice, video, messaging, and beyond. CPaaS empowers organisations to meet those expectations by embedding modern communications directly into existing workflows. 

In this session from Call & Contact Centre Expo in London 2025, Chris Angus, VP CPaas & CX Expansion, explores how businesses can transform fragmented interactions into connected, engaging journeys that drive loyalty and deliver measurable impact. With real-world examples, Chris shows how companies are achieving faster results, greater transparency, and stronger customer relationships through CPaaS.

Frictionless by Design: Modernising Customer Experience with CPaaS with Chris Angus

Public sector organisations face unique challenges—balancing compliance, accessibility, and citizen expectations while driving digital transformation. In this session from Call & Contact Centre Expo in London 2025, Maxine Eunson, Head of Public Sector UK explores how cloud communications and analytics are transforming how housing providers deliver services to their tenants. Discover practical ways to modernise public services while building trust, resilience, and measurable outcomes.

Transforming Public Sector CX with Purpose-Driven Communications with Maxine Eunson

Today’s customers expect more than fast answers, they expect connected experiences.

In this story-driven demo, you’ll follow Paws & Claws, a growing retail and veterinary business, as it scales customer service using the 8x8 CX Platform. You’ll see how they:

- Welcome customers with AI chat and voice
- Hand off seamlessly to informed agents
- Secure payments in chat via SMS
- Escalate to live video when needed
- Track performance in one view

Whether you're leading a CX team, modernizing support, or preparing for growth, this is the kind of experience your customers expect—and your team deserves.

AI to Agent: See the Future of Connected CX

This Halloween, banish your scariest inefficiencies.

Disjointed systems. Vanishing context. Hauntingly slow resolutions.
When communication tools operate in silos, every customer interaction can turn into a nightmare.

Join Genelle Chamberlain, IT Manager at PrimeSource and Dimora Brands, as she shares how her team broke the curse of fragmented tech by unifying communications and contact center on the 8x8 Platform for CX — creating connected, intelligent customer experiences that actually delight.

What You’ll Learn
• What “haunted” their old setup — and what finally made the silos disappear
• Why a single UC + CC platform is the ultimate remedy for inefficiency
• How to cut costs, boost CX, and empower every employee
• Practical rollout lessons and adoption tricks that worked

Don’t let disjointed tools haunt your CX.
Join us for a session that’s part strategy, part survival guide — and 100% practical.

Save Your Spot — Before It’s Too Late →

The Night the Silos Disappeared: A Practical Guide to UC + CC on One Platform

As you head into the critical, high-volume seasons, such as Black Friday, a new sports season, or even the hustle and bustle of the holidays, the pressure to deliver seamless, responsive customer experiences while controlling costs has never been higher. Consumers are more demanding than ever. 

They want an immediate, seamless experience, whether onsite or online, challenging IT leaders to balance accessibility, security, and digital expansion, often while maintaining day-to-day operations. At the same time, contact center leaders must navigate complex systems, rising call volumes, and growing customer expectations.

You can prepare for peak demand (and year-round success) through operational flexibility and efficiency across every customer-facing channel. But building loyalty, driving conversions and setting the foundation for long-term customer engagement requires a tech stack reboot to move beyond surviving to thriving. 

Hear from Director of IT at Southampton Football Club, Huw Fielding, and Michelle Kelly, Retail Solutions Evangelist at 8x8 on how retail leaders are streamlining systems, leveraging AI, creating connected workforces and unifying IT, CX and security to boost efficiency and performance.

In this webinar, you will learn:
- How to create an agile workforce during peak seasons through automation and AI that delivers exceptional customer service.
- How unified data and real-time analytics drive faster decision-making and ensure consistency in customer interactions.
- How to simplify complexities while ensuring security and regulatory compliance. 
- Why IT and CX must be an organization-wide strategy to elevate communication, collaboration and customer interactions.

Give Your Customers What They Want During High-Volume Seasons: An Unbeatable Easy-to-Use Experience

74% of customer journeys now span multiple channels, increasing complexity and the risk of
service breakdowns.

Walsall Housing Group (WHG) took a smarter approach. With 8x8 as their co-pilot, they’re
reshaping how teams connect, support residents, and launch new digital services.

Join this session for a real-world look at how WHG is evolving CX with early AI adoption, cross-
functional service delivery, and a platform built to scale.

What You’ll Learn:

●How WHG built “mini contact centers” across departments to scale CX without added
complexity
●Lessons from integrating 8x8 Contact Center, 8x8 Unified Communications, and
Microsoft Teams Voice, and the impact on customer satisfaction, agent performance,
and service reliability
●What made 8x8 more than just a vendor—and why that partnership mattered in WHG’s
rollout

Bonus Demos:

See how WHG’s platform rollout comes to life—from AI-powered chat to omnichannel agent
tools—all in one seamless experience.

Who Should Attend:

CX and IT leaders, digital transformation teams, and anyone exploring how the right CX
platform can simplify and scale smarter service.

Simplified CX in Action: How Walsall Housing Group Boosted Productivity and Delivered Faster Service

The modern contact center feels like a pressure cooker: rising interaction volumes, increasingly complex customer expectations, frustrated agents, and limited resources are overwhelming even the best teams.

No wonder 87% of agents report extreme stress, and 35–45% leave their jobs each year—an unsustainable churn rate that creates a vicious cycle of attrition, increased onboarding costs, and damaged customer satisfaction.

This is more than a staffing issue, it’s an experience crisis. Agents are under immense pressure to perform, often without the tools or guidance to succeed. 

There’s a better way.

8x8 Agent Assist with Creovai is designed to be your contact center’s strategy to rapidly deliver value by solving this crisis at its core. More than just productivity software, 8x8 Agent Assist is your frontline engine for agent empowerment. It simplifies the complex and provides intelligent real-time coaching, giving agents the support they need to feel capable, make smart decisions, and enable faster resolutions.

In this high-impact session, you’ll learn:
• The “agent experience crisis” and why solving it is key to better CX + greater productivity.
• How real-time AI guidance, intelligent coaching, and automated workflows help your agents resolve issues faster with improved accuracy and less stress.
• The real-world use cases delivering value today.
• Customer success stories from retail, financial services, healthcare, insurance, and more.
• Why Agent Assist has become the most practical, immediately deployable AI-powered agent productivity solution on the market today.

This is not a product pitch. It’s an inside look at how leading contact centers are using AI to transform chaos into confidence.
You’ll walk away with actionable insights to empower your agents, reduce burnout, improve CSAT, and give your team the tools they deserve.

From overwhelmed to empowered: why AI-driven Agent Assist is every contact center’s secret weapon.

When tools don’t connect, conversations don’t either. Fragmented systems create more chaos than clarity, while slowing teams down, hiding insights, and adding risk. 

In this webinar, we’ll unpack how disjointed communication and CX stacks are hurting performance and what it means to build smarter workflows for better outcomes.

What you’ll learn:

• How fragmentation creates blind spots and complexity.
• What a unified communications and contact center architecture looks like in real-world practice.
• Why a single platform unlocks visibility, speed, and outcomes.

Let’s put an end to the patchwork. Reclaim control and deliver outcomes that scale.

Why fragmented UC & CC systems are killing visibility, velocity, and value

Your customers expect seamless and secure interactions.

Cyber threats are escalating, and compliance penalties are climbing to a staggering $14.8 million annually. 

Every interaction, every piece of data, and every customer touchpoint must be protected—not just to avoid fines, but also to build lasting trust.

In this episode of the CX Mastery series, we discuss with the Service Director from Brother Iberia on how security impacts customer trust and share real-world strategies for risk mitigation in customer communications.

Build customer trust with security as your first priority

Change is hard. 

But sinking money into outdated legacy systems is harder. It requires much more time, effort, and cost just to stay competitive and meet customer expectations.

Especially in uncertain economic times, the right technology investment will ensure that your business will thrive. 

In this episode of the 8x8’s CX Mastery series, Ethan Scarbrough, Systems Administrator for Jewish Family & Children’s Service, discussed the challenges of legacy infrastructure—siloed systems, inefficiencies, and the inability to integrate AI-driven solutions.

Upgrade now, reap the rewards later: Why modernizing your systems is the right move today.

Faster solutions. Smarter workflows. Delighted customers.

Is your team stuck in a cycle of inefficiencies, juggling disjointed systems, and mundane tasks? It’s time to reimagine what’s possible.

Conquer complexity and build connections across your teams and customers with an AI-integrated platform, enabling deeper insights and you to make a bigger business impact.

In the second episode of the CX Mastery series, Claire Penny, Customer Service Leader at Lichfield District Council, shared real-world success stories on maximising efficiency with AI-powered CX solutions.

Efficiency Unleashed: Turbocharge your CX operations with AI for maximum impact

Unlock Next-Level Customer Service with AI-Powered Tools.

Join us for an exclusive webinar and demo where we’ll showcase how 8x8 Contact Center can transform your customer service experience. Discover how cutting-edge tools, AI-driven automation, and advanced agent features can enhance customer satisfaction while streamlining your contact center operations. Get access to:

- Interactive Demos: See the tools in action through real-world scenarios.
- Expert Insights: Learn best practices for boosting customer satisfaction.
- Actionable Takeaways: Gain tips to improve your contact center operations immediately.

Improve Your Customer Experience with 8x8 Contact Center

Enhance Self-Service with Cutting-Edge Conversational AI.

Join our team from 8x8 University to learn how the 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant (ICA) empowers businesses to deliver seamless, user-friendly support. This session will showcase:

- Faster Self-Service: Discover how conversational AI delivers quick, personalized support across channels, highlighted through real-time demos.

- Simplified Deployment: Learn how to create and manage self-service experiences using graphical scripting tools—no IT involvement required. Watch these tools in action.

- Unified Workspaces: See how ICA consolidates data from multiple sources into a centralized workspace for better team management.

- Boosted Efficiency: Explore how personalized workspaces adapt dynamically to customer behaviors, promoting streamlined operations.

Optimize Self-Service Experiences with Conversational AI

Automate Customer Communications, Enhance Customer Satisfaction.

Discover how 8x8 Proactive Outreach can help you revolutionize customer engagement through personalized updates, alerts, and promotions across SMS and WhatsApp. Learn how to:

- Boost Engagement: Drive customer responses with tailored SMS and WhatsApp notifications. Watch how to create and send these messages in the demo.

- Personalize at Scale: Strengthen relationships with messaging customized for individual needs and preferences.
Automate & Save: Reduce operational costs with automated reminders and updates. See how to set up scheduled alerts in action.

- Maintain Continuity: Keep customers informed with timely, proactive updates. Explore two-way interactions with chatbots and agents in our demo.

The Power of Proactive CX: From Engagement to Efficiency in Every Interaction

The retail space is highly competitive. While battling for customer mind- and wallet share on a daily basis, you're holding off your competition. The key to gaining traction with existing and new customers is providing great customer journeys. LSH Auto, a luxury car retailer, prides itself on extending the best possible sales and service experiences to every customer. From the showroom, to the service department, to the contact center, LSH provides the personalized care their customers expect.

In this webinar learn how LSH Auto:

- Improved contact center call answer rates from less than 60 percent to nearly 90
- Constantly evolving routed calls to the correct person with the right information
- Uses speech analytics to advance customer communication analysis
- Became more customer focused to provide enjoyable motoring experiences

Accelerating Customer Experiences in Retail Today

2025 is just around the corner, and the stakes for delivering exceptional customer experiences have never been higher. Customers are demanding more—more personalization, more options, and faster answers.

Hear from Tim Wittbrod, 8x8’s CX Specialist Director, as he has a candid conversation with Accu’s Customer Satisfaction leader as they discuss:

- Accu’s CX transformation and how it has impacted their growth
- How to cautiously but effectively adopt AI to elevate customer satisfaction
- Tips overcoming challenges, retaining top talent, and delivering seamless CX in a competitive market

Now or never: Delivering seamless CX in an unforgiving market

We've crossed a Rubicon of sorts: Customers and agents will be relying on conversational AI-assisted chatbots at an increasing rate for years to come, and the technology will improve with use and investment. But what are the key considerations organizations should examine during this transition period?

Join our panel of experts from Verint, 8x8, and Replicant, who will offer their insights for adopting or expanding AI-assisted chatbots.

We will discuss these topics, which are crucial for navigating this next step in your customer service conversion:

– The key benefits reported by contact centers already using AI chatbots
– How to transition from a telephony-centric contact center
– How to overcome the key barriers to adoption
– How AI and automation allow brands to resolve, not deflect, customer service issues
– Which KPIs are impacted when AI is deployed in a natural and effective manner
– The value of open applications and domain-specific data

Humans and their Chatbots: AI-Assisted Answers for Everyone

New year, new expectations. Your frontline teams are more critical to CX than ever.

From retail associates to field techs to remote healthcare staff, the frontline is shaping more customer moments than ever before. But too often, these roles remain disconnected from the systems, insights, and support that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Join Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, and Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, Design & Operations at 8x8, as they unpack the evolution of customer experience, the rise of frontline enablement, and how 8x8 Engage bridges the gap between rigid technology stacks and real business outcomes.

What you’ll learn:
• Why CX strategy now extends beyond the contact center and includes the entire frontline.
• How companies are shifting from reactive support to proactive experience design.
• Why IT leaders are taking ownership of CX and influencing business decisions.
• Where the biggest blind spots exist in CX today and how to eliminate them.
• What makes 8x8 Engage different from traditional CCaaS or UC tools.

Register now and step into the new era of CX—powered by your frontline.

Analyst Outlook 2026: Empowering Frontline Teams Beyond the Contact Center

Customer Experience

Customer Care

Customer Engagement

Customer Journey

Customer Service

Unified Communications

Omnichannel

Conversational Intelligence

Operational Excellence

Flexible Work

Unified communications improve collaboration and increase productivity among employees through technologies such as VoIP, instant messaging and social media. Join this community to learn how to benefit from the full value of unified communications and collaboration technologies.

Collaboration and UC

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Big Data and Data Management

Get powerful end user computing insights from influential EUC experts. Connect with thought leaders and colleagues to get the most up-to-date knowledge on effective approaches to get non-programmers to create working applications.

End User Computing

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Information Technology

Get powerful insights on how to best serve today's customers. If you want to create a successful customer experience today, you will have to appeal to the need for “alone together” time. Millennials, Gen X, Boomers or Silent Generation all look for shared but individual experiences.

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Analyst Outlook 2026: Empowering Frontline Teams Beyond the Contact Center

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About this talk

8x8 Inc