8x8, a business communications platform provider, today launched 8x8 AI Routing, an organization-wide intelligent routing engine that dynamically matches every customer to the best available resources, regardless of where they sit, in real time.
8x8 AI Routing functions as a platform-level service to identify the right resource for each interaction, whether that's a contact center agent on 8x8 Contact Center, a subject matter expert on 8x8 Engage<, or a back-office employee on 8x8 Work, 8x8 AI Routing delivers across any channel, at scale, through a single customer interaction routing layer.
"AI-powered routing has long promised a lot, but vendors have largely failed to address one key challenge: automatically assigning and maintaining agent skills and proficiency levels. Using interaction transcripts, previous history, sentiment, and other real-time factors, 8x8 AI Routing analyzes data, suggests skills and skill levels for each agent, and lets administrators accept or adjust those assignments. The routing engine reanalyzes the data to recommend additional skill or level changes based on the agent's actual work, again for admin review," said Sheila McGee-Smith, founder and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics, in a statement. "What is even more powerful is that 8x8 can evaluate each inbound interaction and determine who across the entire enterprise, not just the contact center, is best equipped to resolve the customer's intent."
Every interaction is evaluated across several real-time factors and matched to the right resource instantly. When the best match isn't immediately available, the system adjusts automatically, keeping customers moving forward without transfers, delays, or dead ends.
8x8 AI Routing puts supervisors in control from day one. Teams can pilot on a single queue before full rollout, expanding at their own pace and shaping how the system works as confidence grows. All decisions are on the record: supervisors can pull exportable audit trails showing exactly why each interaction went to each resource, including confidence scores and complete rationale across all factors.
By analyzing rich interaction data, including transcripts, sentiment, and historical patterns, AI builds and suggests skill configurations automatically, manages automated skill profiles, and detects customer intent without manual interactive voice response (IVR) mapping. 8x8 AI Routing connects to 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant, 8x8 AI Studio, IVRs, and third-party bots. As new channels, tools, and teams are added, the routing layer grows with them.
"The routing problem has always been about architecture," said Hunter Middleton, chief product officer at 8x8, in a statement. "The best person for a given customer interaction might sit anywhere in the business, but most systems were never designed to look beyond their own boundaries. 8x8 AI Routing was built differently, spanning all teams and boundaries in the business simultaneously and evaluating the full range of available resources in real time. That's a challenge point solutions fundamentally struggle to solve and exactly the kind a true platform is built for."