8x8 Contact Center vs. Cisco Unified Contact Center

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
8x8 Contact Center
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
8x8 Contact Center is a cloud-based platform that unifies customer interactions across voice, chat, email, video, SMS, and social. It offers intelligent self-service automation, real-time analytics, and CRM integrations. With omnichannel engagement, agents deliver consistent, personalized service from one interface.N/A
Cisco Unified Contact Center
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Unified Contact Center is a contact center platform that can support up to 24,000 agents. It supports call routing, omnichannel integrations, and a management portal for creating customer profiles, segmentation, and resource monitoring.N/A
Pricing
8x8 Contact CenterCisco Unified Contact Center
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
8x8 Contact CenterCisco Unified Contact Center
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
8x8 Contact CenterCisco Unified Contact Center
Considered Both Products
8x8 Contact Center
Chose 8x8 Contact Center
We previously used CISCO but with limited reporting capabilities and ease of customisation, we moved to 8x8 which offered what we needed and more
Chose 8x8 Contact Center
The right technology for the size contact center we have. The right RoI for migrating to a Cloud Contact Center. The E5 Microsoft license allowed us to leverage the 8x8 Contact Center integrations and not add additional cost for user PSTN. Able to reduce licensing across all …
Cisco Unified Contact Center
Chose Cisco Unified Contact Center
Easy to use
Good quality dashboard
Enables collaboration
Chose Cisco Unified Contact Center
Both with similar purposes and features, but Cisco provides a better measurement for KPI's and target goals which are important to the client, while also helping us keep track of our employee's performance and how is that impacting our customer's satisfaction with the level of …
Features
8x8 Contact CenterCisco Unified Contact Center
Contact Center Software
Comparison of Contact Center Software features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Contact Center
8.6
167 Ratings
3% above category average
Cisco Unified Contact Center
4.5
41 Ratings
60% below category average
Agent dashboard8.8150 Ratings5.041 Ratings
Validate callers8.4131 Ratings5.037 Ratings
Outbound response8.7133 Ratings5.037 Ratings
Call forwarding8.9152 Ratings5.038 Ratings
Click-to-call (CTC)8.8102 Ratings4.031 Ratings
Warm transfer8.6144 Ratings4.136 Ratings
Predictive dialing8.266 Ratings4.028 Ratings
Interactive voice response9.296 Ratings4.135 Ratings
REST APIs8.263 Ratings5.031 Ratings
Call scripts8.794 Ratings4.136 Ratings
Call tracking8.7148 Ratings4.139 Ratings
Multichannel integration8.789 Ratings4.031 Ratings
CRM software integration8.684 Ratings5.031 Ratings
Workforce Optimization (WFO)
Comparison of Workforce Optimization (WFO) features of Product A and Product B
8x8 Contact Center
8.6
154 Ratings
4% above category average
Cisco Unified Contact Center
4.7
42 Ratings
55% below category average
Inbound call routing9.2139 Ratings5.039 Ratings
Omnichannel inbound routing8.584 Ratings4.131 Ratings
Recording8.7138 Ratings4.035 Ratings
Quality management8.7138 Ratings5.036 Ratings
Call analytics8.2139 Ratings5.037 Ratings
Historical reporting8.5130 Ratings5.040 Ratings
Live reporting8.431 Ratings4.140 Ratings
Customer surveys8.478 Ratings5.028 Ratings
Customer interaction analytics8.724 Ratings5.030 Ratings
Best Alternatives
8x8 Contact CenterCisco Unified Contact Center
Small Businesses
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.5 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.5 out of 10
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Google Cloud Contact Center AI
Google Cloud Contact Center AI
Score 7.0 out of 10
Google Cloud Contact Center AI
Google Cloud Contact Center AI
Score 7.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
8x8 Contact CenterCisco Unified Contact Center
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(168 ratings)
7.0
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.6
(9 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(54 ratings)
7.0
(8 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(53 ratings)
7.3
(16 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
8x8 Contact CenterCisco Unified Contact Center
Likelihood to Recommend
8x8 Inc.
Any organisation that has a customer-facing call center should seriously consider 8x8 as a solution. It is cost-effective and competitive on pricing, their customer service has been very responsive and knowledgeable, and the integration was seamless. It is suited to any areas where a centralised and unified call center solution is required, in particular, being able to refer to all customer data interactions. Call data analysis is also incredibly helpful.
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Cisco
I would recommend it to other people in my contact and business circle, but if I recommend it to someone who has certain difficulties in accessing some tools within Cisco, he may have great difficulty in getting help because of the support that is lacking in most of the times.
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Pros
8x8 Inc.
  • The out of the box chat feature is outstanding for your website. My team was able to adopt chat easily.
  • Setting up the system with the help of an integrator was especially easy and did not require any IT training on my part.
  • The visibility of being able to manage my team and all media channels in one panel is awesome.
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Cisco
  • Provides you with a solid routing engine that was built to handle Service Provider level throughput - if you need stability and a work horse this is the platform for you.
  • The core features on the whole are good, but where UCCE is very good is the eco-system of Solutions Plus partner integrations that expand on the core capabilities with the market leaders in areas such as WFO, Campaign Management, Biometrics and Natural Language.
  • The investment Cisco makes in the CC space means they are always improving the platform features, scale and reliability.
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Cons
8x8 Inc.
  • Support has always been a less than stellar area.
  • There's a few feature gaps that have been called out for years that haven't been addressed yet. I.e. passing calls from UC to CC requires a phone number (like why?)
  • Another frequent complaint I get is "why can't I just completely shut off a user's voicemail". You can fiddle with call forwarding rules, but sooner or later, an errant call finds a way to end up there.
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Cisco
  • After 25+ years, the product still requires experienced and highly skilled engineers to deploy the product properly per Cisco Best Practice guidelines.
  • Third-party integrations are also very cumbersome and require highly skilled and experienced engineers and significant time and financial investment to deploy.
  • Upgrading the product is cumbersome and requires Cisco ATP or Cisco AS which is time consuming and very expensive.
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Likelihood to Renew
8x8 Inc.
8x8 contact center is meeting our needs as a call center communication solution. We use 8x8 across the entire organization and have been able to work with our account management team to ensure our configuration and integrations meet our business, legal & compliance needs across the organization. The greatest benefit has been the 8x8 account management team who consistently works with us to ensure our needs are being met.
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Cisco
if it is up to me I would maintain its use. I was not able to make those decisions previously.
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Usability
8x8 Inc.
It is very easy to use; some features that I don't frequently use but still occasionally need to rely on can be hard to find simply because my memory is poor. Once you get in the swing of it, however, the user interface is very straightforward and can be easily used by employees across a range of technical literacy levels.
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Cisco
Cisco Unified Contact Center is a scalable product . Can be used in amy organizational units not only the contact center . Can be used for many IT Helpdesk setups and any internal or external CC . We can use it to automate the outbound dialing as well for marketting and invoices and other use cases
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Reliability and Availability
8x8 Inc.
The only issue I have ran across was on getting the updated new version
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Performance
8x8 Inc.
Yes everything loads quickly and its ready for use
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
8x8 Inc.
Charlie Knutson is fantastic, however when you call the support number it is almost impossible to get through and when you do they cannot fix your issue. That is the biggest challenge. It is a difference between that and reaching our contact directly. The email support number that our company was given is very responsive and good.
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Cisco
Cisco Unified Contact center is a very smart & reliable solution to go for. Its active-active sight base architecture and [customizable] features really help to deliver efficient customer service, enhanced next-gen experience, and uninterrupted operations. I believe every [organization] should opt for it if required.
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In-Person Training
8x8 Inc.
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.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Online Training
8x8 Inc.
The training was easy but would probably be much easier in person. Easier to ask questions and show someone your computer when you are in person. Easier to differentiate between network issues and 8x8 issues. Online works too but for how technical 8x8 can be, I would recommend you try and do in person if possible. Would make it much easier to get help when needed. This is a personal preference and not something that is required by any means. The online training is still great and still did the trick. The good thing is that help is always available months or years after if there is something new you want to do
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
8x8 Inc.
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,
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
8x8 Inc.
I would say they are all very comparable. The one advantage to the Spectrum Enterprise OnDemand would be that it has it own internet bandwidth, so it doesn't eat into our overall internet usage bandwidth. It is however more expensive than 8x8. Poly Series just didn't have the flexibility and extensive features offered by 8x8, and therefore was not an acceptable replacement.
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Cisco
Similar I guess, however, I feel like Avaya was more suited for a contact center and allowed for all information to be in one place. The QA Forms were more flexible and easy to review. Predicative analysis was available to assist with scheduling and staffing. It was easier to manipulate and implement- I didn't need to go through 3 different parties to make a simply modification.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8x8 Inc.
It is pretty much "Par for the course" with the options out there with other vendors.
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Cisco
Licenses are very expensive. The customer has to buy IP telephony or Unified Communication and Collaboration Licenses and for Contact Center Solution licenses separately. There must be a price tone down as the competition is really high. New customers are willing to go for cloud-based solutions [that] are cheaper and easy to deploy.
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Scalability
8x8 Inc.
It was implemented across the board in the company and has worked perfectly
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
8x8 Inc.
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Scripting not supported
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Return on Investment
8x8 Inc.
  • 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.
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Cisco
  • A smoother route to helping end users with critical needs
  • With quick assist while on hold, less calls come into the pool while agents have the ability to assist more critical needs
  • The ability to work remotely during an extreme event assisting end users
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ScreenShots

8x8 Contact Center Screenshots

Screenshot of inbound SMS with contact center agent response in 8x8 Agent Workspace. Agents are able to see incoming interactions and respond with consistently across channels like voice, SMS, RCS, webchat, email, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, one-way video, Viber, and social media channels via our Meltwater integration.Screenshot of real-time suggestions via 8x8 Smart Assist and full customer history and overall sentiment in 8x8 Agent Workspace.Screenshot of the completely customizable 8x8 Supervisor Workspace for real-time and historical reporting plus features to make quick changes on the fly. Available on desktop and mobile.Screenshot of 8x8 Analytics for Contact Center, which provides out-of-the-box reports, dashboards, and visualizations like the Interaction Journey visual that shows the complete customer journey across channels.Screenshot of 8x8 Quality Management, used to drill into specific interactions, playback, and leave comments with timestamps.Screenshot of 8x8 Voice/Text/Sentiment Analytics, used to create Topics to track common phrases and keywords within customer interactions happening in the contact center.