Speaker 1: 00:03 Welcome to the tech in 20 minutes podcast where you will meet new tech vendors and learn how they can help your business. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven’t heard of before. Hi. I’m Max Clark, and I’m talking with Jason Weiser, who is the RVP of channel sales for 8 by 8.
Speaker 1: 00:22 Jason, thanks for joining.
Speaker 2: 00:24 Thanks for having me, Max. I look forward to chatting with you today.
Speaker 1: 00:27 So for people that don’t know 8 by 8, what does 8 by 8 do?
Speaker 2: 00:32 Yeah. So appreciate the question. 8 by 8, we are ultimately a cloud solutions company. We help businesses transform their customer and employee experience with a single system of engagement for voice, video meetings, chat, team messaging, contact center, and enterprise API solutions powered by one global cloud communications platform.
Speaker 1: 00:58 So let’s dig into that a little bit. You know, you say voice, you’re talking about a phone systems, contact center, you’re talking about inbound call routing, probably, predominantly, and then you said API. Can you give me a little bit more color on each one of those, you know, topics?
Speaker 2: 01:14 Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, voice, I feel like that’s pretty self explanatory. Right? You got calls coming in if you’re looking at it from a contact center standpoint, but, also, if you’re looking at it just from a communication amongst the office.
Speaker 2: 01:25 So you’ve got the ability to reach out internally, see presence of employees, also have the ability to interact from a chat standpoint and transition amongst those channels. So I can be on a call and, let’s say, you and I are chatting and one of my coworkers has a question, they can still message me and be able to have that interaction and get the answer in real time, one single pane of glass. I don’t have to leave disparate systems and and incorporate. It’s all in one UI environment.
Speaker 1: 01:52 So 8 by 8 has been around for a while. You guys have been in this space for for some years now. Right?
Speaker 2: 01:58 Yeah. So we started the company, and don’t hold me to this exact date because I’m sure, you know, one of the founders is gonna is gonna call me out on this. If I don’t know the exact date. But, I wanna say it was in 8 1987 is when we originated. So we’ve been around for quite some time, made a couple iterations, and we’ve really morphed as a as a company really focusing on voice in the cloud and 100% in the cloud.
Speaker 2: 02:19 It it was we’ve never done anything from a prem based environment. Everything’s been focused from a cloud ecosystem standpoint.
Speaker 1: 02:26 So in today’s world post COVID, there’s a lot of discussion and and activity related to remote and distributed workforce. I mean, we saw a pretty rapid shift of companies that were maybe on premise and all located or co located in office buildings or locations that now have remote workers. How does this work in the 8 by 8 world? What would be the experience for somebody looking at or thinking about going remote or supporting distributed or deciding what they’re doing, you know, in the next months years?
Speaker 2: 02:52 Yeah. So I think remote work has kinda been a it’s been a topic that’s been talked about over, I would say, the last 10 years. I mean, I look back to when I started my career, personally, it was I was working remotely myself. Right? And the and the tools, I think, have progressively gotten better amongst time.
Speaker 2: 03:09 And so I think this transition or this this pandemic has really catapulted that into a much faster environment for us to adopt it from a business standpoint. Some of the articles that have come out as of late have shown the increase in productivity from people being at home. They liken that to, you know, people not just stopping by to just chitchat at an office desk. And while everyone needs that interaction, when you see 5, 10% productivity increases, it absolutely has an impact to the bottom line. So I think we’re gonna continue to see that shift from a standpoint of getting more and more companies taking advantage of the remote environment.
Speaker 2: 03:50 And 8 by 8 allows for that to happen, by in large part, because of the single platform that we offer. So you’ve got the ability to leverage your your computer, a simple laptop. There’s no downloads that need to happen. So, when we did have this pandemic and companies were forced to make that shift, there was no IT security things that that companies had to do. They could simply say, hey.
Speaker 2: 04:10 Here’s your, here’s your meeting link, and they can log in and have video chat, etcetera. And so I think the in general, this has put a focus on people can do it. People, I think, are starting to like to do it to an extent. And don’t get me wrong, people. I’m missing that interaction.
Speaker 2: 04:26 But I do think that there’s going to be some sort of, healthy balance of folks that are no longer needed to go into the office versus folks that, are in fact needed to be there.
Speaker 1: 04:37 So, I mean, for a company that was already an 8 by 8 customer, their transition to remote was, you know, take the phone off your desk and go home with it or download the softphone and or and and use a soft, you know, softphone app on your computer or install the app on your phone. For, you know, companies that have now been caught in looking at transitioning into a a cloud communication system or or they’re, you know, maybe thinking it from from the standpoint of I need to have remote, you know, remote workers now. What do I do? What has 8 by 8 done, and and what are you how are you facilitating and helping people with that transition?
Speaker 2: 05:10 So we’ve looked at it from a 2 pronged approach. You mentioned a little bit earlier from the from the current 8 by 8 customers. There were things that had to change necessarily from a from a user standpoint, more so in terms of the licensing model. Once you have that shift of everyone being remote, all of a sudden, companies saw the the increase in the number of their staff that they had to be able to support working from home. So we immediately enacted a program called the rapid expansion program, and this was for current customers where it allowed them to turn on new licensees new licenses, excuse me, to be able to assist the workers that are now going to be working from home who didn’t necessarily need a phone number, who didn’t have to have that sort of interaction or videos, etcetera.
Speaker 2: 05:55 And there’s no terms associated with that. So it’s more, hey. We need this for 1 month or or 10 months or we wanna continue on. They can cancel at any time with no ETFs. So that’s the first part of the of the equation.
Speaker 2: 06:06 The second element was more around the net new customers. And with a lot of companies not looking not being able to forecast, obviously, no one was able to forecast this pandemic, but they didn’t necessarily have the the backup or disaster recovery in place to be able to make that that transition incredibly quickly over to that remote at home environment. And so one of the things that we did was we offered our video medians platform right off the bat for free as well to anybody and customers, businesses, to be able to use it. It’s 3 easy steps. You go on to the website, you name the meeting, and you click start meeting.
Speaker 2: 06:45 You can invite folks. It integrates into Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar, etcetera. So it allows them to be able to have that video interaction as well. So we’re certainly looking at it from kind of that 2 pronged approach of how do we help the current customers, but also focus on some of the net new customers. And then the last part of that was with those net new customers.
Speaker 2: 07:05 We allowed them to upgrade into a, what we call kind of that, the premium model where they can pay on a monthly basis. They get more analytics on the back end. They can see, their speech analytics, and, there’s some additional features in terms of integrations that you’re going to get with that month to month model that allows them to be able to leverage it as well. So we’ve been evolving as the pandemic continues on and the needs of the customers continue to change, we make that evolution with them.
Speaker 1: 07:34 So your video collaboration tool is all browser based, you said. So from that standpoint, there’s no software downloads. The IT department doesn’t have to be involved. You’re not talking about security policy revisions. I mean, it sounds like that becomes a very easy thing to integrate into enterprise.
Speaker 2: 07:48 Absolutely. Yes. And and when you talk about from an enterprise standpoint, the the the next thing that always comes up is what’s the security? What does that security look like? Right?
Speaker 2: 07:57 When you when you hear browser based, people start to get concerned. And so, you know, not getting into the some of the challenges that the video companies have had over the last 2 months, but that that has been a big topic now that everybody has shifted. And so we’ve gone to end to end encryption. We’re currently building that out right now. And there’s a couple other security things that we put into place to, you know, be able to satisfy the the IT and security folks at a at a given company up including to, telemedicine to be able to have HIPAA compliance from that standpoint and to be able to leverage those certain security protocols.
Speaker 1: 08:32 There’s a few people offering a UCaaS and collaboration tools and contact center at this point. Why 8 by 8? What makes 8 by 8 better at this, you know, than other people in the space?
Speaker 2: 08:42 Yeah. Yeah. So it goes back to kinda what we had talked about. Right? The first question, I would I would say, you know, one of the things that we focused on is we we were an engineering company first.
Speaker 2: 08:52 We were a company that built out our platform. We believed in a single pane of glass, and that has continued on as we’ve acquired companies. We’ve brought them in, redevelop their code, etcetera, to have it be one system of intelligence. And the reason that’s important, as you look at this from an at home environment, as IT and security is all being looked at and and trying to be tracked in terms of what that engagement process looks like, there’s an element that allows you to be able to get data from an output of that standpoint. And so having that one system of intelligence and being able to transition seamlessly from the UC to the CC, get access to subject matter experts that you may not be in communication with or may not have access to right next at right next to your cubicle, that’s critical to business into that speed to market.
Speaker 2: 09:42 So it helps with the employee experience, which, in turn, helps customer experience. And, ultimately, that’s that’s the end goal is to drive overall the overall experience of each end user and their consumer or customer.
Speaker 1: 09:55 Otherwise, make sure your employees are happy and productive, and your customers will be happy and and satisfied. Right? I mean, that’s that’s the that’s the grail.
Speaker 2: 10:02 That is that is very critical in our mind. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: 10:06 So, I mean, can you give me an idea of who your your customers are, what this looks like? I mean, are you focused on specific industries or verticals or are places on the planet or sizes? I mean, how does that work for 8 by 8?
Speaker 2: 10:17 Yeah. I mean, we’ve got, the way that we kinda have our business structured is we’ve got, 2 two rest to market from a commercial standpoint and from an enterprise. So we run the gamut from single users on up to, you know, 100,000 plus implementation. So it’s a we I don’t wanna say that we segment ourself in terms of specific industries. I will say where we’ve seen a lot of success is retail.
Speaker 2: 10:41 It’s been very popular. We’ve also seen a significant amount of success from the telemedicine side or or health care. Banking is another very large vertical, if you will, that we’ve seen significant successes. So, we don’t we don’t play in one specific vertical. We kind of run the gamut of of all of them and and span the customers.
Speaker 2: 11:00 And then depending on where the customer lines up helps with the go to market strategy of how how we tailor the process to make sure that they’re receiving the best experience from 8 by 8.
Speaker 1: 11:11 And 8 by 8, I mean, you guys have a have a global footprint, global platform. I mean, there’s very large enterprises planet wide with 8 by 8.
Speaker 2: 11:19 Yeah. Absolutely. You know, we’ve got some patents out there that are critical in order to enable the the routing, from a geography standpoint. So we’ve got, the ability to look at where a call is originating and where it’s terminating and defining what the best traffic the route to traffic is or the best way, excuse me, to route that traffic. But in addition to that, we also have the ability to minimize the latency, which, as we know, that’s a big concern as companies try to make the shift from a prem based to a cloud based.
Speaker 2: 11:51 Generally speaking, that there’s two concerns that come in, the the quality of service and the security. And so by leveraging that quality of service to be able to have the geo routing that we have, it absolutely minimizes that and helps with the mass score to ensure that the call quality is there.
Speaker 1: 12:08 So, I mean, if I had an office in I mean, there’s there’s certain countries that are difficult with telephony and voice, right, and VoIP. So let’s say I was I had an office in Israel, and we had a PRI line. I mean, is that something that we could integrate and bring into an 8 by 8 environment and have a single system with you?
Speaker 2: 12:22 Yeah. We would wanna look at it. We’ve got, folks within our company that look specifically at porting. We look at the network dynamics. So that’s all part of the presales process.
Speaker 2: 12:32 There’s not companies right now that I’ll say that we absolutely won’t do business, but there are some I shouldn’t say companies. Excuse me. I’ll back up and say countries that we won’t do business in. However, there are some countries that are harder to do business in. And so depending on what that routing of the telephony looks like, we may or may not say, hey.
Speaker 2: 12:49 We’ve gotta do it a different way. But we’ll leverage our network engineering team at no charge to the customer to say, hey. This is how this is how we could make it happen. Does this work? Here’s what we’re gonna offer from a SLA standpoint, etcetera.
Speaker 1: 13:02 So, I mean, who becomes an ideal customer for 8 by 8? What’s the no brainer? You know? Is it is it, you know, I have multiple countries and continents of footprint, or I have certain locations or certain vertical or certain application or certain size. Like, what what is the, oh, you guys fit this profile.
Speaker 1: 13:17 Like, there’s a slam dunk.
Speaker 2: 13:19 So from our standpoint, again, it goes kinda back to that. We don’t play in a specific vertical standpoint. I will say retail to from our perspective is a slam dunk on our side. We do very, very well on the retail side of the house. In addition to that, when you’re looking at it from a SB, if you’re looking at something from a velocity standpoint, you want quick, It’s got the security, etcetera.
Speaker 2: 13:39 It’s a very good option to be able to spin this up in a very quick manner. And then as you go to the enterprise, again, if you’re looking from a from a global standpoint, that is absolutely a strong suit of ours in a in a place that we win very frequently.
Speaker 1: 13:55 So if I’m considering 8 by 8, you know, how would I kind of under get an idea of how much will this cost? Like, what is you you have a pricing range you can give me an idea of, and what is you know, is this based on extensions or seat or or feature set? You know, what how does this break down?
Speaker 2: 14:08 Yeah. So we look at it from there’s a there’s a couple different routes to market that we can look at it as. We have one, I mentioned a little earlier during the conversation where we’ve got the the free the freemium meetings, if you will, where you get a little bit more API connections and things along those lines. That’s 12.99 a month, for instance. Month to month, you can turn it off as needed.
Speaker 2: 14:28 But if you’re looking at it from a from an overarching communications platform, it can range anywhere from about $12,
Speaker 1: 14:37 I
Speaker 2: 14:37 would say, 10 to $12 on the low end side if you’re just wanting phone lines on up to the contact center side of the house can be, you know, a 115, 120 plus dollars.
Speaker 1: 14:46 Let’s talk about contact center for a second since you brought it up. A a lot of companies might say, you know, we’re not running a contact center. We’re not we’re not a a reservation system or a trap you know, big airline that you call into. I mean, that’s but but that line becomes really blurry in a lot of cases because a lot of people actually do have contact center. So how would you describe contact center, where you actually fit and how somebody would know, like, this is something they should be thinking about?
Speaker 2: 15:10 Yeah. So from a contact center standpoint, one could make the argument that if you’re getting incoming calls, you’re a contact center at the end of the day. And I think it’s important to look at how your business is set up in terms of what that routing is. So the way that we kind of have our system set up, it’s called the X Series platform, you can scale throughout, you know, those licensing depending on what additional needs you may or may not have. And so from a contact center standpoint, as you start to grow and potentially want to get into different spots of the business and or have different integrations, be able to leverage analytics, and those sorts of things, that’s what dictates kinda where it’s at.
Speaker 2: 15:49 But you can have a contact center on the very low side and be able to still, you know, leverage just a basic call transfer because that’s ultimately a, you know, a very basic, if we will, contact center. But if you wanna have kind of that, the IVRs on the forefront and you wanna be able to have speech analytics and those additional items that you get with some of the larger contact centers, so to speak, that’s certainly a function. And you don’t need to have a 100 or 300, 500 employees on that. You can have, you know, 5 employees on that and and just have that routing to to offset some of those calls that you may be getting in on a frequent basis, things like hours of service, you know, what are your holidays, etcetera. That stuff can all be offloaded for a lot lower cost than having an employee, you know, shield those calls.
Speaker 1: 16:33 And your interactions are with the contact center are much more than just voice, and there’s other channels and ways for for customers to interact in that point.
Speaker 2: 16:40 Absolutely. You’ve got, you’ve got the voice side of things. You’ve got messaging. You’ve got integrations on the social platforms. So there’s there’s various different ways that you can absolutely interact from from a contact center side of the house as well.
Speaker 2: 16:53 And that’s important as you’re starting to have those conversations that we that we understand that and understand what it is that how you want to facilitate those coming into your business environment to help that customer experience.
Speaker 1: 17:06 So, Jason, can you run me through what the actual trial and demo process is with 8 by 8 as it relates to somebody looking at you for video or voice, you know, communication collaboration, contact center? I mean, right now, we’re we’re in a con condensed cycle. So how would they, you know, how would they look at this?
Speaker 2: 17:23 Yeah. So from the condensed cycle, it’s interesting because it’s kinda changed the way that that businesses have historically looked to acquire a unified communications platform. So I’ll speak to it in terms of kind of the way that it’s working right now or what we’re seeing right now, and then I’ll I’ll highlight, some of the some of the changes or some of the legacy, I should say, ways that we’ve done the business model or or facilitated working with us. So from a from a standpoint of right now, how COVID has impacted it, one of the changes that we’ve seen is on the small business side of the house and, I guess, for small and midsize businesses, if you will, we’ve seen a lot more velocity. There are deals that have come in and they call us and they say, hey.
Speaker 2: 18:05 We need we need this because our state has shut down. They’re leveraging Safer at Home. How quickly can you turn this up? Can you give us a demo? We can give a demo that within an hour, 2 hours, depending on, you know, the, the resource that’s available, and we can have a system up within a day.
Speaker 2: 18:22 And if I look at it from an enterprise standpoint, there’s actually a pretty neat case study on our website. We school in Italy when the when the country shut down. They actually called on a Friday night. It was after business hours, said, hey. Country’s shutting down.
Speaker 2: 18:35 We need to have a solution. And by that Tuesday, we had the entire country set up to be able to leverage the video communications platform. Right now, last I heard, it was, like, 30% of of all secondary schools in Italy are leveraging our video communications platform to be able to interact with their teachers and still get their schoolwork done. So it’s it’s been a a very big pivot, I’ll say, from a from what historically the process is because anybody I feel like that’s been in this industry for a while knows that the sales life cycle or or the vetting process from a from a, you know, business side is pretty extensive as they look at this. So going back to what it was, you know, prior to COVID and where I think it’ll eventually even back out to, we have some really cool things that we do in that sales process to be able to assist the customer in looking at this.
Speaker 2: 19:26 You know, we do offer demos, of course. We’ve got we’ll do live demos, walk them through. But the biggest differentiator from my mind that we do compared to our competitors is we have what’s called our center of excellence team. And this is a team that, internally, we can take opportunities to and say, hey. This is a, you know, an opportunity for a 500 seat customer, and they want these specific integrations.
Speaker 2: 19:50 And to migrate off of their prem environment, they need to see this and see how it flows. And so this team will actually go on-site. They’ll build out the integrations. They’ll let them trial with specific success criteria that was created from 8 by 8 side and the customer side and let them trial that for 45 or 60 days, etcetera, to ensure that it it works as needed. And it’s a it’s a two way form of communication.
Speaker 2: 20:14 There may be a little tweak over here that needs to happen. From our side, the customer may want something routed a little differently because they don’t wanna like for like anymore. And and during that time, that’s a that’s a no charge service that we provide to ensure that customers feel confident making the shift from their premise or or current cloud environment over to 8 by eights.
Speaker 1: 20:34 It’s awesome. Jason, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: 20:38 Thank you very much, Max. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: 20:41 Thanks for joining the Tech in 20 Minutes podcast. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven’t heard of before. We can help you buy the right tech for your business. Visit us at clarksys.com to schedule an intro call.
