Enghouse Leads The CCaaS Game Ahead of 8×8 vs Five9 Battle

Are you deciding between 8×8 and Five9? It’s a tough call.

Both platforms have earned their stripes: 8×8 shines with excellent voice quality, while Five9 is known for its simplicity and responsive support team, always ready to assist.

Yet even these reputable CCaaS solutions have limitations, often prompting users to seek alternatives at the end of the contract.

Here, we offer a detailed comparison of 8×8 and Five9, focusing on the critical factors influencing choice. We have also introduced Enghouse Interactive as a great alternative to 8×8 and Five9.

Let’s dive into the specifics!

An Overview of 8×8

8×8 initially branded itself as a reliable UCaaS solution. From 2023 onwards, it focused on its CCaaS platform: 8×8 Contact Center. It’s a well-known cloud contact center application that integrates contact center capabilities, workforce management, and internal communication.

According to the user review site, 8×8 gets 4.1 stars out of 5.

Notable features

• Intelligent IVR with Natural Language Understanding.
• Outbound Auto Dialer with multiple dialer modes and automation of outbound message content
• Conversation IQ analytics suite
• Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) components
• Omnichannel support

Pros

• The phone line setup has been praised for its easy setup.
• It is rare for 8×8 to go totally down. Based on user reviews, 8×8 delivers on its promise of high uptime.
• Call and sound quality are big pluses.

• Transferring calls from one device to another is convenient.
• It is an easy-to-use platform with an intuitive user interface.

Cons

• Some users faced call quality and CRM integration issues.
• The 8×8 onboarding experience isn’t very smooth.
• Some reviews on Trustpilot indicate people lose money because of silent auto renewals.
• Sometimes, tech support might not be available when you need it the most.

• You can’t pull out a condensed report but rather individual reports, which might not be helpful in most scenarios.
• If you want to make any changes to the application, you have to approach administrative support, which is not convenient.
• There is a limit on the number of call recordings you can save.

Pricing

For its contact center solution, 8×8 offers three pricing plans. The basic X6 plan is a voice-only plan that comes with other essential contact center features such as skilled-based routing, IVR, and analytics. The x7 plan provides omnichannel support. The x8 plan requires premium features and support.

You need to talk to an expert to get more info on pricing.

An Overview of Five9

Five9 is a well-known player in the CCaaS industry. In 2023, Gartner nominated Five9 as one of the Magic Quadrant Leaders. Therefore, it’s not surprising that businesses of different sizes find Five9 to be a satisfactory solution for their contact center needs.

That being said, Five9, like any other solution, isn’t perfect (we will cover them soon).

Notable features

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and advanced call routing
• Multiple digital channels.Intelligent routing strategies based on various factors
• Pre-built integrations with major platforms, extensive integration options with REST APIs
• Superior outbound Auto dialer that leverages Conversational AI

Pros

• Users like Five9’s user-friendly interface, customization options, and incredible out-of-the-box solutions.
• It’s quick to deploy and allows users to reduce headcount and improve operational efficiency significantly.

• The chat AI feature is one of the highlighted features that users like.
• It has a sound reporting system for sending out reports.
• Five9 offers a massive collection of resources that makes it easy for users to set up or make changes to their platform without the help of customer support all the time.

Cons

• Some users (especially with larger teams) find Five9’s features to be essential at that price range. Some are even skeptical about the Five9 call distribution algorithm’s capabilities.
• Support quality can be less than satisfactory sometimes.

• Although there are plenty of resources available for setting up the software, the guides could have been simpler.
• If you have complex reporting requirements, their reporting feature is not enough.
• Above all, users find the platform to be expensive.

Pricing

Five9 is undoubtedly on the pricier side. It offers five separate plans. The basic plans, Digital (digital only) and Core (voice only) come at $175/month/user. However, these plans don’t cover workforce management and a few key features.

Five9’s Optimum Plan covers the majority of Five9’s features, including omnichannel and WFM features. It is priced at $290/month/user.

Enghouse CCaaS: Another Great Alternative

If you are considering either 8×8 or Five9 as your first cloud contact center solution or looking to change your existing provider, Enghouse CCaaS can be a perfect solution.

Here are a few compelling reasons that set Enghouse apart:

• The Enghouse team has almost 40 years of experience assisting clients with their contact center needs. This vast experience shapes how the Enghouse team deploys the solution without hampering your current operations, customizes it based on your needs, and ensures smooth user adaption. This Hitachi Case study will provide more insight into the effectiveness of Enghouse’s processes.
• Enghouse is a great choice for organizations that are trying to move from a legacy software system to a partial or completely cloud-based solution. Read more to learn about the different deployment options Enghouse offers.Once deployment is complete, the solution can serve you even in challenging situations.For example, after adopting Enghouse CCaaS, the state of Louisiana authority managed to respond well to all citizen queries during floods, even when a few call center sites went down. (Full case study)
• Enghouse CCaaS incorporates powerful AI features to improve the customer experience (CX) significantly. These advanced features can optimize agent productivity and provide valuable insights. To learn more about these functionalities, check out this in-depth guide.

Enghouse CCaaS Features

Omni-channel / Self Service / VCA

• Enghouse CCaaS provides a unified customer experience across multiple channels, including voice, email, chat, SMS, social media, and video. Regardless of where your users choose to engage, you can still consistently provide the best experience.
• You can connect the customer with the right agent with data-driven routing based on a few parameters like history, skillset, and availability.
• A seamless transition from IVR, voicebot, and chatbot to live assistance ensures that your callers get the support they need.
• It’s also complemented by real-time chat translation, which means there’ll be no more language barriers to serving your customers.

Advanced Agent Experience

• An intuitive web-based interface enables the supervisors to work from anywhere – in the office, from home, or a mix of both.
• If you want to integrate any application into the CCaaS solution, that’s possible with their APIs.
• AI-assisted agent support means your agents can receive response suggestions from AI during customer interactions.

Better Business Insights

• You can create comprehensive reports based on global, local, or regional visibility.
• Integrate WFM solutions for managing agents’ schedules.
• Get unbiased agent evaluations from every interaction using AI.
• Perform sentiment analysis on customer and employee voices to extract business insights.

Pricing

Enghouse has two plans, CCaaS Standard and CCaaS Advanced, with special bundles for SMBs as well. The standard plan is a voice-centric solution with advanced routing capabilities, and the advanced plan is to enhance the customer experience with an omnichannel platform.

Ending Notes

Both 8×8 and Five9 have advantages and disadvantages. For instance, customers like Five9’s user-friendly interface and quick deployment. On the other hand, 8×8 is known for its voice quality.

However, none of these two is free from downsides. From being overpriced to tech issues to unreliable support, users are pretty vocal about the deal breakers.

If you are looking for a CCaaS solution, Enghouse can be a great alternative. Not only does it come with powerful features and AI capabilities, but Enghouse also has almost 40 years of experience deploying, customizing, and supporting contact center platforms for organizations of all sizes. So, without further ado, book a demo now!

Disclaimer – The insights presented in this article are sourced exclusively from publicly available information and customer reviews. Feel free to reach out if you require any modifications or updates to the content.