My experience with 8x8 over the last few years has been miserable. In December, we migrated away to another provider.
Here is why we left 8x8 and why you should too.
1. While every effort was made to train and educate users to use 8x8's conferencing and messaging applications, users never "bought in" to it as a valid video conferencing service. Users gravitated to Microsoft Teams which was introduced to users prior to migrating to 8x8.
2. Users that attempted to use conferencing reported frequent issues with audio and video quality as well as participant confusion over functionality.
3. Promised integrations with Microsoft Office 365 products were poorly implemented and often troublesome to manage.
4. Clients demanded use of mainstream conferencing applications.
5. Users were often confused about having multiple tools that do the same job. Why have two conferencing solutions, two messaging solutions?
6. The 8x8 Work application often interfered with audio and video device usage when starting meetings with Team or any other conferencing application.
7. Customer service has been consistently poor. Attempts to communicate with an account representative often took days or weeks to return calls and emails.
8. Support tickets that were submitted often took days or weeks or never were responded to without eventually requiring escalation or a phone call.
9. Calls to tech support on average take 90-120 minutes to reach a live person. Attempts for a return call often took days.
10. We signed on to 8x8 before they started offering their video conferencing solution for free. We felt deceived by 8x8 after we were sold this as a part of the cost of service.
11. We have had repeated issues with user management in the control panel that have not been corrected in 3 years of service. Simply reusing a previously used extension caused numerous issues with voicemail and uploading recorded greetings.
12. After 3 years of administrative frustration and user confusion, we chose to consolidate our communication services into one application for user convenience.
13. Upon moving away from 8x8, we were under the impression that our terms were month-to-month after the initial contract ended. Turns out this is not the case and there is NO exit clause in their contracts. Contracts are AUTOMATICALLY renewed annually. Users are bound to their contracts for the FULL amount and duration of the contract. So, unhappy customers are penalized if they want to leave.
------------------------------
Jim Bednarz
------------------------------