8x8 boosts workforce management adoption with free tools

8x8's workforce management customer base grew by more than 170% between November 2025 and the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, nearly tripling over the period.

Growth was concentrated in contact centre deployments with 101 to 250 agents and those with more than 250 agents. 8x8 attributed the increase to demand from organisations replacing separate workforce tools with software integrated into its contact centre platform.

The company also launched automatic evaluations within its quality management product, extending its workforce engagement push beyond scheduling and forecasting. The feature uses artificial intelligence to score eligible customer interactions and is intended to reduce reliance on manual reviews of a small sample of calls.

According to 8x8, contact centre supervisors can activate workforce management themselves without IT administration and access up to 12 months of historical data. It said this approach differs from older workforce management systems, which often require longer implementation periods, up-front spending, and separate vendor management.

8x8 is making workforce management available at no additional cost to its contact centre customers. That pricing places the product in a part of the market where mid-sized operations have often relied on spreadsheets or manual judgement rather than dedicated workforce software.

Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8x8, said this addresses a longstanding gap in the market.

"Standalone WFM tools were built for the largest, most complex contact centers in the world - and that left organizations with the hundred-seat operations on the sidelines, making do with spreadsheets and gut instinct. That's the gap we're closing. When workforce management is embedded directly in the platform contact centre teams are already running, there's no six-figure implementation project, no IT backlog, no second vendor to manage. The hundred-seat contact centre has always deserved enterprise-grade WFM - they just never had a version built for them, until now," Middleton said.

Customer uptake

PrimeSource and Dimora Brands said the product changed how supervisors planned staffing.

"Prior to 8x8 Workforce Management implementation our supervisors were relying on spreadsheets and guesses on how to schedule their staff. Oftentimes calls would come in with no one available to answer. But now leaders gain the insight to forecast demand, optimize schedules, and ensure every shift has the right amount of coverage. Call abandonment has dropped and customer satisfaction has soared. The agents don't feel overwhelmed and frustrated and we are staffed to the needs of the business," said Genelle Chamberlain, IT Manager at PrimeSource and Dimora Brands.

Oxford University Press said it was testing the tool in a more complex operating environment.

"As we pilot the 8x8 WFM tool, we are excited about several promising features. By feeding directly from live 8x8 queues and contacts, it has the potential to streamline the entire resource planning process across hundreds of queues and multiple teams," said Hunain Kalim, Process Support Lead at Oxford University Press.

For 8x8, the workforce management push comes as artificial intelligence-based interactions on its platform are rising at a triple-digit annual rate, according to fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 data. The company is seeking to tie together workforce planning, quality reviews, and broader customer interaction data within a single system.

The quality management addition is part of that strategy. 8x8 said automatic evaluations score 100% of eligible interactions and map answers back to call transcripts, allowing agents to see the evidence behind an assessment.

That matters in a market where quality checks have often depended on small samples reviewed by supervisors or specialist teams. By shifting to wider coverage, suppliers are betting contact centres will use the resulting data not only for coaching but also for operational decisions across routing, staffing, and customer service management.

Market pressure

Analyst Layne Haaksma of Metrigy said smaller businesses have long faced barriers to adopting workforce management tools.

"The barrier to WFM adoption for SMBs has never been awareness - it's been cost and complexity. By including core WFM at no charge while offering advanced AI-driven capabilities as optional add-ons, 8x8 creates a natural growth path that aligns with how SMBs actually buy. Our research backs it up: 58.3% of SMBs expect automated scheduling and forecasting to come standard with their platform according to Metrigy's Workforce Engagement Management 2025-26 global research study. The market was already moving in this direction; 8x8 is leading the charge for its customers," Haaksma said.

8x8 said its workforce management and quality management products form the core of a broader workforce engagement management strategy for contact centre customers already using its subscription services. It said this model removes the need for additional software suppliers, separate integrations, and IT-led deployment projects that have traditionally accompanied standalone workforce engagement systems.