8x8 has launched 8x8 Resolve, a critical communications and incident management product for deskless and distributed workers. The service is now available to select customers.
The product addresses a long-standing challenge for employers that need to contact frontline staff during outages, safety incidents and evacuations, especially workers without a corporate email account or company-issued device.
Resolve sends alerts simultaneously across SMS, voice, WhatsApp and the 8x8 Work mobile app. It is designed to keep escalating messages across channels until a recipient acknowledges them.
Each event creates an exportable communication log showing who was contacted, through which channel and when they responded. That record is intended for incident teams, HR, business continuity and compliance staff that need evidence of what happened during and after an incident.
The launch reflects wider demand from employers trying to reach large groups of workers outside office settings. 8x8 cited research from The Josh Bersin Company estimating that around 70% of the global workforce does not work at a desk.
Closing a gap
Traditional workplace tools often struggle in these situations because they rely on email, corporate identities and company-managed apps. In sectors including retail, logistics, healthcare, education, manufacturing and utilities, many workers sit outside those systems or use personal phones while on the move.
Resolve is built to cover the full process, from detection and notification to acknowledgment, escalation and resolution, in one system. It can also be triggered by webhook or schedule, while recipient lists can be synchronised with Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace, Okta and Workday.
Another feature uses conversational AI to let employees report incidents by SMS or WhatsApp, allowing staff to submit structured information without using a separate app or form.
8x8 is targeting incident and operations managers, IT leaders, and teams responsible for business continuity, safety and compliance. In regulated sectors, a documented notification trail can be a formal requirement rather than an administrative preference.
The issue has become more pressing as boards and risk teams pay closer attention to business continuity planning. 8x8 pointed to Gartner research showing that 29% of enterprise risk management leaders owned business continuity management in 2025, up from 23% in 2020, while 62% of heads of enterprise risk management said current plans did not adequately prepare their organisations for disruption.
Dave Michels, Principal Analyst and Founder at TalkingPointz, said many companies have invested more in executive communications tools than in systems for frontline staff.
"We've spent decades over-tooling the C-suite while leaving the frontline to rot in a mess of manual call trees and ignored emails. In a world of infinite noise, messaging is one of the most effective things that actually moves the needle. By the time an email is read, the crisis has already evolved," Michels said.
"8x8 Resolve stops treating the deskless workforce like an afterthought, using the channels they actually check, SMS and WhatsApp, to turn chaotic disruptions into orchestrated, audited responses," he added.
Audit trail
For employers, one of the main claims behind Resolve is resilience when other systems are unavailable. The service operates independently of corporate email and is designed to remain available if primary internal systems go down.
That could appeal to organisations where communication failures create operational and regulatory risks, particularly if managers later need to prove which workers were informed and when. The automatic communication log is intended to remove the need for teams to reconstruct events manually after an incident.
Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8x8, framed the company's case for the product in practical terms.
"Too many critical events still end with someone asking who got the message and who didn't," Middleton said.
"8x8 Resolve answers that question before it's asked. It is designed to reach every employee on whatever channel they are reachable on, escalates automatically until acknowledgment is confirmed, and produces a complete record of every step, from first alert to confirmed resolution, in one platform.
"For businesses with distributed or deskless workforces, that's the difference between managing an incident and being managed by one," he said.