Cleveland Guardians
Improving vital technology services at the Cleveland Guardians
Project summary
The opportunity
The Cleveland Guardians are a storied baseball franchise with more than a century of history and a unique relationship with their fan community. Attend a game, listen to the fans, and talk with the staff—it becomes clear that a culture of honor and mutual admiration flourishes in Cleveland. The Cleveland Guardians' IT team understands the importance of adapting to new technology and facilitating seamless communication among staff and fans to uphold the organization's culture and following, both now and in the future.
The Guardians’ IT team had two challenges they needed to address - determining which variables were most important and finding a technology provider with solutions that best addressed their needs. The solution needed to include three vital components:
1
Their managed service provider had to be willing to come alongside the Guardians’ internal department and provide a level of service that greatly exceeded the typical IT support contract.
2
The Guardians also needed technology that would improve the real-time reporting within their call centers, which is vital to provide a level of customer service that their loyal fan base deserves.
3
The IT department needed assurance that the unified communications system they selected would provide a high degree of reliability and serviceability.
Like most organizations looking to make such a decision, Whitney Kuszmaul, Director of IT at the Cleveland Guardians, and his staff were looking to avoid surprises. They knew the unified communications technology they chose couldn’t fail to meet expectations.
The process to move telephony systems became more about the people, than the solution itself. The solution is only as good as the people that are implementing it. Good people make good solutions. Not only did we pick a good telephony solution in itself, we picked a good implementer who had the staff and resources — Whitney Kuszmaul, Cleveland Guardians’ IT Director
The solution
Our solution consisted of three parts:
Value added partnership
We carefully listened to the Cleveland Guardians' needs and created a contract that allowed the MLB team to make the most of their internal IT resources while allowing us to partner with their PBX support team.
The Guardians sought a managed services partner who could design and implement a new unified communications system that would complement their internal team's efforts. We assured them that our UCaaS solution would not only reduce the total cost of ownership but also provide lasting value to the organization for years to come.
Easy-to-use real-time call center reporting
The Guardians knew that multisite contact centers were now the norm, but their previous system required cross-departmental collaboration between technical and managerial teams that made real-time reporting impossible. Built on the highly reliable voice capabilities of an on-premise unified communications system, ShoreTel’s (now Mitel’s) Enterprise Contact Center solution was a clear choice.
“Ease of use of the ShoreTel system was a huge factor in our decision – everything was cumbersome and complicated with our previous phone system.” — Whitney Kuszmaul, Cleveland Guardians’ IT Director
Reliability and serviceability
When evaluating a new PBX solution, the Guardians had to ensure that the resources needed to service the system would be predictable and reliable. Downtime or poor call quality is not an option for a professional MLB organization. ShoreTel's UCaaS product met this need by providing a proven, market-tested solution that maximized reliability, allowing the Guardians to optimize their internal team's capabilities.
We know every problem is unique. The reason we chose to highlight this case study is because at TTx, we have the opportunity to see the trends in technology significantly helping organizations like yours every day. We have the visibility to the leading edge, and we want to help facilitate a knowledge share through the industry. If you have any questions whatsoever, we’d be happy to help. — Brandon Kenney, CEO at TTx
The outcome
1
Call center efficiency
We were able to provide a solution that optimized productivity, especially among the fan services and sales teams. Using the system’s auto attendant and abandoned callback functions, the abandon call time reduced by 85%, from 21 minutes to three minutes. Additionally, hold times reduced from three minutes to less than one minute – significantly improving the overall fan experience.
2
Infrastructure reduction
The Guardians reduced their servers from 20 down to 4 by moving to ShoreTel’s customizable virtualized unified communications solution, a dramatic reduction in the amount of data center footprint space and the number of ports required. Because ShoreTel’s UCaaS solution can be implemented on industry-standard virtualized servers, we were able to provide tremendous flexibility when making infrastructure decisions.
3
Absolute reliability
ShoreTel’s distributed architecture for IP telephony eliminated complexity through reliability, ease-of-management, and ease-of-use. In the event of a WAN failure, the VoIP phone system continued to place and receive calls on the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) without disruption. If a switch were to fail, the other switches would automatically share the load. Users, meanwhile, experienced no disruption or awareness that an incident occurred.
Cleveland Guardians fans benefited from an improved customer experience through their primary purchase touchpoint, the call center. Hold times drastically reduced and abandoned calls decreased significantly.
For Whitney and his IT team, the outcome proved to be what they had hoped for – an efficient system that facilitated positive outcomes for both the Guardians staff and the fans, which is also equipped for future growth and expansion.
“We knew that moving telephony systems would be a very complex process. Now that we are on the other side of the decision, we realize that not only did we pick a good telephony solution, we picked the right implementer who had the staff and resources to get the job done. I’ve found that any technical solution is only as good as the people that are implementing it. Good people make good solutions.” — Whitney Kuszmaul, Cleveland Guardians’ IT Director
For TTx, becoming the official technology partner of the Cleveland Guardians was a dream come true as long time loyal fans of the franchise.
“For a local company who started small 40 years ago, it feels like being called up to do what we do best: providing fully managed call center and managed unified communications systems to businesses large and small. The Cleveland Guardians’ organization, with the leadership of Whitney, has provided a level of collaboration that make a partnership like this a joy.” — Brandon Kenney, Chief Executive Officer at TTx