All of our sales and support center agents are up and running remotely—and have better workflows than ever—thanks to RingCentral.
Jeff Lutes
SVP of Technology, Orlando Magic
True champions for their fans
Founded in 1989, the Orlando Magic is one of the youngest teams in the NBA. And by their sixth year in the league, in 1995, the Magic became the second-youngest team ever to make it to the NBA Finals.
The team has gone on to rack up plenty of other accolades—including six division championships, playoff appearances in more than half of their seasons in the league, and a second trip to the NBA Finals in 2009. Also, five Magic players, including Shaquille O’Neal, have been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
But the Magic organization is committed to more than winning basketball games. Their mission: “To be world champions on and off the court, delivering legendary moments every step of the way” That’s why the team donates millions to community groups each year. It’s why the organization works so hard to create an amazing professional experience for employees. And it’s why the Magic always aims to create an outstanding experience for its fans.
It was this commitment to legendary customer service that led the Magic to retire their old telephony system.
A phone system having one losing season after another
Jeff Lutes, the Magic’s Senior Vice President of Technology, recalls the sales team’s growing frustration with their on-premise phone infrastructure.
“The phone system made it very difficult for our agents to be mobile,” Jeff says. “They were limited to forwarding their office numbers to their own mobile phones, but they wouldn’t know if those calls were work or personal. And if they wanted to make a business call originating from the company phone system, that process was so cumbersome that no one ever did it.”
The staff also desired to more fully integrate their phone system into their CRM—or, as Jeff explains—to easily integrate the systems. “With our on-premise phone system, anytime we wanted to make even a simple system change, we had to call a third party, submit a request, and wait.”
These limitations were increasingly undermining the Magic’s ability to create the outstanding experience the team wanted to provide for clients, fans, and other callers.
Here’s how Jeff sums up the challenge: “We basically had four sales rooms and or support centers established: ticket sales, our Fan Experience Center, the Solar Bears hockey team, and an internal number for IT issues. But other than being able to set up some basic call queues, we really didn’t have much of a contact center solution.”
But the Magic weren’t just playing defense
Even aside from these troubles with their legacy phone system, the Magic had another reason to search for a more modern solution. “In the last couple of years, we initiated a new strategic goal to move as much of our IT operations as possible to the cloud,” Jeff says. “Finding the right cloud communications platform was already on our roadmap. Then COVID hit, and that really accelerated our timetable.”
Jeff’s technology team researched the major cloud communications solutions, vetted each of them, and consulted with other NBA and pro sports teams.
We were extremely impressed with RingCentral’s breadth of features, the ease of use, and the ease of implementation.
Jeff Lutes
SVP of Technology, Orlando Magic
As Jeff points out, both of the NBA teams they spoke with were very pleased with their experiences using RingCentral—particularly with how well the solution was helping their organizations stay accessible to fans and each other during the COVID lockdowns.
“Our counterparts at the Detroit Pistons and Golden State Warriors were so helpful,” Jeff says. “Both strongly recommended RingCentral, and both had their own stories about how much the solution was helping their organizations continue to function at high levels even though everyone was quarantined at home.
He adds: “RingCentral had already impressed us for a number of reasons, but those recommendations made the decision obvious.”
Because we integrated RingCentral with our CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, our agents now see a screen showing a caller’s profile before they answer. They can even originate a call from the CRM and have it automatically added as a record. That’s such a time-saver, and the agents appreciate it.
Jeff Lutes
SVP of Technology, Orlando Magic
Added contact center efficiencies help the team’s Sales rooms beat the clock
One of the biggest benefits the team has discovered since rolling out RingCentral Contact Center has been its ability to integrate with Google Chrome. The Chrome extension allows agents to access key RingCentral features right from their Google Cloud environment. This is saving agents an enormous amount of time, allowing them to be more productive every day.
As Jeff explains: “Our sales and fan experience teams use the Google Chrome extension for Contact Center, which is saving them an average of one to two hours per agent per day. With roughly 40 active agents, that means our call center teams are saving between 40 and 80 hours every day.”
Why the lockdowns didn’t sideline the team’s Sales rooms and Support centers
As Jeff’s IT department rolled out RingCentral Contact Center, the Magic’s sales and support agents were able to improve their workflows in ways they never had before. And they were thrilled.
“RingCentral Contact Center is such a rich solution,” he says. “For our Fan Experience Center, we have Spanish-speaking agents. With RingCentral, we’re able for the first time to direct Spanish-speaking callers straight to those agents.
But what makes these new contact center capabilities especially useful in the current NBA environment is that RingCentral is fully cloud-based and agents can work from anywhere.
The fact that our agents can log in to call queues at home, using their computer and a headset—or even an app on their personal cell phone—has been invaluable for our ability to be there for our fans and clients during the quarantines.
Jeff Lutes
SVP of Technology, Orlando Magic
