If you ask the Detroit Lions about their greatest sources of pride, they’ll almost certainly tell you about the loyalty that both the team’s fans and the City of Detroit have shown the organization over the decades.
As the fifth-oldest team in the NFL, the Lions have built up long standing traditions with their fans. That’s why the Lions’ front-office organization places such a high priority on delivering outstanding service in every interaction the team has with customers.
However, the legacy contact center solution was increasingly unable to meet the Lions’ long-term goals and the team’s ability to provide VIP-level service to every customer was becoming a challenge.
The goal: a call center solution that treats fans like MVPs
“Our contact center system didn’t integrate with our CRM, so we couldn’t give our agents a heads-up on who was calling, or easily direct callers to the right reps,” explains Scott Howland, the Lions’ Senior Manager of CRM & Research
Scott continued : “Our contact center was challenged with some of the basics, like routing calls and setting up call queues. Anytime we wanted to add functionality, we had to find another vendor and bolt on another app.”
Delivering the personalized service their customers deserve
By integrating RingCentral Contact Center into their CRM platform, the Lions were finally able to direct callers to the right agents immediately. “Now when a call comes in, RingCentral Contact Center and our CRM work together to figure out if the caller is assigned to a rep, and if so, it routes the call directly to them,” Scott explains.
Steve Lancaster, Director of IT for the Lions, adds: “RingCentral Contact Center pops up the caller’s CRM profile, so the agent has useful information before starting the call. This solution is really helping us provide more personalized service than we’ve been able to before.”
In another example of how the Lions leveraged RingCentral Contact Center for VIP-level service, Scott describes the team’s 2020 Holiday Message campaign. “We were able to use Contact Center’s outbound dialer to call all season-ticket members around Thanksgiving, just to wish them happy holidays,” he says. “The system made it so easy: When a rep finished a call, it automatically served up the next number to dial.”
Scott adds: “We received lots of positive feedback from these holiday calls. Many season-ticket holders told us they were surprised and delighted by the unexpected, non-sales call.”
And for the extra point: improving the Lions’ internal operations
Although they were initially looking for a better contact center solution, the Lions’ staff found additional benefits from RingCentral Office and RingCentral Video—a unified communications platform integrating voice, video conferencing, and team messaging in a single app.
Tom Wyatt, Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships, recalls, “We realized it made sense to roll everything into one platform—phone, contact center, conference line, video calls, and team messaging -why manage four or five vendor relationships when we could just partner with RingCentral for everything?”
“Now, instead of hundreds of employees having to share a handful of audio bridges, we all have the ability to schedule and host conference calls and even video conferences from anywhere,” says Steve. “That’s been huge for our operations, and a real lifesaver while everyone was forced to work remotely through the COVID-19 lockdowns.”
Originally published Apr 14, 2021, updated Jun 14, 2021
