Like every team in the NBA, the Orlando Magic had a very strange 2019-2020 season. In March 2020, concerns about the coronavirus led the league to suspend all games. Then the league resumed the season in June—but in an isolated facility that fans couldn’t attend, called the NBA Bubble, set up in the Magic’s hometown of Orlando.
The pandemic caused several major disruptions to the Magic franchise, all at the same time. They had to shut down their home arena, the Amway Center. They had to postpone home-game ticket sales for the first time ever. And they vacated their offices and sent employees—including a number of sales and support center agents—to shelter in place at home.
That shakeup could have proved seriously harmful to the Magic’s operations. But it didn’t. One of the main reasons was that the organization had rolled out a cloud communications solution that kept their staff connected to each other, and to the team’s fans and clients, even as the entire organization had to work from home.
When competitors become teammates
One of the lesser-known stories about professional sports during the early months of the pandemic was how much support these teams—even rivals—offered each other to help everyone through that difficult time.
Jeff Lutes, the Magic’s SVP of Technology, explains that his department had invaluable consultations with other NBA franchises, as they sought advice about which communications solution would best help their staff stay productive and accessible during the 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.”
Jeff adds: “We were extremely impressed with RingCentral’s breadth of features, the ease of use, and the ease of implementation. When our friends at the Pistons and Warriors told us about their successes with RingCentral, the decision became obvious.”
Helping the team’s Sales and Support centers deliver a clutch performance
As the NBA’s operations began slowly returning to normal—with teams reopening their arenas to host games for the 2021 season—all of the Magic’s sales and support center teams were still working from home. But that didn’t slow the agents’ productivity or undermine their ability to deliver outstanding service to callers. In fact, as Jeff notes, the reality was just the opposite.
“All of our sales and support center agents are up and running remotely—and have better workflows than ever—thanks to RingCentral.”
Jeff cites a number of ways RingCentral Contact Center is benefiting the teams within the Magic’s sales and support centers from click-to-call dialing thanks to RingCentral’s integration with their CRM, to the team’s ability to automatically route Spanish-speaking callers to agents who speak Spanish.
Also, by integrating their Contact Center environment with Google Chrome, the Magic’s sales and support teams are saving an enormous amount of time. “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,” explains Jeff. “With roughly 40 active agents, that means our sales and support center teams are saving between 40 and 80 person hours every day.”
Additionally, Jeff notes that the sales and support center managers are thrilled with RingCentral’s reporting and analytics capabilities, such as letting them monitor agents’ average call times.
But these great workflow features wouldn’t have mattered much to the operations of the Magic’s sales and support centers if it weren’t for RingCentral’s greatest asset to the team: mobility. As Jeff puts it: “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.”
Originally published Apr 14, 2021, updated Jul 20, 2021