Bennett International
North America’s 6th Largest Specialized Transportation Company Uses RingCentral to Improve Customer Experience and Save Money
3,000
EMPLOYEES/CONTRACTORS CONNECTED VIA A SINGLE TELEPHONY PLATFORM: RingEX
75
AGENTS HANDLING CUSTOMER SERVICE CALLS VIA RINGCENTRAL CONTACT CENTER
4
COMMUNICATION FORMATS IN ONE PLATFORM: PHONE, MESSAGING, VIDEO CONFERENCE, AND FAX
By migrating our company to RingCentral and RingCentral Contact Center, we’ve replaced an IT communications infrastructure that was stifling our operations with one that’s actually helping us grow.
Praveen Boppana
Director of Technology
An award-winning transportation and logistics company
Among the unsung heroes of 2020 were the supply-chain companies that made sure our locked-down world continued receiving everything from necessities to life’s little comforts. And any list of these heroic businesses would have to include the Bennett Family of Companies, named the 6th largest specialized transportation company in North America by American Cranes & Transport Magazine.
A diversified logistics company operating for nearly half a century, Bennett offers a wide range of supply-chain solutions—from long-haul trucking to warehousing and distribution to air and ocean freight transportation. The company’s vast operation includes more than 3,000 employees, contractors, agents, and owner/operator drivers working together to support thousands of customers, from small businesses to Fortune 100s and government agencies.
Seizing an opportunity to find a more flexible communications solution
Bennett operates as a close-knit association of nearly a dozen specialized businesses: Bennett Motor Express, Bennett Distribution Services, Bennett International Logistics, etc. Praveen Boppana, Director of Technology, explains that over the years the company’s contact center operations had become increasingly complex.
“Our organization is composed of many different business units, each with its own areas of focus, operating in different regions throughout the country. We needed more flexibility than our old phone system offered in terms of configuring call queues, creating skills for routing calls to the right people, and addressing each business’s unique telephony needs.”
James Collett, IT Project Manager for Bennett, adds that the company’s previous telephony system didn’t allow for the type of self-serve administration they needed. “The admin interface wasn’t intuitive at all. It required the user to understand the system’s programming language,” James says. “Even for little things, like adding a user or updating a call queue, we’d need to go to the one person in the company who knew that language.”
As Bennett’s phone system neared end-of-life, the IT team took the opportunity to search for a more flexible, intuitive, and feature-rich solution, one the company could use for everything—business phone, team messaging, video conferencing, digital faxing, and customer service operations. “In our research, RingCentral came out on top in every category,” says Praveen.
INDUSTRY
Transportation &
logistics
HQ
McDonough, GA
YEAR FOUNDED
1974
EMPLOYEES
3,000+
Benefits of RingCentral become even clearer during 2020 lockdowns
As Praveen points out, employees had begun using some of RingCentral’s unified communication services prior to COVID. But as the lockdowns began, RingCentral became the primary tool keeping the organization connected and productive through the quarantines.
“Bennett never had much of a remote workforce, so the pandemic posed some culture shock, as we suddenly had to set up all our back-office and operations teams at home. But because everyone had the RingCentral softphone and mobile apps, that transition was smooth. We all had our business numbers, video call capability, and my favorite—team messaging—right on our computers and cell phones.”
Using RingCentral’s reporting capabilities, Praveen noticed a massive uptick in usage of the RingCentral team messaging platform that began during the lockdowns and has remained elevated ever since.
“I completely understand why our employees use RingCentral messaging so often—I use it myself all the time with my team. If I’m on a call or a video meeting and a coworker needs something, I can’t take a phone call, but I can send a RingCentral team message. That’s just one way this platform lets us collaborate more efficiently than ever.”
RingCentral Enterprise Support gives Bennett’s team peace of mind
As James points out, another element of RingCentral that he truly appreciates is the company’s Enterprise Support. “I’ve really enjoyed working with RingCentral’s support team, both during our implementation and whenever we’ve needed guidance since then.”
He adds: “A lot of the things we need from a support standpoint, like video tutorials or other instructional materials to onboard new employees, we can find them ourselves easily at RingCentral University, which is awesome. But when I’ve needed technical support or guidance, I’ve always found the RingCentral team extremely helpful.”
One of the most impressive things about RingCentral’s support team is how proactive they are. They don’t just wait for us to contact them with a question or issue. They’ll call on us periodically just to make sure we’re doing okay and ask if they can help us with anything. That’s not something you find in most tech support operations.
James Collett
IT Project Manager
RingCentral helps Bennett save money on travel
James notes that in addition to keeping teams connected and enabling the company to continue supporting customers from home, RingCentral also led to a reduction in travel expenses for the company—which had until the pandemic prioritized in-person meetings.
Pre-RingCentral and pre-COVID, we were flying employees to our offices around the country all the time, sometimes just for a one-hour meeting. Now that we’re doing those meetings virtually with RingCentral Video, we’re saving untold money.
James Collett
IT Project Manager
Improving the customer experience with RingCentral Contact Center
As Praveen explains, RingCentral Contact Center is also helping Bennett’s massive customer service operation more efficiently serve callers than ever.
“With Contact Center, we can easily set up call queues, assign customer support agents to the right queues based on their areas of expertise, and in general create a better experience for our customers.”
Improving support operations with the RingCentral Zendesk integration
Bennett’s support teams have also found a way to extend the value of their cloud communications environment with an integration that Praveen’s team found in the RingCentral App Gallery.
“When we receive a support call through RingCentral, it automatically creates a ticket in Zendesk. In addition to getting our support group those tickets more quickly, it also lets us see everything that’s happening on the support side without leaving our RingCentral environment. We can monitor how many tickets are open at any moment and the average time it’s taking to close a ticket—which is data we can use to continually improve the customer experience.”
Because our old phone system didn’t offer remote capabilities, and we didn’t have everyone on a shared platform for team messaging and video conferencing, the pandemic could have hurt our operations. But as it turns out, our IT team won Bennett’s Department of the Year Award for 2020. RingCentral deserves a lot of the credit—not only for the award itself but more importantly for helping us continue to serve our customers when they needed us most.
Praveen Boppana
Director of Technology