Find out how West Virginia 211 uses RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR) to reduce costs, streamline call routing, and ensure callers quickly connect with the right specialists.
Iron Workers International
Representing North America’s premier trade association for ironworkers, Iron Workers International uses RingEX, RingCentral Video, RingCentral Webinar, and RingCentral AI Receptionist to make staff more efficient and to deliver world-class experiences to its members.
Region
Americas
Company size
100–399
Industry
Nonprofit
Products used
60%
member calls resolved entirely by RingCentral AI Receptionist
700+
video meetings monthly with RingCentral Video and Webinar
38%
decrease in call handle time with RingCentral AI Receptionist
We represent the ironworkers whose hard work has helped build the infrastructure of North America. But with our own aging IT infrastructure, we weren’t giving our members the service they deserved. Thanks to RingCentral AI Receptionist and tools like RingCentral Video and Webinar, we’re delivering outstanding member experiences every day.
Tim Strecker
Director of IT
Representing 130,000 ironworkers throughout the US and Canada
The International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers—the "cowboys of the sky"—has represented skilled professionals across the U.S. and Canada since the 1890s. Their work is reflected in nearly every major construction project across the United States and Canada.
Today, the Iron Workers Union serves its 130,000 members through training, legislative advocacy, collective bargaining, and other benefits. These benefits, in turn, lead to an ever-stronger ironworker industry, which helps continually improve the quality, beauty, and safety of buildings and bridges throughout North America.
A telephony infrastructure not comprised of the best materials
When he joined Iron Workers International, Director of IT Tim Strecker quickly determined his top priority would need to be updating the union’s outdated, on-prem telephony infrastructure, which had serious shortcomings.
Located in Washington, D.C., their on-premise phone system was housed in a building shared with other tenants, creating a frustrating and frequent point of failure. Tim explains. “When a tenant’s landline system had an issue and a technician was called to fix it, it frequently knocked our entire system offline. This meant we couldn't answer calls or serve our members," creating a frustrating and frequent point of failure.”
Another ongoing challenge with the on-prem phone environment, Tim adds, was the unusual situation created by the Iron Worker’s close proximity to The White House. “We’re located within the security perimeter for major White House events. This meant that when the pope visited, the Secret Service fenced off our building. Our entire headquarters staff—about 100 people—was prevented from coming to work for days.”
Given these challenges, as well as what he discovered was a disjointed set of video conference platforms used by the various teams in the organization, Tim set out to find the right cloud communications solution.
Before RingCentral, we were on a traditional PBX phone system. We’ve gone from practically nothing to using it for just about everything—it just continued to grow.
Tim Strecker
,
Director of IT
Ironclad proof RingCentral was the right call
As a general rule, the Iron Workers’ leadership team opposed employees working from home. However, they saw an opportunity to create a new revenue stream. “Our staff was partially occupying several floors,” Tim says. “We realized that by allowing developers to work remotely and consolidating to one floor, we could rent out the remaining space for significant income. Thanks to RingEX, the remote transition was seamless. We gained a new, continuous revenue source—all enabled by a cloud communications platform.”
For Iron Workers and its partner organization IMPACT, the ability to host large videoconferences was enabled by RingCentral Video and Webinar. The true benefit for the IT team was that these applications are fully integrated into the single RingCentral platform, making management simple and straightforward right alongside their other RingCentral services.
“Our IMPACT team used RingCentral Webinar to host their valuable safety and technology webinars for both members and the businesses and government agencies that hire ironworkers. Those virtual events often had a couple hundred attendees, and there’s no way they could’ve conducted those training sessions as efficiently without RingCentral.”
Similarly, Tim adds, the Iron Workers leadership team used RingCentral Webinar to host large-scale town halls with union members. “We’d host a hundred attendees or more for webinars where our executives would communicate our stances on specific elections or policy positions,” he explains. “Again, we were able to host these large-scale gatherings online because of RingCentral.”
Today, the Iron Workers Union relies on RingCentral Video to keep their community connected. Whether it’s a major town hall meeting or just the daily check-ins, the platform helps them easily reach and serve all 130,000 members, partners, and collaborators across every corner of North America.
I chose RingCentral because it was a single, reliable, unified platform with lots of options, from daily voice to seamless online meetings. Today, we're leveraging that same platform's built-in AI capability and the capacity for virtual town halls, proving we made the right choice.
Tim Strecker
,
Director of IT
Creating new efficiencies with RingCentral AI Receptionist
As thrilled as his organization is with RingEX, Video, and Webinar, Tim points out that the biggest operational improvements have been the result of RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR).
“We had a very specific first use case for AIR,” Tim says. “The Iron Workers and our partner organization, IMPACT, had separate Salesforce instances, and we wanted to streamline data sharing and save money by consolidating them. We knew doing so would trigger a lot of calls from our employees, so we set up AIR with answers to common anticipated questions. It worked beautifully, automating most of those inquiries and keeping our receptionist team from getting overwhelmed.”
With the success of this initial use case, Tim and his team deployed AIR to handle more of the union’s calls, including common scenarios such as members calling in to request information on training classes or to schedule mandatory drug testing. These AIR-handled calls are proving invaluable both in delivering better service to members and creating quantifiable time-savings for the union’s staff. Additionally, with AIR’s ability to send texts, members can easily receive answers without waiting to speak with a union employee, which also saves time for both members and staff.
As Tim explains, both his team and the union’s members continue to benefit from the simplicity of leveraging AIR to update the company’s knowledge hub. “We can go in anytime and quickly add new information or answers to common questions on topics relevant to our members. That means we’re always making it easier for members contacting us to get what they need immediately without our team having to jump on the call.”
When AIR answers calls, it’s able to completely resolve our members’ questions about 60% of the time. It only needs to direct a call to an employee in less than half of the cases. I can’t tell you how much efficiency that’s creating for us.
Tim Strecker
,
Director of IT
Even a language barrier won’t stop outstanding service
As Tim explains, he continues to find additional ways AIR can add value for both the union’s employees and its members. “One great feature we’ve rolled out is real-time SMS texting. Since using this, we’ve seen approximately a 38% decrease in average call handle time,” he says. “If AIR is assisting a member on a call, and let’s say the form they need is on a specific web page, AIR can simply send a text to the caller with the link to that page. That saves our members a lot of time and hassle and provides a great service.”
Another AIR feature that has proven valuable, says Tim, is the Spanish language option. “We have a lot of Spanish-speakers among our 130,000 members, but not a lot of bilingual employees to help them. It’s great to be able to help those members whenever they call and not force them to struggle through a challenging call with someone who doesn’t speak their native language.”
Tim also explains that his team can easily expand AIR’s library of answers to frequently asked questions, which they do by simply listening to recorded calls (or reading their transcripts) in RingCentral and adding responses as they hear new questions from callers.
Learn more about AI Receptionist
Looking to the future—and building it
Just as North America’s ironworkers have been instrumental in building our physical infrastructure, many of the union’s members are now building tomorrow’s digital and sustainable infrastructure. As Tim notes, many of the current projects involve EV charging locations and data centers. And as he explains, among these facilities’ main functions will be powering the AI era.
I know that not everybody is happy with all the ways AI is affecting our lives. I worry about some of the implications myself. But when I see it work to benefit people, as RingCentral AIR is doing for our staff and our members, I can see its potential for improving people’s lives.
Tim Strecker
,
Director of IT
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