For multi-billion-dollar music retailer Sweetwater, "experience" is not just a word; it's a way of life. Their vast, Wonka-esque campus in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is proof of that. With perks like a fitness center with personal training and on-site medical care for employees, a world-class diner, coffee bar, performance theater, arcade, concierge service, Aveda salon/spa, and more open to the public, anyone can see they subscribe to providing nothing less than the best in every aspect of their business.
Managing over 30,000 incoming calls and just as many text messages daily by their 600 sales engineers, their legacy Mitel on-site PBX system couldn't keep up. Maintaining 12 servers and all the hardware that comes with a traditional phone system was becoming challenging and expensive. The manual process of adding extensions was error-prone, plus costs were increasing for new phones, support was waning, call clarity needed to be improved, and there were capacity issues.
JP Eagleson, Sweetwater's Vice President of IT, reached out to their current communications partner Converged Technology Professionals, to discuss options for a new communications system. The
new solution needed to be customizable and be able to integrate with Twilio, which they use for processes like texting customers when purchases are ready to be picked up in person, but also to support their growing influx of voice calls.
Once they'd decided to move to the cloud, Sweetwater didn't want to waste time. They appreciated Converged's cloud procurement process, which narrowed down potential vendors based on specific criteria, and laid out a plan for each step with deliverables and dates attached. Converged set up four customized vendor demos in one day (a Sweetwater requirement). Ultimately, eleven-time Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader 8x8 was the system of choice due to exceptional reliability, call quality, integrations, and more.
"I think the coolest part of the Sweetwater project was how much they bought into our cloud procurement process,” said Mark Johnson, Senior Account Executive with Converged Technology Professionals. “They made a huge investment with their time and full team. Every week they participated with us, making sure the 8x8 platform had everything they needed to improve the tools for their users."
From there, CT-Pros team of engineers and technical account managers took over to provide a path to go-live day, plus ongoing support options afterward. The migration planning included testing and training, so Sweetwater's IT engineers would excel at rolling out the new system.
“We'd previously partnered with CT-Pros and established a relationship where we knew we could trust them; they understood our business well. They cut through much of the noise that normally comes with the traditional sales process, which, in the end, saved us a huge amount of time and headache."
JP Eagleson, Vice President of IT, Sweetwater
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
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Sweetwater is singing the praises of cloud communications. Their employees' trained ears love 8x8's call clarity and reliability.
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Uniting disparate teams from several departments, including networking, security, help desk, IT education, marketing, and more, has enabled Sweetwater to continue providing an excellent customer experience.
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Through CT-Pros discovery process, Sweetwater evaluated multiple solutions in one day, saving time and money.