Thomas Crowe is a Senior Sales Engineer at 8x8. Thomas has worked with many different on-premises and cloud-based phone systems and contact centers for over a decade at Cisco, 8x8, and other VoIP based providers and vendors.

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Every day, more and more organizations with legacy, on-prem communications systems are leaving their providers and migrating to the cloud. They’re finding that their outdated systems are no longer serving them, and the vendor’s lack of agility, slow pace of innovation, and delays in delivering modern communication features are often holding their business back. We frequently engage with such companies who, if not actively looking, are curious about cloud communications and have questions about what an upgrade would look like.

Here are two examples of organizations that made the move to the cloud with 8x8, and their reasons why:

1. The need for streamlined and easy communication between employees and with customers

When it comes to sales and service, the goal is to make the customer experience as frictionless as possible. The Anaheim Ducks were looking for a new communications solution that would improve customer sales and retention. “The ultimate fan experience is behind everything we do,” says Jacqueline Slope, Vice President of Information Technology for the Ducks’ location center. “It’s the reason fans come and spend their entertainment dollars with us.”

To provide stellar customer experiences, businesses need insights. The team and venue’s legacy Cisco system was no longer making the cut, lacking analytics capabilities to gain those much-needed insights. That wasn’t the only issue. Due to the archaic, command-line interface, agent onboarding took days.

In the end, the Anaheim Ducks trusted 8x8 to manage their communications. 8x8’s Platform fuses unified communications and contact center capabilities, making it a perfect choice for the Ducks and their goal of streamlined simplicity. The switch even went flawlessly at Honda Center—a massive location with over 800 phones. Now, their staff can communicate with customers and teammates anytime, from anywhere, and the onboarding process went from days to mere hours, with phone training now being only a five-minute orientation on the 8x8 platform.

2. The need for reliability and compliance

Fred Loya Insurance had hit a wall with its current phone system. The company had difficulties keeping up with compliance and new privacy laws. Seemingly, any change they wanted to make with their previous on-prem provider, Cisco, caused high costs and endless work for the IT team. Whenever one part of the legacy system went down, it would take the company’s whole phone network with it, resulting in  hundreds of dropped calls and frustrated customers. Fred Loya Insurance needed its communications to be worry-free and easy to administer, without the overhead of maintaining outdated systems.

Of the ten vendors that the company evaluated, only 8x8 offered a single platform for contact center and unified communications with 99.999% uptime. By choosing 8x8, Fred Loya Insurance determined it could unify customer engagement, voice, video meetings, and chat onto one dependable cloud platform.

8x8’s centralized administration meant that Fred Loya Insurance could save on staffing by reducing its five phone admins to three. Most importantly, changes happen without a delay or staggeringly high tab. Now, downtime is a thing of the past and Fred Loya Insurance is getting the cost savings and ease of administration it expected. Also, 8x8 Speech Analytics and Quality Management help Fred Loya Insurance comply with regulations around what agents are legally allowed to say. Managers can swiftly coach agents when slip-ups occur, and customer sentiment insights enable them to spot problems and trends.

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These organizations migrated to the cloud because they wanted to invest in themselves and their future, and they wanted the best possible chance at delivering an exceptional employee and customer experience.

Read the full brief on migrating from Cisco to learn more about making a safe and seamless move to the cloud.

Learn more about 8x8’s cloud migration services and resources by visiting https://www.8x8.com/solutions/cloud-migration.