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World Council of Churches enables agile work and IT innovation

90%

decrease in support requests

95%

less time spend on platform changes

Zero

complaints since implementation

Overview: By upgrading from Fuze to 8x8 Work, the World Council of Churches (WCC) modernized its communications, enabling agile working and freeing its IT team from constant troubleshooting. The transition not only improved voice quality and user satisfaction, but also simplified onboarding, enhanced IT responsiveness, and unlocked international call savings—all while delivering a better experience to internal users and external building tenants.

"Support requests have dropped by 90% and we spend 95% less time making system changes, which shows how well our 8x8 platform’s working."

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-Daniel Snachez

IT Manager, World Council of Churches

Combining global scale and operations with dependable servicelink to this section

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a prominent fellowship dedicated to promoting Christian unity and addressing critical global issues from a faith-based perspective. With around 120 employees, mostly based in Geneva, it serves a global community of over 300 member churches worldwide, providing support on ecumenical subjects and inspirational programs.

Leading a team of three, IT manager Daniel Sanchez oversees telephony, email, storage, security, applications, migrations, and more—juggling opportunities for innovation with ensuring consistently great user experience.

“I’ve always been interested in solving problems with technology,” says Daniel. “And the best thing about my job is I get involved with absolutely everything; planning, design, execution, and continuous improvements.”

Empowering agile work with modern communicationslink to this section

When the WCC relocated to a new office, they saw an opportunity to embrace a more agile, mobile workstyle—free from physical desk phones. But their legacy Fuze system stood in the way. Plagued by reliability issues, it became increasingly difficult to troubleshoot and maintain, and it lacked the flexibility needed to support a modern, mobile workforce.

“The old system was in place before I joined and there were regular complaints because we weren’t able to support users properly,” adds Daniel. “Then we experienced a week-long outage that disrupted not just our employees, but also tenants in the building who rely on our IT services.”

Restoring service required resetting 300 phones manually—an effort that exposed just how unsustainable their communications setup had become.

A seamless transition to 8x8 Worklink to this section

After evaluating offers from local providers, the WCC chose 8x8 Work to power its voice communications and streamline its IT operations.

“Switching to 8x8 removed several headaches,” says Daniel. “The migration went smoothly, and now we have zero complaints. Managing users and changes is easy, which allows us to focus on more strategic work.”

When it comes to onboarding new employees or tenants, the process couldn’t be easier. There’s no training or meetings, just a covering email with the person’s login details and away they go. And it’s very rare for the IT team to receive requests asking for help, which is a huge time saver.

Features that support flexibility and controllink to this section

With the 8x8 Work mobile app, users can make and receive calls across devices—PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones—over Wi-Fi or cellular, providing extra flexibility for remote work. Other features like number masking, text-to-speech, and IVR options deliver a secure, professional experience for all users.

“I’m instantly notified on my mobile of updates to install or network issues,” adds Daniel. “So when someone calls, I can confidently say we’re already working on it.”

Elevating the user experiencelink to this section

With Fuze, users struggled with poor call quality, delays, and frequent disconnections. Since moving to 8x8, voice clarity has improved dramatically, and the mobile experience is more reliable.

“We don’t have these challenges anymore,” says Daniel. “When we got rid of our wired handsets the quality of voice services and user satisfaction improved overnight,” noted Daniel. “Support requests have dropped by 90% and time spent on system changes has decreased by 95%, which shows how well our 8x8 platform’s working.”

"I feel like we’ve made a big jump. Everything's working, it's reliable and my life's a lot easier with a cloud communications solution that's always improving."

-Daniel Sanchez

IT Manager, World Council of Churches

Delivering consistent service to internal teams and tenantslink to this section

In addition, the WCC is saving money on international calls to African countries and other territories where it operates. Improving the delivery of tenant services—along with better usage reporting and billing separation—was another big reason for going with 8x8.

“Building tenants tend to have different requirements, which we’re able to meet more easily now,” says Daniel. “Like automatically routing specific numbers or changing a voice recording, which only takes minutes rather than hours. Or, creating a call tree which used to take days with Fuze and now takes less than an hour.”

Building for the future

Those efficiency savings have already been put to good use. Users now benefit from improved out-of-hours emergency IT cover, thanks to a newly configured call menu. Anonymous calls, once impossible to filter, are now managed—improving user safety.

“I feel like we’ve made a big jump,” concludes Daniel. “Everything's working, it's reliable and my life's a lot easier with a cloud communications solution that's always improving.”

At-a-Glance

Location

Geneva, Switzerland

Industry

  • Non-Profit

Size

  • Mid Market

Challenges

  • Unreliable legacy system with limited features.
  • Difficulty supporting agile work.
  • Time-consuming IT maintenance.

Products

  • 8x8 Work®