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At B&R Enclosures, customer service is hyperlocal. Samantha Bridges, Customer Service Manager for B&R, says, “Our customers like to have local representation, so we have 10 agents located around the country who are very much engaged with their local sales teams and their local customers.”
The Challenge: An unreliable, on-premises system at end of life
B&R’s previous on-premises phone system had numerous problems over the years. Neil Jorgensen, Customer Experience Manager at B&R, says, “The previous system was not well supported across the country, and we had individual states going down at different times. It used to take a fair bit of juggling to make sure that other state’s internal sales teams could pick up the slack. We would go days sometimes without having any reliability.”
When their previous system reached end of life, the B&R team began searching for a modern, cloud-based solution. Timing was tight as the vendor had already discontinued support for the old system. Jorgensen says, “We had a burning platform scenario. The supplier gave us a deadline and told us to either migrate to a new system by that date or we wouldn’t have a phone system at all.”
The team looked at a number of solutions, including their vendor’s cloud-based offering, but 8x8 was the only one that ticked all the boxes in terms of the company’s current and future needs, including Microsoft Teams and CRM integration, system security, international coverage, and support for remote workers.
To seal the deal, the team spoke with existing 8x8 customers about their experience. “They were not only great supporters of 8x8,” said Jorgensen, “but they also gave us some valuable information about integration. So, that certainly helped us with the decision making.”
The Solution: An easy-to-use, modern solution for all business teams
B&R Enclosure migrated to 8x8’s XCaaS solution, including 8x8 Work for the office staff and 8x8 Contact Center for the customer service team. Jorgensen recalls, “Our 8x8 support rep was local, which meant he could quickly be onsite if any issues came up. His knowledge of the system was incredible and he could answer any question within a matter of seconds.”
One initial concern was that moving from an analog system with physical handsets to an all-virtual VoIP system might be confusing for some team members. But everyone at the company adapted easily with no issues. “8x8 is so simple to use,” says Bridges. “We love the interface; it’s very user friendly and made the transition from a non-VoIP user to a VoIP user pretty seamless.”
The team set up queues to route callers to the agent in the caller’s state, and any overflow rolls to the other states as backup. With the volume of calls perfectly balanced, callers experience almost zero wait time. Bridges says, “Often, we have wholesalers calling on behalf of a customer standing in front of them. So, when they call us, they need an answer right away, and we’re able to immediately route them to the right person.”
8x8 Contact Center for Microsoft Teams has been an important feature for B&R, as about 95% of the business uses Teams for internal communications. This makes it easier for the customer service team to collaborate with the rest of the organization when needed. The built-in 8x8 CRM feature has been helpful while the organization evaluates and adopts an enterprise-wide CRM solution. 8x8’s seamless integration with two of their top candidates, Salesforce and Hubspot, were part of the reason they chose 8x8.
Soon, the contact center team plans to transition incoming chat support over to the 8x8 platform, which will allow them to optimize that channel for customer service and outreach.
The Results: Reliability and ease, with opportunity for more
With 8x8, B&R Enclosures gained a flexible, modern communications solution that they could depend on. Jorgensen says, “When we were trying to decide which solution to choose, we just felt that the experience of 8x8 was one that we were willing to trust. And for us, it's a big part of who we are culturally as a business.” After using the system for some time, 8x8’s reliability won over the team, who still remembered the frustrations of the previous system. “All in all, feedback from the team members has shown that it’s been a positive transition for them,” says Bridges.
For Bridges, 8x8’s Analytics features gives her the visibility she needs to confirm her theory that things were working well as she can see there are no abandoned calls or customer frustration with the system. She can also more easily manage the workload across her team and monitor individual and team performance.
Jorgensen and Bridges see great potential in using more features of the 8x8 platform to optimize their operations even further. Bridges says, “There's still lots within 8x8 that we're not yet taking advantage of. I'm looking forward to getting my head around a bit more of what we can leverage in the system.”
