Kettle Cuisine serves up excellent communications with 8x8

While Kettle Cuisine began as a small soup manufacturer serving restaurants in the Boston area, it has grown into a national food business, available at major retailers like Walmart, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and much more.

The Challenge: A disjointed system past its prime

Kettle Cuisine operates out of four locations in Washington, California, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. With a team of approximately 400 people working across those multiple locations, it is critical that Kettle Cuisine employees are able to collaborate and communicate seamlessly from wherever they are. The previous system was so outdated that everyone who knew how to manage it or make any changes was no longer at the company. And as the company expanded and acquired other companies who had been using their own solutions, they found themselves with a web of overlapping and inefficient communications systems.

Kettle Cuisine needed a secure, consolidated system that would bring their company together and make communications fast and efficient. Additionally, they needed a platform that would be easy to install and adopt across their various locations, with minimal impact on their users.

Another huge priority for the company was privacy and security. Employees weren’t comfortable giving out their personal cell phone numbers, so they needed a solution that would allow for phone calls and messaging done securely, whether at home, at the office, or on the go.

The Solution: A cloud system that’s easy as 1, 2, 3

After looking at a few options, Kettle Cuisine decided to migrate to the 8x8 eXperience Communications Platform. “We went with 8x8 in the end because it was so simple to install,” says Neal Anderson, Kettle Cuisine Head of IT. “I didn’t have any IT people on site, so I needed something I could easily walk my users through remotely. And it was a huge success. So easy to put in place, easy to manage from an admin perspective, and everyone took to it right away.”

According to Anderson, Kettle Cuisine experienced first-hand how simple and intuitive 8x8 is to set up, even when it came to some of the specific features and systems they were using, including things like ring groups and call queues for easy, organized call management.

“I've had users who used to go into the office every single day, but they’ve now moved to Florida and don't even need to come into the plant,” laughed Anderson. “With 8x8, they’re able to make calls and manage certain aspects of the business—all remotely.”

Additionally, 8x8 has been great for Kettle Cuisine in terms of privacy and security, allowing employees to have a remote phone option, without the need to use their personal phones or give out their phone numbers. And even simple features like visual voicemail, which automatically sends voicemail recordings and transcripts to agents’ email inboxes, have made a huge impact on Kettle Cuisine’s ability to stay productive and agile.

The Benefits: One platform for all experiences

As Anderson sees it, the best thing about switching to 8x8 has been having all experiences on one simple platform. Previously, they had various systems with different platforms and admin portals: one portal for the California phones, a different setup for the Michigan location, and then cobbled together integration solutions between the plants.

“8x8 helped us migrate with almost zero user impact,” says Anderson. “I wanted the switch to be as minimally impactful on the end user as possible, and we easily migrated everyone on every phone.”

Many Kettle Cuisine employees rely on 8x8 Work to communicate with vendors, clients, and teammates, from anywhere. And because 8x8 was set up and running without a hitch, when the pandemic first hit in 2020, Kettle Cuisine was able to transition to a hybrid work model with little to no difficulty, allowing its employees to work remotely as needed.

“I’m so happy with 8x8’s service and the company,” says Anderson. “Across the board, I’d give them ten stars out of ten. Everything has all been perfectly smooth.”