Calls/Month
Turning Point streamlines customer service operations with 8x8
Turning Point streamlines customer service operations with 8x8
Founded in 1982, Turning Point is the global broadcast ministry of Dr. David Jeremiah. The ministry broadcasts via multiple channels, including radio and television, provides listeners and viewers with Bible study resources, and runs monthly giving programs. David Jeremiah’s teachings are translated into multiple languages and broadcast across the U.S. and over six continents.
12K
30%
Time savings on outbound calls
1982
Year established
12K
Calls/Month
30%
Time savings on outbound calls
1982
Year established
12K
Calls/Month
30%
Time savings on outbound calls
1982
Year established
12K
Calls/Month
30%
Time savings on outbound calls
1982
Year established
"8x8 is working great—much better than our old platform. There are a lot of really great features that we’re really excited about using, and also exploring for the future."
- Aaron Wyant, Director of Customer Service, Turning Point
"8x8 is working great—much better than our old platform. There are a lot of really great features that we’re really excited about using, and also exploring for the future."
- Aaron Wyant, Director of Customer Service, Turning Point
"8x8 is working great—much better than our old platform. There are a lot of really great features that we’re really excited about using, and also exploring for the future."
- Aaron Wyant, Director of Customer Service, Turning Point
"8x8 is working great—much better than our old platform. There are a lot of really great features that we’re really excited about using, and also exploring for the future."
- Aaron Wyant, Director of Customer Service, Turning Point
The Challenge: Bundled toolset and disjointed UX
With customers around the world, Turning Point partners with Synergy Solutions to operate four external call centers 24/7 that handle most of the roughly 40-45k phone calls as a whole. The ministry also operates an in-house call center, and more complex inquiries typically get routed to the internal team.
Prior to adopting 8x8 for its internal call center in early 2023, the Turning Point team was becoming more and more frustrated with their old communications system. The modular system bundled multiple third-party tools into its platform, resulting in a disjointed user experience and didn’t plug in well to the organization's other business systems.
“One of the things that drew us to 8x8 was that it was all proprietary—everything was owned and managed by 8x8,” says Aaron Wyant, Director of Customer Service at Turning Point.
As Turning Point is a Microsoft-based organization, it decided to adopt 8x8’s Microsoft Teams integration to add external calling capabilities seamlessly integrated into the MS Teams interface.
The Solution: An all-in-one, single-vendor platform
Turning Point rolled out 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams across the organization, and 8x8 Frontdesk to the reception team.
One of the benefits of 8x8 has been the platform’s ability to connect and collaborate with remote employees. “I love the fact that I can just copy a link to a dashboard and share that out with my remote users. That wasn’t possible with our previous system,” says Wyant. A third of the customer service team, and half of the CSRs are currently remote.
The organization’s internal call center handles about 12,000 calls per month through 8x8. Most of these are transferred calls from the external call center through direct inward dialing (DID) and dropped into a queue on 8x8.
One DID number is dedicated to Turning Point’s advanced donor team that maintains close relationships with approximately 800 donors. This team has its own unique queue, which Wyant considers like a “hybrid call center” in that the queue is set up in a similar way to that of the main call centers. The donor team also regularly makes a large number of outbound calls, all going through 8x8 as well.
Wyant and team are continuing to explore other 8x8 features, such as reporting and analytics, that will help them further optimize their operations. They have been finding some interesting features through browsing content in 8x8 University. “We’re really excited about implementing the Play Recorded Messages feature, ” says Wyant. “We’re recording a few voices internally and working with 8x8’s technical support to implement them as stored voice messages.” This allows the donor support team to leave one of the pre-recorded messages on a donor’s voicemail box using a “play and hang up” option. He adds, “We expect to save about 30% of our time on outbound calls.”
The Results: A more connected organization
So far, Turning Point’s 8x8 implementation has been a success, particularly with respect to supporting the organization’s hybrid workforce. Now, everyone at the organization can stay connected from wherever they are. “8x8 is working great—much better than our old platform,” says Wyant. “There are a lot of really great features that we’re really excited about using, and also exploring for the future.”
