The Kansas City Royals deliver wins with 8x8

The Challenge: A digital-first initiative

The Kansas City Royals had been in the process of upgrading older technologies and bringing the organization into the digital world. When it came time to upgrade their communications system, the team wanted a cloud system with advanced features, functionality, and data for richer insights.

Before making the switch to 8x8, the Kansas City Royals were using an outdated, on-premises Cisco system for business communications and call center operations. “The old system was really good with the basics, but we didn’t have a lot of flexibility, especially in terms of remote work,” says Michelle Sullivan, the Royals’ Inside Sales Manager.

“We wanted a deeper understanding of our customer conversations,” says Brian Himstedt, CIO and Vice President of Technology & Business Analytics for the Royals. “With the previous system, we had issues with tracking, quantifying, and reporting, and we had zero visibility into the nature of the calls.”

Himstedt and his team looked at about half a dozen solutions before making the decision to go with 8x8. In the end, the decision came down to 8x8’s flexibility, advanced features, and data, but the thing that sealed the deal for the Royals was 8x8’s top-notch support. “8x8 came to us and they really listened well and helped us put our goals into words,” says Himstedt.

The Solution: A new system in the nick of time

Once the Royals made the decision to switch to 8x8, it was time to start thinking about the deployment strategy. “It was maybe four months of detailed planning,” recalls Himstedt. He and his team worked directly with experts at 8x8 to build a custom migration plan that made sense for the organization’s unique needs. “We really spent a good deal of time talking to the team and understanding how we’d navigate the process,” says Himstedt. “8x8 helped us understand every step and gave us confidence in how seamless and effortless the process would be, and the ways we could take risk out of the equation.”

The Royals launched 8x8 Work and 8x8 Contact Center right before the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns, which was a stroke of luck. “It was very helpful—we were able to work remotely with all of the changes that came with COVID,” says Sullivan. “We were able to maintain our work week and our hours without having to go into a complete shutdown, which was huge. That’s something we wouldn’t have been able to do with our old system.”

At the time, not only were the Royals getting ready for the season, they were also preparing to send their entire workforce home for an undetermined period of time. They were able to compress their 8x8 implementation schedule by almost two weeks in order to be ready two or three weeks in advance of what would have been the season start. That allowed them to be safe in terms of the pandemic while sending people home with an entirely new telephony platform, both on the call center and on the business phone side.