8×8, Inc., a leading integrated cloud communications platform, announced the Kansas City Royals Major League Baseball (MLB) team deployed the 8×8 Open Communications Platform to allow employees and contact center agents to operate from anywhere and continue working productively even as the start of the season was delayed almost four months.

As part of its digital transformation initiative, the Kansas City Royals replaced legacy, on-premises communications and contact center systems with 8×8’s cloud enterprise communications platform in order to improve employee, partner, and customer experience. Working closely with technology partner System Target and 8×8, the Royals originally scheduled to go live on 8×8 X Series, an integrated cloud voice, team chat, video meetings and contact center solution, in March before the official start of the MLB season.

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“Whenever we start thinking about transformation, it’s about doing it seamlessly and without disruption. Due to the global crisis and shelter-in-place directives, we accelerated the 8×8 deployment by a week, and not only was it seamless, it was invaluable in helping us avoid major disruption,” said Brian Himstedt, Senior Director of Technology at the Kansas City Royals. “The forced move to remote work accelerated the pace of change of employee behavior and speed of adoption of new technology used to work effectively. As a result we have realized benefits more quickly than planned as usage of 8×8’s single integrated desktop and mobile apps for communication and collaboration are now firmly entrenched with our employees.”

The Royals deployed more than 500 points of communications across the organization providing the location-independent workforce with a single phone number and team chat and video conferencing capabilities that are accessible anywhere on any device. In addition, the organization implemented a complete 8×8 Contact Center solution to provide a solid foundation that could be extended over time to deliver an exceptional, multichannel fan experience.

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The sales and customer service teams quickly embraced 8×8’s collaborative contact center capabilities while working remotely, using daily standup video meetings and lively group chat rooms to boost morale and continue to develop a motivated work culture in inventive ways extending far beyond normal on-site activities.

“8×8 Quality Management allows us to build upon this strong work environment by providing the customer service and sales managers with the ability to better monitor, guide, coach, and share successes to enhance agent efficiency,” added Himstedt. “In addition, 8×8 Speech Analytics enables us to pull out valuable insights from customer engagements so we can continue to better understand our fans and the value delivered in our interactions with them.”

“During this critical time, Major League Baseball teams, like organizations of every size across every industry, have quickly realized the importance of adopting an operate-from-anywhere mindset to ensure business resilience,” said Vik Verma, Chief Executive Officer at 8×8, Inc. “By deploying the 8×8 Open Communications Platform and driving employee adoption during the current crisis, the Kansas City Royals were able to never stop working. We’re proud we were able to help them start off the season ready to play great ball.”

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The 8×8 Open Communications Platform is the industry’s most complete portfolio of operate-from-anywhere enterprise communications. It uniquely brings together the essential digital workplace elements required, combining voice, team chat, meetings, and contact center solutions fueled by shared intelligent communications services like AI-driven expert routing and predictive analytics. The 8×8 Open Communications Platform accelerates digital transformation initiatives and strengthens business responsiveness and resilience by providing secure, scalable, and extensible capabilities that are required for organizations to create unique employee and customer experiences at scale. For more information, visit the 8×8 Open Communications Platform.

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