ECHO: Customer Success Case Study

ECHO Incorporated Moves to RingCentral Office & Contact Center

Watch the interview with ECHO Incorporated's Infrastructure Manager, Christopher Everson, here.

THE CHALLENGE:

ECHO Incorporated’s aging contact center had reached end of life. They sought a quick turnaround for a cloud-based solution with superior call quality and modern omnichannel contact center features.

THE SOLUTION:

Converged Technology Professionals helped ECHO evaluate and implement RingCentral Contact Center across their organization, while also providing training for their administrators and team members.

Headquartered in Lake Zurich, Illinois

2,595 employees across 6 locations

About ECHO Incorporated

ECHO Incorporated is a worldwide leader in manufacturing professional-grade, hand-held outdoor power equipment for commercial and homeowner markets. ECHO products can be found in Home Depot stores throughout North America & Mexico.

AN OUTDATED PHONE SYSTEM REQUIRED A MODERN OVERHAUL

ECHO Incorporated's aging ShoreTel PBX was experiencing call quality issues and would require extensive hardware upgrades to remain functional. With an end of life already looming, a conversation started with Converged Technology Professionals about a path to the cloud with modernized contact center features that would elevate customer support and service.

Since Converged was ECHO’s Mitel support partner on record since 2018, a relationship had already been established and conversations began organically. ECHO knew that Converged had a unique background with RingCentral and other Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders in CCaaS, and with expedited timetables due to the COVID pandemic, ECHO wanted to move quickly at several key locations.

“Our ShoreTel PBX was installed back in 2009 and we were coming up on the end of its useful life,” explains Christopher Everson, Infrastructure Manager at Echo Incorporated. ”Although we briefly considered Mitel MiCloud Connect, we were blown away by the features included in modern cloud communication technologies.”

"We have been very happy with our decision to move to RingCentral and appreciate the value Converged brought to the
table as a partner with their advice and ongoing support."

Christopher Everson, Infrastructure Manager
ECHO Incorporated

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS WITH CONVERGED TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONALS

During the initial review process, Converged helped ECHO identify specific communications needs across different customer service and support departments. A full audit was performed on their existing PBX environment to determine if staying on-prem was viable, but the necessary hardware upgrades would be too extensive to see a clear ROI in an aging platform. It was decided fairly quickly that a cloud office and cloud contact center would be the best path forward.

Specifically, Echo required a solution that provided excellent connectivity and stability, a way to route calls more accurately and better insights into real-time metrics. ‘Multichannel’ was also a frequent buzzword since the new solution should have text, voice, and video chat all on the same platform.

Complicating matters even further was a subsidiary in Arizona that began experiencing severe call quality issues due to the end-of-life scenario with Mitel/ShoreTel. A new cloud solution would also have to be simple to deploy, maintain and scale since time was clearly a factor.

“The move to RingCentral Contact Center has provided us a modern platform to really engage
our customers and support them in exciting new ways."

Christopher Everson, Infrastructure Manager
ECHO Incorporated

CONVERGED LAUNCHED ECHO’S RINGCENTRAL SYSTEM AT SONIC SPEED

After evaluating numerous potential paths forward, Echo decided to proceed with installing RingCentral Office in the Arizona location. The planning and implementation phases took about a week total for just under 100 total users, including the implementation of voice, chat and video. The actual implementation was performed by Nicole Brusich, a Technical Account Manager from Converged with extensive programming and implementation experience.

“My account manager Nicole from Converged was instrumental in a smooth implementation and fast turnaround times- I trusted her implicitly to guide us in the right directions,” states Christopher Everson.

Echo was so impressed with the seamless rollout that they decided to also convert their headquarters in Illinois to RingCentral as well as other locations in Illinois, California, and Florida. In all, over 650 users were ported over to RingCentral Office and/or the RingCentral Contact Center platform. Converged Technology Professionals also provided the training needed to introduce these unified tools to help gain employee buy-in, plus deliver a high initial adoption rate.

IMPROVED CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS AND EMPLOYEE COLLABORATION WHILE REDUCING SPEND

Echo is now poised to deliver better, faster, and higher-quality customer interactions with improved calling capabilities with more efficient call queues, detailed analytics, and simplified interfaces. Corporate employees and the sales team also enjoy features such as the ability to switch calls between desktop and mobile, plus the ability to use their work number through the app and the synced contact directory.

The migration to RingCentral also helped Echo reduce costs in several key areas. Besides getting rid of redundant premise-based technologies, the new platform required less IT manpower to manage. It also allowed ECHO employees to access their business communications through their personal digital devices without privacy and security concerns, so corporate cellular phones were replaced with a small internet stipend for additional savings.

“The move to RingCentral Contact Center has provided us a modern platform to really engage our customers and support them in exciting new ways. We are thrilled with the overall transformation!” confirms Christopher Everson.

ECHO was very happy with the transition to cloud communications and the extensive functionality provided by the RingCentral platform. New customer-centric video support features are already being developed to ensure world-class service for ECHO’s current and future customers.

Learn how Converged Technology Professionals can help your business migrate to the cloud today!