Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) implemented Webex Contact Centre and Webex Calling to modernise their infrastructure and improve their customer experience. Integration with their CRM (Microsoft Dynamics 365, on-premises) helped personalise and speed up customer interactions; and integrations with WhatsApp and LivePerson, via the MCC App, created additional channels to offer customers choice and more efficient service.
About MCC
The MCC has two primary roles, firstly, custodian of the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) which involves scheduling and managing high profile sporting events, functions, concerts, conferences and tours (eg, Australian Sports Museum) and secondly, managing the Melbourne Cricket Club with its 150,000+ members and 180,000+ wait list candidates.
Triggers for change
Prior to implementing Webex Contact Centre, MCC had a hybrid platform – a third-party contact centre integrated into CUCM (Cisco Unified Communications Manager).
To support the Membership team’s strategy and business requirements, it needed a more modern, simplified and scalable platform to support the organisation’s growing needs, particularly as inbound call volumes can vary significantly.
Webex Contact Centre, by Cisco, presented a more modern call management system with industry leading functionality that would allow MCC to introduce new technology to its customers, including:
- Customers being able to request call backs
- Integration with chat channels such as the MCC app (LivePerson) and WhatsApp
- Integration with its CRM/Membership Management System (Dynamics 365)
- Flexibility for agents to answer calls from anywhere – providing the opportunity to scale up when desk space is limited and work from home as required
- Soft phone technology, facilitated through Webex Calling, to reduce ownership and maintenance cost
Webex Contact Centre provided the Membership team with greater visibility of their call queues, which was particularly important during busy periods so the team could allocate their resources to other channels such as e-mail and chat.
MCC is seeing a significant reduction in abandoned calls, even with an increase in call volume. In May 2024, there was a year-on-year increase in calls of 9.6%, but the call abandon rate had decreased by 60%, with the same level of staffing. And during that month, 231 customers took advantage of the call back option.
Benefits of the Webex Contact Centre / Webex Calling platform
MCC receives over 1,000 calls per day during busy periods, and Webex Contact Centre has become vital for servicing MCC members and stadium visitors.
Some of the other benefits the new Webex platform include:
- A more personalised member experience for inbound calls because the caller’s membership number or phone number is used to pull up their contact/CRM record.
- Simplified outbound calling, using click to dial from the member’s CRM record.
- Call notes can be directly input into Dynamics (CRM) using an activity form, against the customer’s profile, at the completion of the call.
- Greater agent flexibility, including the ability to work from home, or from any other location.
- The simplicity of having a single collaboration platform across the business.
- Customers are now advised of their place in the queue, and are offered a call back option or can engage using chat.
- The ability to modify call flows in a more visual and user-friendly manner.
Backup and DR
Business continuity is critical for the MCC, not only to support its membership program, but also in its role as the ground manager of the MCG. MCC simply cannot afford to have its phone system offline for any period of time. Leveraging its longstanding relationship with MCC, Data#3, a leading Australian IT services and solutions provider and a Cisco Gold Partner, partnered with Kytec to implement a disaster recovery (DR) solution for using an existing, on-premises UCCX (Cisco Unified Contact Centre Express) platform so that if for any reason the Webex Contact Centre is offline or inaccessible, MCC had the option to switch over to the on-premises UCCX instance and continue taking inbound phone calls using the hunt group functionality.
The new hybrid contact centre along with Webex Calling has given the MCC team a range of benefits and flexibility both from a technical perspective but also from a Business Continuity perspective.
The power of partnership
The shared knowledge and expertise between Kytec and Data#3, combined with Cisco’s leading technology, enabled the delivery of brand new innovation and unparalleled support, ensuring a seamless implementation.
“Kytec, as our implementation partner, assisted us with the design of our Webex Contact Centre, UCCX and Webex Calling solutions and then supported our team in implementation all the three solutions”, said Raman Tiruchunapalli, Executive Manager, Technical Services at MCC.
“Without their support and guidance throughout each phase we wouldn’t have ended up with as successful a project as we did”.
“Their expertise on the products we implemented and innovative methods for connecting a cloud-based solution to on-premise applications have allowed the MCC to continue to offer our customers with the best possible customer service which is a focus for us in everything we do”.
“We’d happily work with the Kytec team on implementations in the future and couldn’t recommend them more highly, particularly the team we were lucky enough to have on our project”, said Raman.
“Working with Kytec was more like a partnership. The process was seamless and they just got things done. They took the time to understand our business, had highly skilled staff, and made useful recommendations”.
Advice for others
For MCC, the implementation of Webex Contact Centre and Webex Calling was complex due to the multiple integrations.
To ensure a successful project, the advice from the MCC team is to:
- Gain agreement on the project objectives – including genuine buy-in and alignment – from all internal teams. For MCC this was the IT and Innovation team and the Club Services team. And then document all business and technical requirements.
- Delaying an upgrade can actually be detrimental because of the opportunity cost of not having the functionality provided by the latest technology.
- Be open to new ways of doing things and be open to learning during the project roll out. Flexibility is important.
- A Webex space or ‘chat room’ was set up between the MCC and Kytec teams which simplified communication and effectively created a ‘single team’.