ShoreTel Success Story BUFFALO SABRES+SHORETEL

The Buffalo Sabres enhance customer service and score a hat trick with ShoreTel conferencing, reporting and mobility

Challenges: Enable the Sabres to provide a great customer experience and the flexibility to make changes on the fly to accommodate any scenario.

ShoreTel Solution: The ShoreTel UC deployment delivered a VoIP business phone system that included ShoreTel Voice Switches, ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center, IP Flexibility to accommodate the needs 400 and 600 series phones, New goal: Modern ShoreTel Mobility, and Web of a multiuse facility and enhance the conferencing. telephony that doesn’t fan experience require expensive third-party First Niagara Center is a multiuse facility and home support to the NHL Buffalo Sabres, the Buffalo Bandits in ShoreTel Benefits: Lacrosse, and a venue for all concerts and family ■■ Eliminate costly third-party support The Sabres’ aging telephone system had become shows performed in Buffalo. ■■ Ease of use increasingly less reliable. It was dropping calls and It isn’t easy to host these events. Winning helps, ■■ Contact Center reporting taking longer to find replacement parts as various but being able to stay in contact with fans and ■■ ShoreTel Mobility components failed. Its lack of flexibility prevented making sure that they can contact a representative ■■ Web conferencing Sabres staff from making any changes in house. easily is imperative to ensure an excellent Modifications required a call to a third-party customer experience. To facilitate this interaction vendor, which was inconvenient and pricey. requires modern telephony features.

The Sabres had several items on its must-have list. The new phone system needed to be user-friendly, flexible enough to change as business needs

ShoreTel. Brilliantly simple business communications. ShoreTel Success Story

dictated, and easy to use so staff could make With telephones now in every suite, Sabres staff changes to meet the needs at any event. The can communicate with customers during events. Sabres explored a number of systems from Mitel, They also have the ability to transfer calls, so if Cisco, and NEC. somebody can’t make it to the office, calls can be forwarded to their homes or cell phones using “When reviewing options for a new telephone ShoreTel Mobility. On game day, it’s easy system, we decided that the ShoreTel UC VoIP to accommodate different broadcast needs. solution met all of our main priorities in our ticket offices at First Niagara Center and just general calling needs,” says Chuck Lamattina, executive vice president of finance and business “THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE operations and CFO for Sabres’ parent company, SHORETEL ENTERPRISE Pegula Sports and Entertainment. “Flexibility, CONTACT CENTER HAS manageability, and ease of use really made ShoreTel stand out.” HELPED OUR CUSTOMERS INTERACT WITH OUR BOX ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center elevates customer service OFFICE AND CUSTOMER The ShoreTel deployment made it stress-free for SERVICE STAFF TO MAKE the Sabres to get up and running. Much of the EVERY EVENT A POSITIVE work was done in the offseason and allowed EXPERIENCE,” SAYS employees to work, while the ShoreTel VoIP system was implemented in the background. One mission LAMATTINA. “IT ALSO was to enhance Sabre customer service, which ALLOWS US TO RUN required a fully featured contact center. REPORTS SO THAT WE With ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center, the CAN MONITOR CUSTOMER organization can now prioritize calls for season SERVICE TO ENSURE THAT ticket holders. When other fans call in, prompts direct them to information or a department via WAIT TIMES AREN’T TOO established workgroups. The team store is one LONG.” workgroup, and this enables the Buffalo Sabres Chuck Lamattina to consolidate all of its inquiry calls to a specified Executive Vice President of Finance and group of agents. This group can be augmented Business Operations and CFO or changed on the fly to respond to peaks and Pegula Sports and Entertainment changes in traffic. Productivity is enhanced, and calls are answered quickly. “As a hockey venue, we have to have a connection to NHL headquarters in Toronto in order for “The deployment of the ShoreTel Enterprise executives to oversee and instant-replay all the Contact Center has helped our customers interact goals and/or questionable items that occur during with our box office and customer service staff to game play. The ShoreTel system enables seamless make every event a positive experience,” says and timely communication so the game moves Lamattina. “It also allows us to run reports so that on in a timely fashion,” says John Sinclair, vice we can monitor customer service to ensure that president of tickets and customer service for the wait times aren’t too long.” Buffalo Sabres and the First Niagara Center.

ShoreTel. Brilliantly simple business communications. ShoreTel Success Story

ShoreTel cost savings take center ice

Cost savings have also been a huge benefit for “SHORETEL HAS BEEN A the Buffalo Sabres. As a result of its ShoreTel GREAT SOLUTION FOR US. implementation, the Sabres have saved not only IT HAS ALLOWED US TO on toll charges due to sharing the same line for both data and voice traffic, but also on service EXPAND TO ROCHESTER, provider charges for difficult configuration changes. WHERE WE PURCHASED ShoreTel unified communications features also A MINOR-LEAGUE enable employees to better communicate HOCKEY TEAM. IT HAS among departments and allow Pegula Sports and Entertainment to use one platform across GROWN WITH US AS WE a number of its different businesses. That has BUILT HARBOR CENTER also saved the organization money since it’s HERE IN BUFFALO, NEW no longer necessary to duplicate services. YORK WITH SHORETEL, Lamattina estimates that ShoreTel has reduced the company’s total cost of ownership (TCO) by WE CAN SCALE UP approximately 50%. WITHOUT ANY ADDITIONAL As the team continues to enhance its customer INFRASTRUCTURE experience, it plans to integrate the ShoreTel ADDITIONS. BOTTOM LINE: Enterprise Contact Center with its CRM system and add functionality such as enhanced 911 and SHORETEL IS A GREAT call recording. PRODUCT AND A GOOD

“ShoreTel has been a great solution for us. It has COMPANY.” allowed us to expand to Rochester, where we purchased a minor-league hockey team. It has grown with us as we built Harbor Center here in Buffalo, New York. Also, since Buffalo has been selected to host the 2016 draft, we’ll need at least 120 lines for suites and individual team needs. With ShoreTel, we can scale up without any additional infrastructure additions,” concludes Lamattina. “Bottom line: ShoreTel is a great product and a good company.”

ShoreTel. Brilliantly simple business communications. ShoreTel, Inc. (NASDAQ: SHOR) is a leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems and unified communications solutions powering today’s always-on workforce. Its flexible communications solutions for on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments eliminate complexity, reduce costs and improve productivity.

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