Greater flexibility and service for fans and “athletes”
A world leader in sports merchandise, collectibles and iGaming, Fanatics amplifies pride and connections. That means delivering unforgettable experiences every time fans buy its licensed products and memorabilia or bet through its digital platform. Supporting its operations is a 22,000-person workforce and a global partner network of over 2,500 sports personalities, 900 properties and 2,000 retail locations.
Keeping the fan experience on track is the job of more than 1,000 “athletes,” the Fanatics term for contact center agents, worldwide. Many of these athletes are also passionate sports followers. Together, they expertly handle several million annual contacts in nine different languages. Those conversations used to take place on different systems with calls handled by the Genesys Engage™ on-premises solution.
“We loved the 99.999% uptime we got with Genesys Engage,” said Nigel Ponds, Senior Director, Global Resource Planning and Telephony at Fanatics. “However, moving to the cloud offered greater flexibility for remote working and service enhancements, along with IT savings and the chance to consolidate different channels and solutions on one platform.”
Reduced cost and maintenance requirements
A solid financial business case confirmed many reasons for moving from Genesys Engage to Genesys Cloud. “With everything factored in, we realized we could get a better tech stack with weekly feature releases and more capabilities for around 9% less spend,” said Ponds. “And that’s since proven to be the case.”
Greater IT efficiency is a case in point. Previously, standing up new sites and users relied on purchasing multiprotocol label switching circuits, which could take external providers up to 10 weeks to install.
“Now, with Genesys Cloud, most changes can be completed self-autonomously within 24 hours, without the need to buy extra IT kits,” said Diane Stephens, Lead Product Manager at Fanatics. “We’ve retired four legacy systems, further reducing cost and maintenance burden.”
On top of reducing IT infrastructure that generates carbon dioxide, an increased scope for home working is also contributing toward a greener operating model — eliminating the carbon footprint associated with regular commuting, while lowering office electricity, heating and air conditioning usage.
Unified sales and service across 10 sites
Equally importantly, moving from Genesys Engage has made it easier to develop multiskilled athletes. “We originally had three separate teams handling calls, chats and email,” said Ponds. “By adding middleware, we got some degree of blended working. However, the system would sometimes make mistakes routing contacts through to the wrong athlete. Those problems no longer exist with Genesys Cloud.”
Fanatics athletes can now meet on fans’ preferred channels while efficiently managing all contacts through a single desktop interface — no matter which sport they want to discuss.
“We climbed the learning curve real quick,” said Stephens. “Genesys Professional Services did a great job with the cutover, building our IVR use cases and deploying web chat. Issues are normally responded to within the hour. And they’re always opening our eyes to how Genesys products can do more. We just wish all our other vendors did the same.”
