Grand America Hotel & Resort (GAHR), a leader in the premier hospitality industry, offers upscale accommodation and event hosting services, including ski resorts, condos, long-term apartments, conference rooms, ballrooms, restaurants and a spa. Its contact center has 35 agents and grows to as many as 200 agents during peak seasons. These agents provide white-glove support for event and accommodation inquiries, reservations and other arrangements, making the contact center instrumental to the business and its brand.

Grand America Hotel & Resort's contact center is instrumental to its business and brand, so it requires reliable, cost-effective and scalable technology to manage customer interactions efficiently. Facing an upcoming license renewal for its on-premises contact center, which was not fully meeting its needs, GAHR used the opportunity to investigate other solutions. At the same time, its existing routers were being discontinued, and SD-WAN came into consideration because of its more advanced network capabilities.

Flexibility was essential. During holidays and peak season months GAHR hires temporary agents, so it needed a solution that could scale up and down quickly and support agents working from home. The existing system required costly, long-term licenses for temporary staff, and simple tasks such as adding a new employee meant navigating multiple systems, creating administrative burden and complexity. Work-from-home agents depended on older VPN technology.

Rapid deployment was also crucial. The existing vendor was pressuring GAHR to renew its license and upgrade its equipment, and time was running out for a seamless transition.

MetTel's Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) powered by Talkdesk, coupled with MetTel's Managed SD-WAN, addressed the challenges GAHR faced. Financially, the hosted licensing option presented significant cost savings compared with the on-premises contact center and agent licenses. The solution also allowed GAHR to decouple voice and data, opening up more options and flexibility.

The joint MetTel and Talkdesk solution gives GAHR access to tens of millions of carrier-grade call paths, so it can scale up and down to match seasonal demand cycles. Scaling, adding or removing agents and other system changes are made quickly and easily through a simplified, user-friendly dashboard.

MetTel's SD-WAN removed the need for VPN. Work-from-home agents now use carrier-grade, encrypted connections to reach the company network, files and applications, and the Managed SD-WAN prioritizes traffic to protect bandwidth and call quality. Because the cloud platform is built on open APIs, integration with third-party platforms and services became faster and more efficient, connecting GAHR's property-specific applications to a broader set of features and functionality.

MetTel handled every aspect of the transformation, including hardware deployment, software installation, licensing, customer experience, programming and integration, providing a white-glove experience throughout onboarding and installation. MetTel and Talkdesk met GAHR's deadline and tight timeline, delivering a seamless transition from the existing system to the new contact center.

• Significant cost savings from hosted licensing versus on-premises contact center and agent licenses
• Contact center scales from 35 to as many as 200 agents to match peak-season demand
• Processes that took up to 9 months were accomplished within 30 days
• Remote agents reach the system securely over carrier-grade encrypted connections, with no VPN
• Voice and data decoupled for more options, with quick, simplified change management
• Open API integration with third-party and property applications; transition deadline met