PING is a family-owned company founded in 1959 in the garage of Karsten Solheim, whose frustration with his putting inspired him to design a putter that made a “pinging” sound when striking a golf ball. Today the brand is synonymous with innovation, quality and service in golf. PING products are designed, engineered and assembled at its corporate headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, where it employs staff in golf club production, customer service, administration, engineering and management.

Manufacturers faced a particular challenge at the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. Unlike companies that could move all their employees to remote work or easily apply social distancing, many manufacturers must have their labor performed under a single roof, often with little space between employees. Their phone systems are often hardware-based as well, which creates hurdles to adopting a unified communications as a service (UCaaS) system with softphones and strong mobile connectivity.

PING faced this communication challenge in early 2020. It needed to upgrade its communication systems to keep the business both thriving and safe for employees. A change had been on the horizon for some time, but the new social distancing restrictions pushed the decision to the front of the line, and Chris Mellott, PING's Senior Telecommunications Technician, was tasked with it.

PING already had Microsoft Teams for many office-based employees and saw it as the way to unify the company as a global manufacturer. Its contract with Mitel was nearing its renewal period, and PING also wanted a separate cloud-based contact center for its customer service department while keeping Microsoft Teams licensing for the rest of the company.

PING's on-premises systems vendor, Maverick Networks, searched the UCaaS provider community for the right fit. Maverick and PING reviewed options from RingCentral and 8x8, and even a return to Mitel, but none offered the desired price point or could carry the level of support PING required. PING also wanted to keep control of its licenses and add a robust cloud-based contact center from Five9 for customer service. CallTower was the one provider that met all of these requirements.

CallTower first delivered a suitable price point for the solutions PING needed, saving a considerable amount compared with competing offers. It then managed the transition of the cloud-based contact center licenses from Maverick Networks into CallTower's native Microsoft Teams Direct Routing solution, and used the CallTower Connect admin portal to hand licensing control back to PING.

CallTower Connect is a proprietary portal developed in-house that lets CallTower customers administer services without expertise in any single technology or outside consultants. PING's administrators can expect a lighter workload as users make quick changes themselves, such as call forwarding, password management, PIN changes, speed dial assignments and voicemail personalization, without calling support.

• Complete turnkey native Microsoft Teams solution with a comprehensive admin portal and US-based customer service
• A single monthly bill for PING's accounting department to track
• All employees, not just those at a computer, gained collaboration features and mobile flexibility
• Considerable savings compared with the rates of competing solutions
• Five9 cloud contact center added for customer service while Teams licensing covers the rest of the company
• Licensing control returned to PING through the CallTower Connect portal