Buffalo Sabres

During peak hockey season, more than 18,000 fans can come to watch the National Hockey League’s Buffalo Sabres face off at their home venue, the HSBC Arena. Located on the waterfront in Buffalo, NY, HSBC Arena is also home to the National Lacrosse League’s Buffalo Bandits and a state-of-the-art venue designed for all kinds of live entertainment. Ensuring that communications throughout this $127 million facility are efficient, cost effective, and reliable is vital to serving the interests and safety of the local population and the crowds of tourists and visitors that flock to the site.

“We’re dealing with the public in a fairly high-pressure kind of environment, and simply can’t afford to have our staff tied up in complex system management tasks.”
- Michael Queeno, Manager of Technical Communications, Buffalo Sabres.

The Sabres’ aging telephone system was becoming increasingly less reliable, dropping calls, and taking longer to find replacement parts as various components failed. It was time to update the entire telephone system.  In addition to reliability, a major requirement for the team’s new system was the ability to integrate with its customer relationship management (CRM) system, which contains vital business intelligence about customers, campaigns and promotions, and other key sales and marketing information.

“The ability to put relevant CRM details at the fingertips of our staff, so they have information about the caller that can help them best answer the call, was a key goal for us. Efficiency features like these are what unified communications are all about.”
- Tom Matheny, Database Marketing Manager, Buffalo Sabres.

ShoreTel provided the Buffalo Sabres with more than 20 ShoreTel Voice Switches and about 700 ShoreTel IP Phones to support the organization’s more than 530 users throughout the HSBC Arena. The new unified communications (UC) system is also accessible in the locker rooms, luxury suites, concession stands, and management offices throughout the six-floor facility. Other benefits include:

• Integration of the ShoreTel UC system with the organization’s CRM system provides rich information about callers, making it even easier for ticket office agents to meet customers’ needs.
• Support and expertise provided by ShoreTel through its partner, PremCom, give the Buffalo Sabres and HSBC Arena the confidence they need for a demanding 24/7 business.
• Enhanced productivity with a built-in suite of versatile, real-time tools that put flexible features, telephony and IM control, and collaboration services at employees’ fingertips.
• The system, which looks and behaves like a single, unified platform, scales with plug-and-play simplicity across as many sites as needed, and can be managed from anywhere on the network with the Web-based interface of ShoreTel Director.

“The savings on things like long distance are incredible, but the simplicity, the ability to do what we can do with the features on the ShoreTel UC system that have improved our business, and the support we get from ShoreTel — those are the things that are really worth mentioning.” - Michael Queeno, Manager of Technical Communications, Buffalo Sabres.