Detroit Pistons' cloud phone migration enables AI expansion
The Detroit Pistons ditched their on-premises phone system for RingCentral during an arena move. The migration enabled the organization to integrate AI with its contact center.
When IT leaders for the Detroit Pistons NBA team were planning the move from the Palace of Auburn Hills to the Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit, they knew one thing they would leave behind: their older, on-premises Cisco phone system.
"We didn't want to pick that up and move it," said Paul Rapier, vice president of IT at the Detroit Pistons.
They chose RingCentral's cloud-based phone system in 2019 to support the team through the transition to the new location. Moving to a cloud-based phone system made it easy to give everyone phones and port over their numbers, Rapier said.
A cloud system also offloaded management responsibilities for the IT department, which originally managed the complex Cisco phone system. Moving to RingCentral meant that contact center leadership could take over management, he said.
Now, Rapier is expanding RingCentral's capabilities by rolling out AI. Rapier was one of many IT leaders who spoke at Enterprise Connect on AI strategy.
Boosting efficiency with RingCentral AI
Rolling out RingCentral's AI with their contact center and CRM enables capabilities, such as sentiment analysis and transcription.
"That was an easy jump into AI," Rapier told TechTarget.
Rapier said he has received positive feedback on the AI rollout, as contact center agents are happy to have some time saved through automation. Contact center management is also pleased with the rollout because call notes are automatically loaded, and the sentiment analysis capabilities flag the calls that might require more training, he said.
The goal is to try to keep our ticket salespeople focused on selling tickets and let the FAQ be handled by AIR. We want that human interaction.
Paul RapierVP of IT, Detroit Pistons
"That's much easier than having to just listen to random calls and hope that you find something," he said.
Rapier also plans to deploy AI Receptionist (AIR). An initial rollout had to be scaled back to focus on other business priorities and to clean up the data set for AIR's knowledge base.
AIR will serve as an FAQ to answer basic questions about information, such as parking and weather policies.
"The goal is to try to keep our ticket salespeople focused on selling tickets and let the FAQ be handled by AIR," he said. "We want that human interaction."
AI lessons learned
While AI has improved operational efficiencies, the initial deployment wasn't smooth sailing. Rapier described the initial use of AI within the organization as the Wild West, with departments experimenting with multiple large language models as they explored AI use cases.
He launched a large task force to rein in the use of AI and determine use cases.
"We started with the technology and then tried to find out where it fit," he said. "But you have to start with the problem, and is AI the right technology to solve that problem?"
Now, Rapier has a much smaller task force that includes himself and two people each from the data analytics and legal teams. They meet with department leaders to discuss problems and identify ways for AI to improve operational efficiency in their department's workflows. He said he doesn't want to take the approach of throwing AI at the wall and seeing what sticks.
"I think if you have that approach, it puts a bad taste in people's mouths," he said.
Equally important is developing an AI policy that includes governance, he said. Rapier worked with the Pistons' legal team to define a policy that encourages the use of AI while setting guardrails on what users can and can't do with AI.
Katherine Finnell is senior site editor for Informa TechTarget's unified communications site. She writes and edits articles on a variety of business communications technology topics, including unified communications as a service, video conferencing and collaboration.
