By Lindsay James |
Major League Baseball team Cleveland Guardians is committed to delivering an exceptional fan experience, both on and off the field. The team’s contact centre plays a critical role, handling ticketing enquiries, season-ticket services and customer service. However, its legacy on-premises phone system was struggling to keep up.
On game days in particular, high call volumes often meant slow response times – and this was a growing source of frustration for fans. Keeping the system operating as it should was stretching resources, with the IT team spending more time maintaining outdated infrastructure than focusing on innovation.
At the same time, there was little flexibility for remote work – a major issue during stadium renovations when staff needed reliable access from anywhere. And a lack of data on engagement and service quality only added to the list of challenges, making it difficult for Cleveland Guardians’ staff to measure or optimise the fan experience.
It was clear a change was needed. Cleveland Guardians realised it needed a more flexible communications solution – one that could support remote work, reduce IT complexity and provide insights to help deliver an exceptional fan experience.
“We needed a system that could keep up with the fast-paced nature of our organisation,” says Whitney Kuszmaul, head of IT for Cleveland Guardians. “The priority was making things simple, scalable and reliable so we could focus on baseball and the fan experience, not managing infrastructure.”
Cleveland Guardians turned to TTx, a full-service IT provider, to source, implement and manage the right communications solution for the organisation. As a longtime IT partner, TTx had a deep understanding of Cleveland Guardians’ unique needs and provided hands-on expertise to guide the transition seamlessly.
TTx recommended Maven Cloud, its AI-powered cloud communications solution built on Intermedia’s intelligent communications technology platform, providing voice, video conferencing, messaging, file sharing, contact centre capabilities and more.
The solution integrated with the Guardians’ existing Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 environment, with deployment requiring less than five hours of IT oversight. Training time was minimal and user adoption was fast.
By choosing a cloud-based solution fully managed by TTx and Intermedia, Cleveland Guardians has significantly reduced the constraints and risks associated with its legacy infrastructure.
The impact on IT resources has been substantial: Cleveland Guardians is saving 20 to 30 hours of IT time per week, freeing the team to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure management.
Fan engagement and customer service have both improved significantly. Intelligent call routing ensures fans quickly connect with the right ticketing or service representative and the system scales effortlessly to handle seasonal workforce fluctuations, such as during Spring Training, playoffs and peak game-day surges. The combination of customer relationship management (CRM) synchronisation, screen-pops and AI-powered analytics provides real-time insights into fan interactions, allowing for more personalised service and helping the team continually optimise the fan experience.
Communication has become more reliable too, boosting productivity across the organisation. Team members can now work from anywhere – whether that’s from home, the ballpark or on the road – with reliable access to the communications tools they need. The mobile app’s expanded capabilities have led to increased adoption among management and staff, and contact centre agents now experience crystal-clear call quality.
Following the success of the contact centre transformation, Cleveland Guardians is now rolling out Maven Cloud for its broader unified communications needs. This next phase will unify business phone, team messaging, video conferencing and collaboration tools – all in a single platform. By replacing fragmented systems with one cloud-based solution, Cleveland Guardians is creating a more connected, efficient organisation, ensuring seamless communication across coaches, front-office personnel and mobile staff, not to mention the fans.
“We trusted TTx to bring us the best solution, and they delivered,” Kuszmaul says. “With Maven Cloud, we have a reliable system that lets us focus on our team and our fans, not outdated technology.”
Read more like this, including news, interviews, case studies and insight from industry experts, in the Autumn 2026 issue of Technology Record. To get content like this on a regular basis, subscribe to the print edition or free digital edition of the quarterly Technology Record magazine.