Discover how Sydney Film Festival achieved 81% cost savings, streamlined operations, and enhanced customer experiences with Zoom Phone, Zoom Contact Center, and Zoom Meetings.
81%
Cost savings
HQ Location:
Sydney, Australia
Industry:
Arts Entertainment, Not-for-Profit
Challenges:
Increasing cost-efficiency while managing high seasonal call volumes and driving customer service excellence
Benefits:
Cost savings, scalability, single platform management, reporting & analytics
Website:
Products used
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30
Reduced call-back time to 30 minutes during busiest period
15 to 50
Scaled from 15 to 50 agents during peak season
The Sydney Film Festival (SFF) is all about celebrating diverse voices and sharing incredible stories. Despite global challenges affecting the film industry in general, the 71st annual festival was one of the most ambitious and successful to date.
“People still really like to come together and enjoy the experience in the cinema,” says SFF Head of Operations & Events, Brock Taffe. “The fact that we get to do that with over 400 sessions and 250 films each year is amazing. You get to travel the world without leaving your seat.”
As a non-profit arts organisation, SFF has its work cut out in the current climate. However, following an upward trend in ticket sales, the team is focused on continuing this positive trajectory while making the organisation more financially sustainable and operationally efficient. Investing in new and scalable technology is therefore key to the organisation’s ongoing strategy.
Saving money by modernising
Brock initially turned to Zoom because SFF’s 20-year-old phone system was outdated and not fit for today’s increased call volume. On top of that the phone lines weren’t configured, there was no way to identify callers, making updates was complicated, and all information was logged manually. The huge phone bills were also a big concern - particularly for an arts organisation largely dependent on donations and funding. Zoom offered a scalable phone solution in Zoom Phone that could easily adjust to changing demands by providing assigned phone numbers, seamless updates, and enhanced caller transparency.
“Moving to Zoom has been an absolute game changer,” says Brock. “The main goal was to reduce the phone bills and, with Zoom Phone, we achieved 81% cost savings during the festival’s core period.”
Elevating customer experiences
With twelve box office staff working on a seasonal basis, the festival’s phone system handles a huge influx of calls between April and June. But, it also needs to function seamlessly and cost-effectively throughout the year - particularly as staff travel to meet sponsors, stakeholders, and filmmakers worldwide. To meet these conflicting demands, the Zoom team used Zoom Contact Center to create two contact centre environments with integrations to allow smooth transitions from one to the other. The out-of-season environment is streamlined to handle calls for 15 full-time staff members along with the unique demands of the Travelling Film Festival across 21 Australian locations. Then, as the organisation scales up for the SFF, the in-season environment is equipped to support 50 staff members and a larger volume of calls.
As well as reducing costs and streamlining operations, Zoom Contact Center provides the box office team with invaluable data. Previously, they couldn’t see agent availability, analyse queries, or triage calls. Now, they have full visibility and can run advanced analytics to improve the customer experience.
The dashboard was fantastic because we could see if an agent wasn't logged in or if there were a lot of customers waiting in the queues - we've never had that visibility before. We didn't have data to look back and see if we had enough staff to support the load. That helps us so much - especially when we're budgeting for the next festival.
Brock Taffe
Head of Operations & Events, Sydney Film Festival
Meanwhile, Zoom’s tools like Voicemail Transcription, IVR, and Automatic Call Distribution for call queuing and escalation are huge time and resource savers for SFF. These features play a key role in the organisation’s business continuity success.
“The callback function saved us during this year’s festival. We had a street-wide internet outage during one of our busiest periods. But, in the time it took to fix the issue, Zoom Contact Center was lining up callbacks. It was all so smooth. We didn’t need to trawl through voicemails or miss any queries - we could return everyone’s call within 30 minutes.”
Seamless collaboration across the organisation
SFF also uses Zoom Meetings for board, supplier, partnership, and production meetings, providing accessibility to key decision-makers despite busy schedules. With Zoom's collaboration tools integrated across the organisation, SFF has modernised and streamlined communication and increased cost-efficiency with minimal effort.
“There are many different apps out there, but the fact that our communication tools can be all-in-one is very valuable.”
Moving forward, Brock is keen to take advantage of Zoom’s other features. From AI-powered tools to help analyse customer conversations and sentiment, to call dispositions and chatbots, there’s plenty left to explore. With all of these features available to Zoom customers, Brock can continue on the journey towards providing the best experience for movie-goers and ensure that the SFF continues to entertain audiences for another 71 years.