Company
A global sports marketing company secures multi-million dollar contracts for international sporting events, providing data modeling, analytics, and customer support systems for the world's largest athletic competitions. The company operates under extreme public visibility, where technical failures become headline news and impact their ability to win future contracts.
The Challenge
After winning the Paris 2024 Olympics support contract, the company faced an immediate crisis: they had exactly four weeks to build a complete Interactive Voice Response (IVR) call center system that would need to operate 24/7 throughout the Games. The system required sophisticated decision trees, data modeling, and the capacity to handle call volumes equivalent to their busiest day of the year—the day after the Super Bowl—sustained every single day for six weeks. Third-party agencies doubted they could meet the deadline, and Salesforce's pricing exceeded budget constraints. With the entire world watching and failure meaning front-page embarrassment, the company needed a partner who could deliver flawlessly under impossible time pressure while staying within a fixed budget that required round-the-clock staffing.
The Solution
A.Team brought in a lead architect from their expert network who had managed a small, geographically dispersed team for over 15 years—a structure that would prove essential for 24/7 coverage within budget. The architect assembled his trusted team across multiple time zones, implementing eight-hour shifts with disciplined handoffs where each person tagged in their replacement, and international resources were always paired with domestic support. The team established a defined triage cadence and workflow within days, anticipating business needs before they were articulated and using semi-automatic test case generation through a practice called Swing testing to validate the IVR systems rapidly.
They compressed work that would typically take four months into the four-week deadline, setting up development environments at speed while A.Team managed the budget structure to keep cash flows proper. The IVR lead's combination of technical expertise in phones and SalesCloud, plus her composure under pressure, kept the team focused—ultimately resulting in the company hiring her full-time to continue managing the systems beyond the Olympics.
Technologies Used
SalesCloud: Managed phone systems and call routing for international support lines
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems: Designed and implemented decision trees for three international call lines
Swing Testing: Applied semi-automatic test case generation to validate IVR functionality under tight deadlines
"I suddenly had enabled, full-time head count. They had a defined triage cadence and workflow that came into place really quickly."
— Head of Paris 2024 Project
The Results
A.Team delivered three international IVR lines on time for the world's largest sporting event, handling unprecedented call volumes that would have overwhelmed traditional staffing approaches.
Call Volume Management
Supported an 11,000% increase in inbound cases per month while maintaining system stability throughout the six-week Olympic period.
Accelerated Delivery
Compressed four months of typical development work into six weeks, launching on a non-negotiable deadline with global visibility.
Operational Excellence
Improved both customer satisfaction and agent efficiency while managing call volumes equivalent to post-Super Bowl traffic sustained daily.
Strategic Team Adoption
Converted the IVR lead into a full-time hire, creating a technical-phone specialist tandem that expanded the company's ongoing capabilities.
