How Acosta Uses Zoom to Help Deliver Brand Success for Leading Retail, CPG Companies

It’s Acosta’s job to ensure that a product or brand is well represented in any store around the world, and it’s darn good at it. The Jacksonville, Florida-based marketing and sales organization has been responsible for driving clients’ success in retail locations across the United States since 1927, growing from a regional firm to a national force serving the world’s largest consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies. A connected workforce of over 26,000 employees work to deliver unparalleled support for clients like Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, and Nestle by providing everything from retail consulting and consumer marketing to headquarter sales and business intelligence services.

The need for an intuitive, reliable communications solution

Coordinating the efforts of tens of thousands of employees to support some of the world’s largest companies is no easy task. Acosta had a legacy video communications tool in place, but it wasn’t meeting its needs, leaving its end users frustrated and distrustful of video conferencing software. This led to an increased burden on its IT teams, which also drove up the cost of supporting the solution. 

“We were using Webex, and it was really a struggle,” said Kristy Trice, Acosta’s Director of Vendor Management & Systems Assurance. “Our employees did not like it. It wasn’t user-friendly, there were continual connection issues, quality of service was poor and employees struggled using it in their day-to-day.” 

With so many employees and a wide range of services, the teams at Acosta needed a communications platform that employees would actually use. It also had to meet various criteria for internal and external collaboration. 

“We have a lot of remote workers, so we really needed the solution to be remote-friendly,” Trice said. “We also needed the ability to screen share as well. Other key criteria included the ability to hold large town-hall-style meetings, where we could have up to 5,000 attendees for company-wide announcements. And, of course, cost was a really big consideration as well.” 

Streamlining operations with Zoom’s reliable, flexible solutions

Acosta and its teams were in the process of reviewing different video conferencing solutions and Zoom was one of them. They were impressed by Zoom’s performance, reliability, and ease of use and immediately shortlisted the solution.

Acosta worked with Zoom to set up training sessions to ensure that employees were properly educated on the platform, and Trice immediately noticed the enthusiasm for the new solution. 

“Zoom partnered with us to do the training, and people were so excited to switch to a new solution that we saw 90% to 100% attendance at our trainings,” Trice said. “That’s pretty much unheard of.” 

Zoom’s ease of use and reliability resulted in a better user experience, and according to Trice, it “drastically reduced” the number of support tickets and the cost of managing Acosta’s video conferencing. Zoom’s flexibility also allowed the teams at Acosta to easily roll it out, which saved the company time and money and earned Trice’s IT teams recognition across the organization. 

“We bought Zoom licenses, but we didn’t have to buy any additional hardware to run the solution,” Trice said. “It was actually one of the best projects that I have ever run at Acosta. We were even nominated for the Chairman’s Award for the project, which we were really excited about.”

Trice added that Zoom’s benefits extended beyond simplified communications and cost savings. Because Zoom is designed for reliability and unprecedented uptime, Acosta’s IT teams were able to use Zoom as a backup communications method when their systems experienced a temporary outage. 

“We experienced an issue a while back that temporarily shut down our systems,” Trice said. “And in the middle of it all, Zoom was the only system that worked. We got all of our managers on a video call, and then sent them into breakout rooms so they could work independently without interrupting each other. And then we would bring them back into the main session every hour to give us updates. So, Zoom is an amazing tool that got us through a tough time.” 

Improved reliability, engagement, and effectiveness of communications

By implementing Zoom, Acosta was able to reduce its IT burden while improving communications reliability, remote worker engagement, and its ability to deliver company-wide announcements. Additionally, the Zoom platform is now ingrained into its emergency processes for future system events, giving the company the ability to communicate no matter what. 

As Acosta continues to grow, Trice said it is planning to further simplify the communications infrastructure and reduce on-premises hardware management to streamline its operations. 

“My goal is simplicity, having as few tools as possible and reducing support costs,” Trice said. “Right now, we have both hard phones and softphones, but we are trying to drive toward softphones. We are currently looking at additional features in Zoom’s communication platform to help us move closer to that goal.”