Yum! Brands is a fast-food powerhouse with over 59,000 restaurants operated by 1,500 franchises. Operating household names like KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and The Habit Burger Grill, and serving food in over 155 countries and territories, takes over one million employees and franchise team members to get the job done. The company gets meals into millions of customers’ hands daily. Not only that, but it opens a new restaurant every two hours.
These stats highlight just how large an organization Yum! is, requiring a lot of work to maintain such an enterprise and global reputation. The company provides solutions for the Yum! corporate staff, as well as the technical staff that support the stores and restaurants that are under the brand umbrella. With all the operational complexities the company faces, effective technology and communication systems are essential to its success.
Let’s dive into how Yum! Brands went from outdated legacy tech to modern communication platforms that keep it one step ahead of its competitors, helping serve customers delicious meals and satisfaction daily.
Aging on-premises infrastructure and operational overhead
Yum! Brands’ contact center historically ran on an on-premises solution called Avaya systems, then switched to using Cisco UCCX for 20 years, a dependable system that had reached its limits in flexibility, scalability, and maintenance efficiency.
The contact centers don’t serve external customers; they help internal employees, including restaurant staff, franchise owners, and corporate support teams. These centers handle everything from payroll questions and IT troubleshooting to operations and HR support. Despite not being customer-facing, reliability and responsiveness are crucial — and delay could impact restaurant operations across all of Yum! Brand’s global locations.
“Cisco UCCX was solid, but we started to feel the pain of keeping everything on-prem,” said Anudeep Mangireddygari, Senior Voice Engineer at Yum! Brands.
Over time, the legacy system created significant strain. Every server, update, and patch required manual intervention, and performance reporting was cumbersome. The costs extended beyond time and labor. Maintaining a large physical data center footprint was at odds with the company’s broader digital transformation strategy, which aimed to modernize systems and move fully to the cloud.
“We’re trying to get out of data centers altogether,” said Mangireddygari. “Running on-prem meant more hardware, more cost, and more things that could break.”
Additionally, the legacy system limited how fast the team could adapt to the growing needs of their internal users. Integrations with platforms like ServiceNow, Office 365, and workforce management tools required workarounds, often involving custom scripts or manual data entry.
“If we wanted to roll out a change or connect something new, we had to go through so many layers,” said Mangireddygari. “Reporting wasn’t real-time, and getting insights took way too long. We knew we could do better with a modern system.”
The move to the cloud: From UCCX to Webex Contact Center
Following the push to get rid of data centers and move to the cloud, the company needed a solution that would be able to keep up with demand and provide a seamless transition. While the company looked at several different options, including Five9, Amazon Connect, and NICE, the team ultimately chose Webex Contact Center and Webex Calling.
In retail, things move quickly, especially during high-volume times like major promotions or events. The cloud approach means the company can make changes instantly, without worrying about downtime or after-hours maintenance. Webex offers this and more.
The team selected Webex Contact Center and Webex Calling as their solution of choice based on their long-standing partnership with Cisco. Plus, Webex offers a seamless migration path, competitive pricing at enterprise scale, and the confidence and comfort that the internal team feels with Cisco technology.
To implement Webex solutions, Yum! opted to work with CXAS, its Cisco partner. CXAS designed a hybrid architecture that enabled a smooth, flexible transition to the cloud at their desired pace. The company chose CXAS for its deep specialization in collaboration and its proven ability to handle large-scale, multi-system environments. Yum! leveraged a phased CXAS migration approach, integrating on-prem systems with the new cloud platform without disruption. CXAS engineered custom reporting to replicate complex legacy on-prem analytics, ensuring operational continuity and data consistency.
“A lot of our teams were attached to their existing reports and dashboards, so using Webex Analyzer and the JSON-based desktop configuration let us replicate these formats,” said Mangireddygari. “It helped our brands feel comfortable with the change, while still giving us better tools and flexibility.”
Yum! Brands migrated more than 200 agents to Webex Contact Center and 400 licenses for Webex WFO Additionally, the team could integrate other useful platforms like ServiceNow, Domo, Power BI, and Oracle Cloud seamlessly into the platform. Now, agents can have all the info they need, whether it’s incident stats, user info, or payroll details, right on their desktop.
Greater efficiency and flexibility
With Webex Contact Center, many of the headaches the internal team faced went away. Rather than spend large amounts of time doing on-premise maintenance and data center management, the team now focuses on value-adding tasks. Plus, easier API-based integrations across CRMs make work easier and less siloed.
A single sign-on and browser-based login improved accessibility for agents, and an easier remote work setup made sure agents didn’t have to be confined to using in-office hardware. AI features also cut call admin time from six minutes to just one minute, making it simpler to help more internal staff members during the workday.
Access to stronger analytics and trend analysis via Webex and Webex WFO spotlights specific growth opportunities, taking the guesswork out of performance improvement. This also simplifies monthly performance reviews and enhances targeted training, putting more power tools in supervisors’ hands.
Lastly, Webex Contact Center offers Yum! Brands reliability, with zero downtime and no dropped calls post-launch, showing a promising future with the platform. This improves customer satisfaction and ensures agents can resolve issues faster than ever before.
Preparing for the future: AI and digital transformation
Looking forward, the company plans to continue innovating operations by implementing Cisco’s AI Assistant as the first point of contact for routine questions, giving agents more time to focus on complex incidents. The company has also started testing call transcription, which is already helping with incident management and quality checks. It’s also working alongside Cisco partners on more advanced analytics for QA.
“Overall, moving our contact center to the cloud has helped us deliver faster, more consistent support across all our brands,” said Mangireddygari. “It lets us stay focused on what matters most in retail: keeping our teams supported and our restaurants running smoothly, no matter what comes our way.”
Discover what Webex solutions could do for your business. Connect with a Webex team member today to learn more.
About The Author
