How a Live Entertainment Company Used Team Chat to Make Work Easier

Introduction

Founded by Teresa "T-Bird" and Mike Gigante, Ball of Fire Entertainment is an entertainment company with a simple mission: help bars and restaurants drive revenue by providing fun, engaging trivia and music bingo nights. 

Today, they run an average of 35 games a week across the US, powered by a remote team of 24 hosts who are the face of the company. Keeping that team connected, supported, and having fun is the key to their success.

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The Challenge: When Managing Your Team Becomes Unmanageable

As Ball of Fire’s team grew, their communication system couldn’t keep up. The team relied entirely on personal text messages, which quickly became a logistical nightmare as they scaled to over 20 hosts in different locations across the country.

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This created several critical pain points:

• A Mess of Disconnected Text Groups: If a host had an urgent issue during a live game - like a wrong answer in a trivia question - management had to create a brand new text group with multiple people to solve it. Information was scattered, and there was no single place to look for updates.
• A Slow and Inefficient Workflow: Finding old information was so difficult that it was often quicker to just start a new conversation from scratch. This reactive process wasted valuable time and made it hard to keep track of everything.
• A Lack of Team Community: With hosts spread out and communication limited to ad-hoc text messages, there was no sense of a shared team culture. Hosts rarely interacted with each other, and the fun, social nature of the company wasn't reflected in their internal tools.

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"If we had an emergency, it usually involved not sending seven texts, but creating a new text group... it was quicker to recreate it rather than look for it. When the crunch was on, it took several steps."

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The Solution: Why Zenzap?

Ball of Fire needed a communication tool that was as easy to use as a personal chat app but built with the structure a business needs. After looking for a new solution, they chose Zenzap because it was intuitive, easy to roll out, and perfectly suited for managing a remote team. The migration was incredibly smooth.

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"The migration to Zenzap was very easy. Our first group of people, when we sent out the invites, I would say within about 10 minutes they were on, chatting and trying out features."

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Key Features in Action

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A Fun and Engaging Communication Hub

Zenzap became the central place for the entire Ball of Fire team to connect. Unlike simple text messages, the options of GIFs and emoji reactions made communication more expressive and enjoyable, helping to build a true team community.

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Organized Channels for Easy Management

The Ball of Fire team can now manage all team communication in one place. With dedicated chats for different games, weekly schedules, and general topics, everything is organized and easy to find, which has hugely simplified their workflow.

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A Lifeline for Hosts During Live Events

Because Zenzap's notifications pop up instantly on a host's phone, it acts as a real-time support system during live games. If a host has a problem, they know that management can see it and respond immediately.

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"Since we switched to Zenzap, my ability to manage communication has been so much easier. It has simplified things for me so that I'm managing it all in one place."

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The Impact: Connected, Confident, and Fun

The switch to Zenzap transformed how Ball of Fire Entertainment works together. The fragmented, frustrating process of managing a remote team was replaced by a single, streamlined system that empowers their hosts and fosters a real sense of community.

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The transformation was clear across the business:

• The team feels like a true community. Hosts are no longer isolated. They can now interact, share experiences, and get to know each other in a fun, social environment that reflects the company's culture.

"Zenzap has made our communication together as a team much richer and much more rewarding."

• Hosts can perform with total confidence. They know that if they run into a problem during a live show, they have a direct and instant lifeline to the management team, who is always there to back them up.

"It really gives our hosts the confidence to respond to challenges with confidence and know that we are backing them up"

• Work communication is actually fun. The team loves using the social features of the platform, which has made daily interactions more engaging and enjoyable for everyone.

"The animated GIFs and the fun things about a social communication tool has really allowed our staff to have fun with the way that we communicate, not just rely on a simple text message."

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Conclusion

Ball of Fire Entertainment's success depends on creating a fun, engaging experience, but their internal communication tools were anything but that. Zenzap provided the simple, intuitive, and enjoyable platform they needed to connect their team, streamline their operations, and build a stronger company culture. 

By bringing everyone together in one place, they can focus on what they do best: making every night a fun night out.

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