Removing deep-down experience inhibitors

Direct and franchise sales models

Founded on American ingenuity, Stanley Steemer began as a one-man carpet cleaning business by Jack A. Bates in 1947. Today, with flourishing direct and franchise sales models, it has a $650 million turnover and reaches over 90% of the US population with 287 locations in 48 states. Powered by US-manufactured equipment and technicians trained in house, the company continues growing through constant innovation.

Essential to its success is 1-800-STEEMER, a toll-free number that routes residential and commercial customers to local support anywhere in the US. That could be the Stanley Steemer Contact Center supporting all the corporate branch locations or an independent franchise that’s been passed down through the generations.

“We’re fighting for market share every day and support our dedicated franchisees by handling a significant portion of their interactions, so they can focus on what they do best,” said John Parente, Director of Contact Center Operations at Stanley Steemer.

Smarter routing and simplified IT

Having used Genesys PureConnect cloud for a decade, the Stanley Steemer team trusted Genesys — a trust founded on system stability and reliability. While Genesys PureConnect had served Stanley Steemer well, there was room for improvement when it came to user experience and IT support. Since the toll-free number was essential, the thought of putting it in the hands of a new vendor seemed too risky. So the Stanley Steemer team chose to move to the Genesys Cloud platform.

“Switching to Genesys Cloud made a load of sense,” added Parente. “Although we use email and chat, our business is built around routing inbound calls to the right branch or franchisee. Doing that right the first time, every time through Genesys Cloud means more sales and appointment bookings. And, because our agents are largely still at home, we wanted to help them work and serve more efficiently. Now, they can do that through single sign-on, smart screen pops and ZIP code lookups.”

Moving to Genesys Cloud made sense from an IT perspective as well.

“We escaped single points of failure, multiple admin apps and expensive legacy MPLS connections between our data centers,” said Rob Bennett, Manager of IT Operations at Stanley Steemer. “In addition, we reduced four admin tools to one.”

The company has reduced its IT infrastructure and support costs by as much as 70%. It has also fully automated its contact center employee onboarding and offboarding processes, while removing delays for requests relating to moves, adds and changes — resulting in a substantial time savings.

Contact center and unified communications work as one

Before, Genesys PureConnect supported around 200 agents and 550 business users working outside the contact center. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, collaborating and communicating over Microsoft Teams became the norm for Stanley Steemer.

“In next to no time we integrated Genesys Cloud and Microsoft Teams through Direct Routing with our session border controllers hosted in Azure,” added Bennett. “It was a super-smooth transition. All our numbers worked perfectly, and people were making calls from Teams from day one.”

Now if a customer calls in, the Teams integration allows agents to get quick answers from dispatch controllers regarding arrival times and work schedules. Similarly, the customer receives text messages to confirm their initial booking; notify them when the driver is on their way (along with a link to a map so they can track their exact location); and ask them to complete a short survey after the cleaning is done.

Optimizing resourcing and retention

Not surprisingly, staffing presents a perennial challenge. Incoming calls to Stanley Steemer peak during spring and summer — averaging 230,000 a month — then reduce by around 45% in the fall and winter. Big swings also occur during the week. On Monday, the company might receive 10,000 calls, dropping to around 2,000 on Sunday.

“One of our big differentiators is we do everything we can to avoid a hire and fire culture,” said Parente. “Holding on to people and cutting back hours in a fair and transparent way is crucial. Genesys Workforce Engagement Management allows us to do that and is a lot easier to set up and use than our old solution. Now, we’re able to tightly run agent flex schedules, and optimize our volumes and work distribution.”

In addition, Stanley Steemer uses the quality management capability — recording all calls along with a large percentage of screen captures. This helps in instances when a franchisee raises a concern regarding a customer quote. Now, the agent can find the call or screen recording much faster than before.

Next, the company intends to take advantage of other workforce engagement management features like the mobile app to assist with shift swaps and automated time-off requests. Other plans include migrating its current text solution to Genesys Cloud and trialing bots and speech and text analytics, initially to uncover pricing sensitivities and customers’ reasons for calling. The company also plans to implement voicebots to handle more routine calls.