Stanley Steemer reduces IT costs by 70% while elevating customer experience

Transforming operations to support a modern customer experience 

For Stanley Steemer, the real magic happens when its technicians are in a customer’s home providing its signature cleaning services. But the customer experience begins the moment someone calls to schedule that service.  

The primary role of its contact center is to guide callers through a consultative conversation that helps them select the right services and book an appointment. And unlike the many contact centers where fewer interactions are better, for the cleaning services company, more calls equals more sales opportunities. 

“From a contact center perspective, the priority is marketing to get us more volume. We don’t mind call volume, because the majority of it is calls to book our cleaning services,” said John Parente, Director of Contact Center Operations for Stanley Steemer. “Although we use email and chat, our business is built around routing these inbound calls to the right branch or franchisee. By doing that right the first time, every time, Genesys Cloud means more sales and appointment bookings.” 

But to continue delivering those consultative interactions with the consistently high quality today’s consumers expect, Stanley Steemer needed to further innovate its customer and employee experiences. 

Having already moved to the Genesys Cloud™ platform to simplify its customer experience (CX) technology infrastructure, expand its channel options and support a remote-first workforce, Stanley Steemer has been deepening its use of automation, sharpening agent performance tools and building operational flexibility. Genesys Cloud had replaced multiple administrative systems, giving the company a modern technology foundation that strengthened call routing stability and supports remote work. The next phase was to make agents’ work easier, reduce the burden of repetitive calls and preserve a consistently high-quality customer experience.  

Balancing flexibility, coverage and consistency 

Most customer interactions are by phone, so delivering smooth, reliable voice experiences is essential — especially now that the majority of the company’s contact center agents work remotely. This approach allows Stanley Steemer to hire nationwide and keep agents productive regardless of their physical location.  

That reality made the simplicity of Genesys Cloud even more critical. “Our agents have to pretty much support themselves, and that’s no insignificant benefit to using Genesys,” said Parente. “When we bring on new agents, training them on the Genesys system is usually the easier part. The harder part is training them on our products and services.” 

The ability for developers to quickly innovate on the platform also is important. For example, Genesys Cloud enabled the company to automate most elements of the onboarding and offboarding processes.  

Even with those innovations, a remote workforce brings challenges around staffing and scheduling. Fortunately, Genesys Cloud Workforce Engagement Management capabilities have helped Stanley Steemer balance flexibility with coverage. Most agents have rotating weekday schedules along with one fixed weekend day off. Start times now shift within two-hour windows, which gives the operation the agility it needs without adding headcount.  

Parente acknowledges that this is a meaningful savings: When 120 agents can shift their start times and days off dynamically, the company avoids hiring an extra group simply to cover PTO and seasonal swings. The approach helps sustain what Parente calls the company’s “non–hire and fire” culture.  

“Holding on to people and adjusting hours in a fair and transparent way is crucial,” said Parente. “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. 

Even minimal bot use delivers maximum impact 

Another area of employee experience improvements is more directly impacting the customer experience. Stanley Steemer began using automation more strategically — not to replace human conversations, but to handle basic, non-revenue interactions.  

The team built a voicebot using out-of-the-box Genesys Cloud features. When a caller’s phone number matches an active appointment, the bot can cancel or reschedule the job or confirm a technician’s arrival window.  

“If you’re calling to reschedule, 80% of the time the bot will handle your reschedule without any issues,” said Parente, emphasizing that the bot is never a barrier. “We make it super easy for callers to get out of the bot. If the customer says, ‘I want to speak to an agent,’ the bot directs the interaction to an agent.” 

This philosophy reflects what Parente describes as the company’s “old-fashioned, hypersensitive” approach to customer experience: Automation should help customers, not trap them.  

Despite its focused scope, the voicebot now handles about 6% of interactions — a meaningful share given the simplicity of the use case and the company’s preference for voice engagement. By handling routine calls reliably, the voicebot allows agents to spend more time on revenue-oriented consultative selling. 

The chatbot follows the same logic but is used more selectively due to the complex nature of routing interactions across corporate and franchise locations. Many website visitors must be matched to their specific local branch before account details become available, and most reschedules still occur by phone. Even so, the automation across channels reinforces a consistent, high-quality customer-friendly experience.

Advancing CX with insight, AI and continuous improvement 

Beyond self-service automation, Genesys Cloud helps agents deliver more polished live interactions through real-time screen pops. When caller ID matches a customer record, the agent sees the customer’s history immediately and can start the conversation more naturally. Parente said this alone “probably saves at least 10 seconds of a call.” But more importantly, it changes the tone from transactional to informed and personal. 

Supervisors also have better tools for performance management through Genesys Cloud. Topic and sentiment analysis help to identify coaching opportunities and recommendations more objectively. This eliminates the perception that coaching is based on one unlucky call and helps leaders be more proactive in guiding agents.  

The information also enables supervisors to better prioritize their coaching sessions. “If you’ve got an agent with a bunch of red and another with a bunch of green, you know who to focus on — as opposed to guessing who they need to coach next,” said Parente. 

The company has piloted generative AI features like Genesys Cloud™ Agent Copilot as well, testing them with both experienced agents and new hires. For example, Stanley Steemer is evaluating how these tools might help new agents ramp faster and improve call quality.  

 “We’re always looking for ways of using new Genesys Cloud capabilities with what we already have,” said Parente.  

With a mature cloud foundation, a remote workforce model now operating smoothly and early wins that prove the value of self-service, Stanley Steemer is well-positioned for ongoing innovation — all while keeping its unmistakably personal touch at the center of every customer interaction. 

To learn more about the solutions featured in this case study, visit www.genesys.com.