Stanley Black & Decker Outdoor Modernizes Contact Center Operations with Verint Workforce Management in the Cloud

Stanley Black & Decker Outdoor optimizes its workforce resources through modern and automated forecasting and scheduling with Verint

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The results

15%
Improved schedule adherence by 15% and reduced call abandonment rates.
20%
Increased contact center capacity by 20% without adding headcount.
250%
Expanded agent training and coaching by 250%, with 80% of agents broadening their skill sets from targeted cross-training efforts.

About Stanley Black & Decker Outdoor

Stanley Black & Decker Outdoor (formerly MTD Products, Inc.) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of outdoor power equipment. Through its facilities in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, the company produces quality mowers, snow throwers, utility vehicles, trimmers, tillers, and more for both residential and commercial markets. Stanley Black & Decker’s products can be found online and across the globe in all channels of distribution, including home improvement stores, hardware stores, mass retailers, independent dealers, and farm supply stores.

Stanley Black & Decker is the only outdoor power equipment company with its own contact center. It believes this provides a significant competitive advantage in delivering the best customer experience and is key to growing its global lawn and garden market share.

In its contact center, Stanley Black & Decker is continuously striving to elevate the service and customer experience it delivers, with a focus on key metrics such as schedule adherence and operational efficiency. Another focal point to meeting this ongoing goal is optimizing agent engagement and empowerment.

“Using Verint Workforce Management Professional has allowed my agents to take ownership of their schedules. We have gone from 75 percent schedule adherence to 90 percent and above. We are answering more calls with less people.”
Samantha Thompson Quality & Workforce Management Supervisor, Stanley Black & Decker Outdoor

Optimize workforce resources through automated forecasting and scheduling

Stanley Black & Decker deployed Verint Workforce Management Professional, part of Verint Customer Engagement Platform, to optimize its workforce resources through modern and automated forecasting, scheduling, agent communication, and adherence. At the same time, it upgraded its telephony to Vonage and introduced Salesforce as its new customer relationship management system.

With the move to Verint and Vonage, Stanley Black & Decker gained a single, unified platform to connect its telephony and workforce management solutions. As a result, the organization can more effectively forecast contact center staffing requirements to meet service levels and reduce overtime.

Similarly, with the cloud-based Verint Workforce Management Professional enabling seamless integration with Salesforce Service Cloud or Sales Cloud case management systems, Stanley Black & Decker has a more holistic view of the customer and agent-customer interactions. As a result, greater efficiencies are gained and agents are more empowered, in turn helping to elevate the customer experience.

Meet your CX goals with Verint Workforce Management Professional

Stanley Black & Decker now has the technology in place to make interactions with customers, agents, and supervisors as streamlined as possible. In addition, the Verint solution is easy to use, which enables the company to optimally integrate its seasonal employees with its full- and part-time contact center workforce.

One of Stanley Black & Decker’s overarching goals is to “right size” labor headcount requirements while increasing efficiency and operational capacity. With Verint Workforce Management Professional, the company achieved a 20 percent increase in contact center capacity without adding headcount. Also, by organically boosting capacity, Stanley Black & Decker avoids significant costs associated with hiring and onboarding new employees.

By leveraging Verint and other technology aimed at helping agents work more efficiently, Stanley Black & Decker increased the amount of agent training and coaching by 250 percent. Furthermore, targeted cross-training efforts resulted in 80 percent of the company’s contact center agents broadening their skill sets from two skill queues to four skill queues. This provides them with greater flexibility in shift swapping and coverage and has also helped reduce overall call abandonment rates.

Improve scheduling efficiency

Improved scheduling efficiency thanks to Verint Workforce Management Professional has also enabled Stanley Black & Decker’s contact center managers to be more strategic and customer focused. No longer distracted by scheduling nuances and issues, managers have more time to interact with agents and be more responsive to requests. This has improved schedule adherence while also helping to fuel the reduction in call abandonment rates.

“Using Verint Workforce Management Professional has allowed my agents to take ownership of their schedules,” says Samantha Thompson, Quality & Workforce Management Supervisor at Stanley Black & Decker Outdoor. “We have gone from 75 percent schedule adherence to 90 percent and above. We are answering more calls with less people. We have been able to schedule thousands of hours of training, which is something agents throughout our entire contact center are eager for.”

The ability to take advantage of seamless integration between the Verint, Vonage, and Salesforce systems has brought newfound efficiencies as well. On top of this, the solutions are backed by world-class support.

“We’ve had the same account teams supporting us for the past five years,” Thompson concludes. “This speaks volumes. They know us and they know our expectations. The partnership has helped Stanley Black & Decker thrive.”

Featured Verint solutions

Workforce Management (WFM) Professional
Enhance your employee and customer experience with superior forecasting and scheduling
Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform
Connect your data across the enterprise and provide much-needed clarity into your performance.