Genie, a leader in the equipment manufacturing industry, provides support and sales services to machine operators and resellers across six continents. Over time, its systems and processes had grown fragmented, resulting in extended wait times impacting customer experience.

The company wanted to hit key goals, such as standardizing an always-on customer service model, providing priority service to strategic accounts, improving customer support agent experience and efficiency, and creating AI-enhanced interactions. Genie partnered with Slalom to develop a new AWS and Salesforce contact center solution. The first phase of the project implemented a change management and business readiness plan and moved 180 agents and supervisors onto the new platform in 4.5 months. Phase two extended into additional regions and broadened the early transformative effects of AWS and Salesforce by introducing AI components through Salesforce Einstein.

Together, the teams have laid the groundwork for a reimagined digital customer experience, built on an AI foundation and aligning around shared goals.

Slalom kicked off the project with 17 Genie leaders from across the globe in a three-day workshop to establish goals, ownership, and working methods across workstreams, organizations, and individuals. In just four weeks, the team shaped the foundations for a new best-in-class Amazon Connect and Salesforce Service Cloud Voice.

“Genie’s leadership prioritized and made time for the appropriate conversations and was also involved in all aspects of the change and communication approach, focused on their ‘why’ and driving a better experience for both customers and agents,” says Jessica Heaton, a principal focused on transformation at Slalom. “That’s a critical factor. Leaders set the tone for what’s expected.”

As the solution moved forward, the teams continued to collaborate and iterate, utilizing a flow-based delivery. Slalom helped develop business readiness trainings, documentation, and all-hands meetings to prepare customers and agents for the upcoming experience.

“This was a collaborative effort between Slalom, Genie, and our partners—AWS and Salesforce,” adds Alex Aitken, a principal at Slalom. “They didn’t say, ‘Go build this and come talk to us when you’re done.’”

The global rollout of Genie’s new, 24-hour “Sun Never Sets” standardized support system brought North American, European, and Australian agents onto the platform. Prior to the migration, everything was region-locked and calling after business hours didn’t offer immediate support.

“We built something that will grow with Genie easily,” says Kellie Laflin, a senior cloud consultant at Slalom. “The solution makes it much easier to onboard new groups at the right global level.”

Slalom also implemented customer recognition and prioritization for key and strategic accounts. Now, agents know when they’re talking to someone who’s a high priority for the business, accessing data in real time from Salesforce. Slalom guided Genie in updating customer data to a recognizable, standard format, ensuring this customer enablement provided the desired results and improved agent efficiency.

“This wasn’t around a vendor-customer relationship. It was about collaborating and getting to a partnership,” says Matthew Skipworth, vice president of global service and digital solutions at Genie. “That’s key to me. Having seen so many projects head off in the wrong direction, this is a success story all around, and we took a lot of learnings away.”

The project’s first phase, launched in the United States, EMEA, and Australia regions, set up the foundation for Genie through change management and aligning the tech stack. Reducing the average customer wait time was a significant goal; both 24/7 support and customer prioritization helped accomplish that.

“Speaking to our president after we had gone live with phase one, he said this was the best implementation he had ever seen,” says Skipworth, referring not only to the technology build but also the change management teams and how they collaborated to support Genie’s customer service agents with communications, training, and testing.

The second phase introduced generative AI and expanded to Singapore and Southeast Asia. Genie customers often call the support team with some knowledge of the problem, but they can’t quite put their finger on the best solution. The support agent works with them to determine the part they need, which the customer can then purchase on the ecommerce site.

Genie receives about 7,000 of those calls each month, each lasting between three and 12 minutes. With Einstein’s AI working in the background, agents have call summaries and the proper parts surfaced for them. They’re not spending time jumping around manuals, knowledge articles, and the install base.

The contextualized AI serves as a foundation for improved service. Not only do agents have a more streamlined experience, but they’ve also gained opportunities for personal growth that didn’t previously exist.

“We’re enabling them to have more time to develop themselves,” says Skipworth. “In the past, it’s been caller, hang up, caller, hang up, caller, hang up. Now, they can focus some of their day on personal development or relationship building internally.”

Internal operations have improved, too, leading to more confident employees and impactful results. After user acceptance testing, Slalom surveyed Genie employees about their experience: 92% of participants reported satisfaction or favorability with the training content, and 100% responded that they felt adequately equipped to answer questions.

“There was a lot of really good feedback around business readiness and the level to which people felt supported,” Heaton says.

“It was such a difference between where the Genie product owner started versus where he ended,” Laflin adds. “His confidence and ability to make quick decisions and iterate were really cool to see.”

Now, Genie is primed to build on its AI offerings to better support customers, which remains the company’s number one goal.

“We honed in on wait time because that had impact,” Skipworth says. “Determine the true problem for your customers and create a solution that will move the needle.”

“The launch is the beginning, not the end,” Aitken says. “This is a product Genie is going to continue to build on. That’s success.”