Case Study: Overstock.com achieves scalable, SLA-backed customer service and IT cost savings with Genesys

Overstock - Customer Case Study

Overstock.com, a leading online retailer known for “white‑glove” customer service, faced growing pains as seasonal call spikes and a patchwork of on‑premises hardware, hosted apps and manual systems strained its contact center. The legacy ACD/PBX lacked skills‑based routing, reporting was fragmented, redundancy was costly, and the company depended on an outsourcer during peak periods—driving high IT support needs and limiting scalability and service levels.

Overstock moved to a Genesys cloud‑based contact center with advanced routing, IVR, multi‑site virtual management, unified reporting and integrations, deployed within 90 days. The results were dramatic: average speed to answer fell by over 93 to under two seconds, abandon rates dropped 85% to <0.4%, average hold time fell ~21% (537s → 422s), agent occupancy rose 27% (30 fewer FTEs, ~$930K annual savings), ongoing annual labor savings exceed $2.6M, and TCO savings were $13.9M over five years (total five‑year savings ≈ $27M); service levels and Net Promoter Score also improved while seasonal scaling became seamless and capex‑free.

Overstock