The Staples Background
   Staples and Vital Learning

It’s 2004 and Staples Contract is Staples’ fastest growing business with industry leading double-digit growth and a J.D. Powers award for service quality.

Now flash back to 1999 when Staples first broke ground on its state-of-the-art Staples Contract call center in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Within the next 18 months, 750 employees joined Staples as the company aggressively populated its new Halifax facility. Krista Soucy, Senior HR Manager at Staples, remembers that growth and also some of the growing pains that came with it.

“We had high turnover during that first year. and whenever possible we used internal promotions to fill vacancies. Those promotions gave us some business continuity during our startup period but brought with them a clear need for management skills training. We needed that training to establish a process new managers could consistently follow in their evolving roles.”

Vital Learning’s Supervision Series was chosen

because it featured a systematic way to build fundamental management and supervisory skills. According to Krista, “We were looking for a business issue focus because we see managing as a profession that requires specific skills. Vital Learning’s management training courses, which center on the essential and critical skills of leadership and communication, were a great fit.”

Why Vital Learning

According to Krista, Vital Learning’s Supervision Series is a perfect fit in the Staples culture of “Perfect Order.” At Staples our culture drives our focus on the customer. The Vital Learning curriculum matches our corporate values and serves as the strong platform for building skilled leaders at all levels.”

Staples Results

Krista Soucy tells us, “After we started using Vital’s materials we saw our turnover drop by almost one third over the course of a year. Our turnover rate is now about half of what it was in year one and we know from employee feedback and our performance measurement system that Vital’s training has a lot to do with our success.”

That success continued in May, 2004, when the J.D. Powers and Associates Certified Call Center Program (SM) certified Staples Contract call centers for customer satisfaction excellence. Staples is the first in the office products industry, and one of the first companies nationwide, to have its call centers certified by J.D. Power and Associates.

In order to achieve the J.D. Posers certificate, the Staples call centers serving medium and large-sized company customers passed a rigorous audit of quality assurance capabilities, management roles and responsibilities and associate recruiting and training.