The contact center is a lens that focuses the effects of all external communication activities of the company. Therefore, the new offer and related advertising activities mean that the call center will face increased traffic. What to do to manage communication during Peak in Call Center without unnecessary expenses?
To be able to respond to peaks, you need to have detailed knowledge of your company and its customers. Analyze recent problems with insufficiently efficient service that caused irritation of unmanned customers. Perhaps you will notice certain dependencies – an hour, a day or a specific period, coverage of communicating the offer on Facebook or sending a newsletter – that will allow you to designate moments when traffic in the call center clearly increases.
Peak in Call Center
For the fashion industry, this is certainly the sales season (summer and winter), telecoms record increases in contacts with customers during promotions and in connection with advertising campaigns carried out, dealers – closing the sales year.
Knowing the season, planning and predicting customer behavior are the starting points for establishing a strategy for unloading excessive traffic – at the same time, it determines the cause and predicts the moment when you will have to make changes.
Vending Machine in a Call Center
What changes are we talking about? There are several complementary solutions. You can focus on automating some of the customer communication. The most convenient way is to use IVR (Interactive Voice Response). This system takes over as the first contact person. It allows the customer to dial the issue he is calling by number or voice and automatically directs his call to a specific department.
Depending on the system settings, the call may go to all people in the department, to a free consultant or to the one who answered the fewest calls on a given day. If the customer number is assigned to a given category, e.g. industry, it will be directed directly to a consultant specializing in the indicated sector. On the other hand, if the client has talked with the advisor before, he can be automatically redirected to him.
Skillful Queuing
Too many incoming calls means the risk that the customer will repeatedly find a busy line. Queuing, thanks to which the customer does not have to dial the same number many times, will help to avoid annoyance. He is also informed about his place in the queue and can estimate the time it will be served.
When queuing, remember that premium customer numbers should be handled outside the queue and directed to specialized advisers.
Queuing applies not only to call centers, but also to the entire contact center. Managing multiple channels requires diligence in prioritizing customers waiting for a response. However, during a peak, large contact centers have a significant advantage: consultants specialized in one of the channels (e.g. telephone, e-mail, chat) can unload traffic in other channels.
Organization of the Process in the Call Center
Also consider whether the organization of your call center’s work requires changes. Internal call centers limit flexibility in the case of peaks, which, in the absence of skilful, planned in advance recruitment, often means employing too many or too few employees. It also means the lack of technological facilities, the lack of proven solutions and the lack of external consultancy.
If you do not want to fully outsource call center services, you can opt for the mixed model. Depending on the contract, it is possible to share competences with an external partner or transfer calls to him that you are not able to handle yourself. Thanks to this, you do not have to invest in equipment, systems and employees, and you receive support in the most difficult moments of running a call center.