Workforce Management Featured Article
Holiday Tips for the Busy Call Center
‘Tis the season when consumerism reaches its peak and that means busy times for the call center. Holidays are always a bit chaotic, but December generally means a heavy workload for most call centers. It’s also the time of year when call centers can either successfully engage with their customers – or risk losing them to the competition.
Being prepared for a major uptick in omnichannel communications is the best way call centers can handle the holiday season. And that means proper staffing and workforce management to ensure the correct number of agents, with the right blend of expertise, are on hand at any given time. Holdcom, a company that specializes in technology for business communications, has come up with several suggestions to ensure technology in the call center is up to the task of handling the influx of holiday traffic.
Having an adequate human staff is of course the best way to deal with an increase in call center traffic. Managers can go through a seasonal hiring and training process to ensure they have knowledgeable staff members on hand. Beyond human agents though, call centers are increasingly turning to AI and chatbots to handle routine questions and issues as well as to automate repetitive tasks. Chatbots and messaging apps are invaluable as a first line of communication with customers for standard queries like order details and shipping status. And AI bots are intelligent enough to escalate more complex queries to human agents when the need arises.
Having an updated IVR is absolutely essential for any call center, and even more so during the busy holiday season. Updated IVRs can quickly and easily obtain information about a customer and their history, and either provide answers on the fly, or intelligently route the customer to the appropriate agent. This saves time and increases productivity in the call center, not to mention reducing customer frustration levels.
A few other simple steps call centers can take to seamlessly handle the holiday season include creating special on-hold recordings. Holiday music and messages can go a long way toward appeasing callers that may need to wait on hold and create a more pleasant and upbeat atmosphere in line with the holiday season. Businesses can also provide information about popular questions like routine policies and warranties in recorded holiday messages, getting ahead of the game and potentially decreasing the number of callers in the hold queue.
Call centers should also enable their customers to opt out of the hold queue and either leave a voicemail message or a phone number so an agent can get back to them. This option offers a valuable alternative for customers who don’t have the time or patience to wait in a long hold queue.
Engagement is the key to call center success and never more so than during the busy holiday season. By taking a few practical measures to meet customers’ needs and streamline workforce management and call center operations, businesses can ensure they are positively engaging with their customers, meeting their needs and maintaining a cheerful holiday spirit.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
