The holiday season, Black Friday, seasonal sales, or even back to school – these are some of the special periods or events that grab the full attention of managers of commercial enterprises every year. However, while these occasions are particularly favourable to raking in exceptional profits, they are also quite often periods of stress and internal tension. Indeed, given the stakes, and due to the additional influx of customers or contacts, these critical periods demand a particular focus on customer service management. To adequately meet these often short-term economic needs, it’s ideal to rely on the services of an external partner of choice: a call centre. Here’s why, in 4 key points:
Maintain good internal organization
You obviously shouldn’t let customer calls go unanswered during sales, on New Year’s Eve, or a few days before Easter! That could cost you and hurt your annual income. But without a flexible approach, you’re very likely to miss out. In such a situation, an external call centre allows you to maintain a strong and competitive internal organization while dealing with the new requirements in terms of reception and the strategic management of incoming calls.
Adequate, readily available infrastructure
Faced with the increase in call volume and the other factors that holidays and other promotional periods entail, the natural response is to increase reception capacity. But that requires a sizable investment in equipment, which many retail companies can’t afford – especially in the context of a passing need. What’s the point of purchasing additional equipment if it’s really only going to be useful for a few days each year? Trusting this capacity extension to a call centre saves you from such an investment while letting you take advantage of quality infrastructure at a reasonable cost.
Qualified staff
The problem here is quite similar to the one described in the previous point. In effect, hiring and training staff to meet a temporary need for a few days or weeks isn’t ideal for any company that’s really concerned about its profitability. In addition, such recruitment takes time and involves taking into account numerous other parameters related to the integration of the “seasonal staff,” as well as the social aspect. A strategic partner of commercial enterprises, an external call centre provides an appropriate response in this context. One of its major advantages is to provide you with qualified staff with skills and training that are optimized to meet your particular requirements. Having a single contact person for your business lets you manage the floods of calls in total peace.
Maintain the company’s brand image in periods of excess calls
Periods of excess calls are generally a source of stress and tension for the agents in charge of handling incoming calls. To prevent anything from slipping through the cracks, it’s therefore important to unclog the lines and optimally distribute the calls by relying on the extra team, which is fresher and better prepared to respond to the specifics related to this period. In the context of an approach oriented towards optimizing the customer experience, this is imperative.
All in all, a call centre is an excellent support solution in situations involving an overflow of calls. Besides guaranteeing quality customer service, this option lets you optimize profitability in these periods that should – above all – be considered opportunities to increase profits.
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Micheline Durocher, president
