Call Center Outsourcing During Busy Season
Reading Time: 10 minutes
Table of contents
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- Understanding seasonal business demand
- Why seasonal demand can strain in-house call centers
- Benefits of call center outsourcing for busy seasons
- How outsourcing enhances customer experience
- Choosing the right outsourcing partner
- Implementing outsourcing strategies
- How ROI CX Solutions handles peak season demand
Introduction
Whether or not it takes place around the winter holidays or summer vacation, every business has a peak season, so it’s important to plan your call center outsourcing during busy seasons accordingly. Today, we’re discussing how to plan for your peak season customer support, the benefits of seasonal call center outsourcing, and how you can take advantage of these resources during your peak seasons.
Key takeaways
- Identifying peak seasons: Determine when your unique peak seasons are by analyzing your sales and customer interaction trends in past years, and consider any events that may influence your customers’ behavior.
- Challenges of peaks for in-house call centers: In-house call centers often have a difficult time during peak demand, as the time investment and high costs of hiring and onboarding staff, maintaining infrastructure, and other expenses can overwhelm many smaller businesses.
- Benefits of seasonal outsourcing: Outsourcing for busy seasons is a more cost-effective option that is easier to scale, and provides 24/7 access to highly trained agents from a wider talent pool, multilingual support, and shorter wait times.
- Choosing an outsourcing partner: Your brand should prioritize an outsourcing partner who has expertise in seasonal demand, robust tech options, a strong focus on CX, and a proven onboarding process.
Understanding seasonal business demand
Rising demand for your products and services is a double-edged sword. While it’s objectively a positive for your brand when more people want what you’re selling, it can also give rise to challenges and potential downsides for your business if peak demand hits when you’re not prepared for it.
Identifying peak seasons
Most industries have peak seasons, which are the specific times of the year when their products and services are the most in demand. For industries like retail and eCommerce — which sell consumer goods — the peak season is predictably in November and December, as people shop for holiday gifts, decor, and food. The financial industry in the US peaks in March and April as tax deadlines creep ever closer. And the travel and hospitality industries peak twice a year; Once in the summer months during summer vacations, and again in December as people travel for the holidays.
In many cases, the peaks will be obvious enough that you can recognize them simply by observing a marked increase in business at certain times of the year. But for other businesses, the spikes in demand might not be so pronounced. To determine your own peak seasons, it’s important to take a look at your industry and niche. What do you sell? What type of person is your typical customer? Are there events throughout the year that influence the demand for your products or services? Does weather play a factor in your demand?
Another simple way to determine your peak seasons is to look at past data if you have any. Going over your financial records, you can chart your sales trends throughout the year. Even if relatively minor, you will likely see seasons where, year after year, you are more likely to generate more revenue.
Once you know when those seasons are, ask questions to determine the cause of those spikes. It may be as simple as a holiday or weather conditions, but it could be influenced by something else, like a local annual convention that brings enthusiasts of your product into the area, or a local annual televised sporting event causing people in your area to stock up on food for watch parties. With the when and the why of your peak seasons in mind, you can more effectively prepare for them, both in selling the products and in providing call center customer service.
Challenges of seasonal demand
While peak seasons may feel like nothing but upside, they do present challenges, especially if you’re caught unprepared when a peak season arrives. In the same way that unexpected peaks can deplete your inventory, they can also make customer service more difficult.
During busy times of the year, it’s often necessary to staff more agents in call centers. For in-house call centers, this can be tricky, since it will often necessitate hiring more agents to relieve the burden on your core staff, but then after the peak is over, it can be very cost-ineffective to consistently staff the same amount of agents year-round.
Impact on customer service
If a peak season creates more demand for customer service than your call center can reasonably provide, this can cause longer wait times, testing your customers’ patience. Additionally, when call centers are taking a higher volume of calls than they can handle at one time, agents are more likely to get fatigued, which can lead to sloppy mistakes that they wouldn’t otherwise make under normal circumstances.
Under these circumstances, it can be quite difficult for an in-house call center to keep up, which will ultimately result in a poorer customer experience, damaging your reputation as a brand.
Why seasonal demand can strain in-house call centers
Though the perception of greater control makes in-house call centers an alluring option to many companies, they are fairly limited when it comes to handling peak-season demand.
For one thing, in-house call centers are expensive during the best of times, since the installation and maintenance of expensive infrastructure and the ongoing expense of staffing are major considerations. When peak seasons arrive, things get even more expensive. Call center staffing for peak seasons requires you to find temporary agents to supplement your usual staff. The cost of hiring and training those agents can quickly add up. Equipment and software will also require more maintenance during the busy season to ensure everything is running smoothly, adding yet another cost to in-house call center operations.
Rather than pay these costs, many smaller in-house operations will attempt to tackle the higher volumes of peak seasons without scaling up their infrastructure or workforce, which results in unmet customer needs and lost business opportunities.
Cost-effective scaling
Seasonal call center outsourcing has the advantage of diversification. Whereas an in-house operation handles all of the costs associated with running the call center, an outsourced call center typically services more than one business, allowing it to spread the cost of doing business over various clients. When you outsource your call center, your price will be a fraction of what you might pay trying to do the same in-house.
This also means that you aren’t required to pay directly for call center staffing in peak seasons. When the season hits, you can easily scale up your seasonal call center outsourcing, merely paying a slightly higher rate for the season instead of paying the expensive costs of directly hiring and training new staff in-house.
Highlight the cost savings associated with outsourcing, including reduced need for infrastructure and additional in-house hires.
Access to trained, ready-to-go agents
Outsourced call centers are a great option for peak-season customer support because they allow you to lean on the expertise of agents and teams who are experienced, not only in the day-to-day work of a customer service representative but also in gracefully handling high-volume scenarios. This provides your customers with quicker, more effective service and an overall excellent customer experience.
Enhanced customer satisfaction
By outsourcing customer service to a trusted partner during peak seasons, you can ensure that your customers are receiving prompt, high-quality service more consistently. Through a good outsourcing arrangement, your customers are far more likely to speak to an agent on the first try and consistently receive accurate support, resulting in quicker issue resolutions.
24/7 service availability
Seasonal call center outsourcing is an effective way to gain flexibility when you’re facing the high volumes of your peak seasons. With outsourced customer support being much cheaper than in-house, your dollar stretches further. The right outsourcing partner can provide your customers with 24/7 support while still being less expensive than operating an in-house call center during business hours only. Having support available around the clock is a great feature at any time of year, but it’s especially valuable during peak seasons like holiday sales and other end-of-year inquiries.
ROI CX Solutions has years of experience successfully managing call center outsourcing during busy seasons! Get your free quote today to see how your business can face peak demand with confidence!
Call center outsourcing during busy seasons is not only a great help to your business it also has a major benefit to the customer.
Reduced wait times
An outsourced call center typically has more staff to go around, which makes it much more likely that your customers have a shorter wait time when they call in. In times of peak demand, this quick support provides a more positive customer experience and vastly reduces abandonment rates.
Improved call quality
At reputable outsourced call centers agents are thoroughly trained to provide quality customer care with efficiency. When customers have their needs met promptly it leaves them feeling valued by your brand, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
Access to multilingual support
Not only does multilingual support potentially open up your target market to millions of additional people but it also shows respect and care for your customers. Customers are more likely to feel valued and respected when shown the courtesy of an agent who speaks their native language, as it makes the conversation more natural and smooth, greatly enhancing the customer experience.
Personalized service
A major benefit of outsourcing customer support to a trusted partner like ROI CX Solutions is that your outsourced teams can be trained thoroughly and specifically on your brand, equipping them with the precise tools they need to handle your brand’s unique inquiries. With expertise and confidence in your brand, it allows agents to give greater focus to your customers, for more personalized interactions.
As you search for call center outsourcing during the busy season, the following are a few things to keep in mind while you consider potential outsourcing partners.
Seasonal demand expertise
Just because a potential partner provides call center outsourcing, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have experience managing seasonal demand spikes, or that they have the procedures and staffing in place to successfully handle all of your peak season customer support needs. While vetting outsourcing partners, be sure to ask about their experience with call center staffing for peak seasons and how they ensure excellent holiday season customer service.
Technological capabilities
Successfully handling seasons of peak demand requires robust software, equipment, and infrastructure. In addition to strong security measures that protect your customers’ data, it’s also important that your outsourcing partner has the bandwidth to handle increased call volumes and tech like interactive voice response (IVR) and automatic call distribution (ACD) that can mitigate wait times and improve the customer experience.
Focus on customer experience
Customer experience (CX) should be the number one priority of any call center outsourcing partner. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business, so it’s essential that their needs be met and they leave each interaction with a positive impression of your brand.
Proven onboarding process
The call center agents representing your brand need to be extensively trained on the ins and outs of your brand. A thorough onboarding process with proven results is the only way to ensure that the agents representing your brand have the information and tools they need to do so effectively.
To effectively scale up your seasonal customer service operations through outsourcing, it’s important to create a plan that is systematic and data-driven.
Assess seasonal demand patterns
Start by taking stock of how your peak periods tend to play out. Gather as much data as you can about the volume of calls you can reliably expect during peak seasons, the types of inquiries you receive in those interactions, and any other data that can help you prepare for similar periods of high demand in the future.
Plan service level requirements
Based on your data from previous peak seasons, determine which services a potential partner would need to provide, as well as how many agents it would take to comfortably manage that demand. Determine whether you’ll need services such as inbound calls, live chat, technical assistance, or others based on data and your experience from previous seasons.
Engage and train agents early
It’s important that agents are onboarded and trained well ahead of your peak season, giving them a chance to get familiarized with your brand and offerings before diving into the deep end. This period is crucial for instilling your brand’s values, customer expectations, and answers to your most common inquiries, allowing outsourced agents to become an extension of your brand.
Monitor and adjust in real-time
Throughout your peak periods, it’s important to regularly evaluate your most important metrics and KPIs to ensure that the customer experience stays positive and that your team is staffed appropriately for demand.
ROI CX Solutions has years of extensive experience in managing holiday season customer service for our clients as well as other seasonal surges of high demand. Retail, eCommerce, and the utilities industries are particularly affected by seasonal spikes. ROI CX has successfully provided individualized support solutions for companies in each of these industries (and many others), adapting to each company’s unique seasonal demands.
