Plan Ahead for Call center Solutions

all Centre Helper asked a panel of experts how to relieve pressure on call centres during busy periods.

1. Plan ahead
Ben Dale-Gough

Ben Dale-Gough

It’s vital that managers let their agents know when the peak times will be. This will give them a chance to prepare and will mean they’re not taken by surprise with high volumes of calls. Making sure the scheduling is correct is really important. Organisations can do this by looking at times of peak calls in previous years. Once the trends have been identified, forecasts can be made as to when future busy periods will be. This enables managers to recruit extra staff to help out if necessary.

Ben Dale-Gough, Site Operations Manager – Domestic & General (www.domgen.com)

2. Update call queue status message in IVR

Give customers information on the current call queuing times in your IVR message, and redirect them to the self-help section of the company/organisation’s website if possible. If the volume of calls is high and the waiting time is more than a couple of minutes, informing customers in IVR will help redirect some of them to a less busy time of day or the website.

3. Allow staff to have frequent breaks at peak times

An increased break schedule during peak times will help agents deal with the busier period. By reducing lunch to half an hour, but with a ten-minute break away from the phones every hour, agents will feel incredibly refreshed, and it will allow them to deal with difficult calls more effectively. The mental break is important.

4. Make sure new agents are up to speed on the top 20 reasons for calling
Clive Turner

Clive Turner

A lot of call centres take on new agents, especially students, in the run-up to Christmas. All these new agents may be answering calls on things they’ve never come across before, and simply as a result of the volume of calls at peaks times there is going to be an increase in the number of difficult calls. So make sure your second-tier agents are available to help resolve the difficult calls with their experience.