For every business there are pressure points to be aware of. If you have an internal team of customer service or sales agents who are tasked with dealing with customer calls and queries, or customer orders, it is important to keep on top of the entire process and ensure that you have the capacity to cope with demand. In some cases, as a company grows, or during peak times of traffic (for whatever reason – whether it is a successful product or service, or an emergency situation where there is a growing number of customer complaints), it is vital that you can quickly and effectively deal with the situation. This is where it can pay off to hire the services of a professional contact centre team to act as your call overflow team.
There are many reasons why you might not be able to cope with the demands of your customers. It could be that your company is in transition and is not in a financial position to hire more staff just yet to add to your existing in-house customer service or sales team. It could also be that you are receiving a higher number of complaints than usual due to a certain defective product or service, or for more positive reasons, that one of your products or services has proved more popular than you anticipated. It is not always as simple to just say you can hire more staff and equipment, because it might just be a short-term challenge.
The last thing you want is to leave customers waiting, as this reduces the chances that they will be happy with your service. An overflow call handling service instead means that once your internal team are at capacity, an external team can take on the extra calls. This could be to take down basic information and arrange for a call back from a member of your internal team, or it could be to progress the query entirely (you just have to ensure the external team are fully trained in your brand, products, and services).
By utilising a team to take on emergency overflow calls, you can provide your customers with uninterrupted customer service, improving call quality and not placing extra pressure on your existing team. In the event of an emergency situation where there is disruption in the workplace, an external team can step in, ensuring business continuity and covering brand reputation. It helps to lower the rate of call abandonment, and improves customer satisfaction levels.
Choosing to work with an external team of call centre operatives to act as your company overflow call handling team, makes sense for many companies. It helps them to achieve consistency in customer service delivery, cuts down call abandonment rates, keeps customers happy, and helps to manage a situation without escalating long-term costs for a company that isn’t ready to take on more internal staff just yet. If you are thinking of looking for assistance to cover the deficit during peak times, where your internal customer service teams are at maximum capacity and can no longer take any more calls, seek out a contact centre with experience in your industry.
