Across the U.K., the holiday season is already in full swing. Thousands of seasonal workers are being hired by businesses in preparation for peaks in demand. Yet peak periods (and the challenges they bring) aren’t only a festive phenomenon.
For customer-centric businesses of all shapes and sizes, from travel providers in the summer months to student financial services when new terms begin, changing levels of demand is an ongoing reality. And, as has been abundantly clear over the past 18 months, rapidly changing circumstances can make those peaks challenging to prepare for.
That’s why it’s crucial that customer-orientated organizations learn to both read data signals that can help them predict peaks and rapidly onboard and train agents whenever the need arises—all while maintaining an incredible customer experience.
Jeff Reekers, Chief Marketing Officer of Aircall, the leading cloud-based call centre and provider, joined us for an exclusive interview to discuss how businesses can put adaptability and scalability at the heart of their approaches to customer support all year round.
Learning to adapt to seasonal demands
For Reekers, there are a few must-haves when it comes to building a business that’s ready to adapt to shifting seasonal demands. “A lot of it comes down to predictability,” he explains. “If you have real-time insights into current levels of demand, as well as historic data, it becomes easier to anticipate those peaks before crunch time.” That makes maintaining and building meticulous data records essential.
“With seasonal demand, you need analytics and data from each customer interaction. These records will be crucial in helping you map future peak demand periods. With the right tools, you can empower agents to do this automatically and accurately. With those insights in your pocket, you’ve got a cheat sheet enabling you to read the signals next time—so you’ll be ready before the demand really hits,” Reekers concludes.
If predictability is one ingredient in the recipe for managing customer support peaks, another is agility. “Once you’ve identified a peak, you need to start ramping up the number of agents. With the clock ticking, and given the past 18 months, you want to be able to onboard those teams rapidly and remotely. That means preparing them with the right tools, guidance and structures needed for them to deliver great experiences from day one—wherever they’re based,” Reekers notes.
Empowering everyone to create meaningful customer experiences
Whether you work directly with customers or not, everyone’s experienced the workplace holiday crunch at one time or another. And whether you’re Christmas shopping or trying to change travel plans during the pandemic, we’re all familiar with the experience of dealing with a business that’s clearly overstretched. In either case, things fall through the cracks, and it ultimately leads to an unenjoyable experience for all.
