Handling Holiday Season Surge: Tips for E-commerce Call Centers

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The holiday season is a time of joy, cheer, and if you’re in the e-commerce business, a surge in customer activity. While this period offers the chance for increased revenue, it also introduces significant challenges for call centers.

When online shopping hits its peak, so do customer inquiries, concerns, and requests for support. In fact, businesses can receive double or even triple their usual inbound call volume during peak periods, like the holidays. This can overwhelm agents and create extended wait times that leave customers frustrated.

But fear not because with the right strategies and tools, you can effectively navigate this peak period and turn it into an opportunity to build customer trust and loyalty.

Here's how to cope with increased customer inquiries during the holiday season. 

Understanding the Holiday Surge E-commerce Centers

E-commerce call centers typically experience a significant increase in call volume during the holidays as customers seek assistance with a variety of issues including.

• Order Inquiries: During the holidays, many customers will reach out to ask questions regarding the status of their orders, expected delivery times, or tracking information.

• Product availability: Products tend to go out of stock quickly during holiday seasons. So you can also expect a lot of incoming inquiries about restock dates, availability in other locations, or alternatives in other locations.

• Payment and billing questions: Customers might call to report issues with payment processing, discrepancies in billing, or to seek clarifications about discounts and promotions.

• Returns and exchanges: Customers may need assistance with returns, exchanges, or issues related to sizing and compatibility.

• Product questions: Customers can also call to seek more information or clarification about product usage and features and usage.

Needless to say, this surge can put immense pressure on your call center.  This pressure is further amplified by the emotional nature of holiday shopping.  For example, depending on when they are doing their shopping, customers are often under time constraints and may feel stressed about getting gifts on time, making them more sensitive to delays or issues.

If your call center is not adequately prepared for the surge in call volume during this period, it can have negative outcomes. Longer hold times, reduced personal support, and delays in resolving issues can result in frustrated customers, which impacts overall satisfaction and loyalty.

Preparing Your Call Center Team for Peak Season

Here are key actions and strategies to help your call center gear up for the busy season.

Leverage Data and Stats to Forecast Call Volume

The first step in preparing your call center for the holiday rush is to leverage data to forecast call volumes and trends. Accurate forecasting ensures that your team is equipped to handle the seasonal surge and minimizes the risk of overwhelm.

Start by thoroughly analyzing historical data from previous holiday seasons. Look at not only the overall number of calls received but also specific metrics like average call duration, peak call frequency, and any patterns in customer inquiries. Break down the data by month, week, and even hour to gain a more granular understanding of when call volumes are likely to peak. Identifying these trends allows you to prepare for high-demand periods with better precision.

In addition to your internal data, consider looking at industry benchmarks and projections. These can provide valuable context for forecasting and help you stay aligned with broader trends. For example, what specific dates in your industry do shoppers begin their shopping sprees? This can give you a good estimate of when you can expect call volumes to start spiking. 

Overall, by analyzing relevant data, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect in terms of call volume and can prepare accordingly.

Expand Staffing

To handle the holiday surge, consider temporarily expanding your call center team. Hiring temporary or seasonal support staff will alleviate some of the pressure on your core team and prevent issues like burnout. 

If you do decide to expand your team, make sure to do it early — i.e., don’t wait until your current team is already overwhelmed. Remember also that your temporary hires will probably need to undergo some form of training to get them up to speed.

For existing agents, it's also a good idea to refresh their skills before the holiday rush begins. Offer brief training sessions to sharpen their customer support techniques. Focus on areas like managing stress, multitasking, and problem-solving, which are critical during peak season.

Provide Omnichannel Support

Research reveals that 62% of customers want the flexibility to connect with brands through multiple support channels.¹ However, additional findings indicate that 61% of consumers encounter difficulties when trying to transition between channels during customer support interactions.²

Omnichannel customer support means integrating all communication channels —like phone, email, live chat and so on — into one unified system. 

An omnichannel approach ensures that regardless of the channel clients use to reach you, they have a consistent experience. Customers don’t need to repeat themselves, as agents can access the entire conversation history across platforms. For instance, a customer might start a conversation via live chat about a product inquiry, then call the support line to finalize their order, while maintaining continuity in the support experience.

During peak periods, an omnichannel contact center can also relieve pressure by empowering your agents to redirect some call inquiries to other support channels like emails or social media with knowledge that support continuity is guaranteed and customers won’t have to start each interaction from scratch.

Optimize Call Center Technology

Various technological tools are at your disposal to help improve and streamline your call center operations, so take advantage. 

For example, an efficient Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system can handle automated interactions like information retrieval and call routing, freeing up your support team to focus on more complex tasks. 

Meanwhile, integrating the IVR with smart or intelligent call routing ensures that direct incoming calls are routed to the most appropriate agent based on a variety of factors such as skill set, availability, and priority. This means customers are not kept waiting longer than necessary, and they’re always connected to the agent who can best address their specific issue.

Meanwhile, integrating your CRM with your call management system allows agents to quickly pull up important customer data, previous interactions, purchase history, and preferences. The less time agents spend gathering information, the faster they can resolve issues.  What’s more, this feature ensures that customers get personalized and informed support from the start. 

Real-time analytics is another important technology to incorporate. It can offer valuable insights into call center performance, such as call volume trends, average handling times, and agent productivity. As a manager, these insights enable you to make on-the-spot adjustments, such as increasing staffing or reallocating resources. For example, if analytics show an increase in delivery-related inquiries, you can proactively address those concerns or reallocate agents to manage that spike. 

Aircall’s integrated Call Center Software offers these all features and more, making it an ideal solution for e-commerce call centers preparing for the holiday season.

Find Ways to Boost Staff Morale and Motivation

During the high-pressure holiday season, maintaining high morale and motivation is essential for ensuring your team remains productive, engaged, and provides excellent support. 

One way to boost morale is by setting up a rewards program to recognize outstanding performance. Consider offering small incentives, such as gift cards or extra break time, for agents who meet or exceed their targets.

Long hours and high call volumes can lead to fatigue. Consider implementing a schedule that allows for short, frequent breaks, giving staff the chance to relax and return to their work with renewed energy.

In addition, providing access to wellness resources, like guided meditations or stress management tips, can also make a difference in keeping your team’s energy high.

Finally, regular check-ins and open communication with your team are equally important. Acknowledge their hard work, listen to their concerns, and offer any additional support or resources they might need to deliver the best possible experience. 

How Aircall Supports E-commerce Call Centers During Peak Seasons

The holiday season is a time of big opportunity for e-commerce businesses. But for their call centers, it can be a period of immense challenge. As we’ve seen, an increase in the number of shoppers translates to an increase in the number of incoming customer inquiries on a wide number of issues — from product availability, shipping statuses, or returns and many more.

This surge can put tremendous strain on e-commerce call centers. However, with proper planning, the right strategies, and supportive tools and technology, it’s possible to effectively manage increased call volumes, optimize internal workflows and most importantly ensure overall customer satisfaction. 

Aircall’s inbound call center solutions offer a scalable, flexible solution to help e-commerce brands manage seasonal customer support surges efficiently. 

Our solution includes several powerful features like IVR, CRM integration, real-time analytics, omnichannel support and many more which all work in unison to empower your call center to deliver seamless, high-quality customer support — even during the busiest time of year.

Schedule a free demo today to see Aircall in action. 

Sources

Khoros. Must Know Customer Service Statistics of 2024. https://khoros.com/blog/must-know-customer-service-statistics

Pedowitz Group. Omni-Channel Marketing: Statistics To Know And Key Differences From Multi-Channel. https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/blog/26-statistics-on-why-you-should-consider-omni-channel-marketing/

Published on November 26, 2024.