On the phone...
The Best Way To Handle High Call Volumes – While Still Delighting Your Customers
With some discussion:
We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls.... | Gransnet
From the Guardian's readers:
Does anyone still believe that any of the companies they call or email are labouring under higher-than-normal call volumes – especially given that that they all seem to have it “higher than normal” all of the time. Does anyone know how long ago the baseline “normal” might have been? Robert Cullen, Härryda, Sweden
Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.
Readers reply
Because they are experiencing lower than normal staff levels. Isanyonelistening
I once asked a technical service representative why his company was always having “higher than normal” call volumes every time I called. He replied that it was really just a marketing and sales ploy to exaggerate the popularity of their products. It was also a cover for inadequate staffing. Sara Owen, Pensacola, Florida
I used to work in a hotel call centre and yes, we did get “higher than usual” call volumes. We would look for trends and call peaks over the previous five years and attempt to get staffing right, however, it would just take a casual mention in a newspaper about our hotels to get calls queueing. It’s all too easy to assume the worst about how companies staff departments, the one I worked for did its absolute best to maintain good staffing levels and still we got caught out. ONscotland
It’s the glib prerecorded reassurance that “you are a valued customer” that really bugs me. PlausibleDenier
The words they use are interesting – “Your call is important to us.” Not you, your call. Bill01
How about: “This call may be recorded for quality control purposes”? Really? Don’t most of them already know how abysmally poor their service is? madhusa
I work in customer services for a small energy firm and it’s almost always a cover to manage expectations, although the whole edifice is surely undermined if every company says it. Last year we had four permanent customer service staff, but we have seven this year after investment from the company and the shift in attitude is indescribably better. Our procedures are infinitely better and our customer satisfaction levels are through the roof. Nurnsy97
I used to work in a call centre for a large company when I was a university student. When it got to a point that there were too many calls in the queue, we went to “systems down” where we told customers (untruthfully) that our systems were down and we were unable to help them, please call back later. The aim of this was to clear the queue – needless to say, it did not go down well with the customers, some of whom had been waiting in the queue for an hour just to be lied to. IndigOh
Contact centre manager here. We make a prediction on call volumes for the coming year based on a number of factors (historic calls, sales targets, product releases and marketing campaigns) and these are usually pretty accurate, but lots of things can cause unexpected increases in traffic even without factoring unplanned absences or staff attrition. That said, if you’re regularly not meeting service levels for a sustained period, it’s probably a good indication that the company doesn’t value (and aren’t investing in) either their staff, their customers, or both. Arnoldsbiggerbrother
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