Christmas is known as the merriest time of year, but if you’re a business owner, it’s also probably the busiest. Most retailers and many companies hire additional staff over the Christmas season, but outsourcing your customer support using an inbound call center may be the most helpful thing for your business during the holiday season. The holiday season can bring a huge influx of customers to your business, and if you’re unprepared, you may end up losing customers or creating a PR disaster. An inbound call centre in Toronto can help keep your business running smoothly over the Christmas holidays.
8 Reasons to Outsource Customer Support during the Holiday Season
Here are a few reasons why you should outsource your customer support during the Christmas holidays.
Predicting Call Volume
It can be hard to predict busy periods over the holiday season. In fact, it is not uncommon for there to be peak periods with an incredibly high volume of calls followed by slow periods with a low volume. Inaccurate predictions could leave you unprepared to deal with high-volume periods. Call centers have the experience, expertise, and technology to predict high volumes of calls. They use data, tracking, and other statistics to accurately predict peak periods and to effectively handle them.
Having Enough Agents
When your business receives a heavy volume of calls, you need to be able to handle them quickly and efficiently. Hiring tons of seasonal staff can be prohibitively expensive, especially as they need to be paid during slow periods when they may not be needed. The great thing about call centers is that they have a large workforce of agents who can be allocated to your customer service requirements on an as-needed basis. Having more agents will reduce wait times for your customers, which will increase their satisfaction. You will never have to worry about having enough agents to handle your calls.
Meeting Your Needs
Call centers specialize in being able to provide customer service for a wide range of clients who all have different needs. This makes them a great option for the holiday season when special circumstances may have you wanting temporary 24/7 service or support in a range of languages. Call centers have a lot of options that can meet your company’s specific needs, thus allowing you a cost-effective option for making temporary or quick changes to your customer support.
Ensuring Efficiency
During the holiday season, you will want to be able to deal with customers and complaints as quickly and resourcefully as possible. Call centers are uniquely qualified to provide customer support efficiently and can offer support over a range of platforms beyond the phone, including email or other digital communications. This allows them to quickly deal with customers based on the level of service they require. As well, call centers have protocols in place to quickly classify and prioritize calls based on their importance.
Helps with Customer Retention
The importance of customer retention can’t be overstated. As important as it is to seek new customers, current customers have already shown that they will spend money on your products. Keeping them maintains revenue, and through introducing new products, current customers can also increase revenue for your business. Outsourcing your customer support provides the attention your current customers need to stay happy. It also provides an avenue to upsell to these customers, with whom trust has already been established.
Increase Customer Loyalty
A big part of customer retention is finding ways to connect with the customer. More than just buying a product, customers need to feel connected to the culture of the brand. This is where the outsourcing of customer support services becomes beneficial. The creation of strategic loyalty programs that rewards customers for their loyalty will help because by maintaining customer loyalty, you reinforce to your customers that they can feel confident purchasing more products. More than that, loyalty programs engrain the customer in the fabric of your company’s culture by providing them with opportunities that benefit their lifestyles.
Win Back Lost Customers
As much as maintaining customer satisfaction is a goal for your business, some customers just get away. This doesn’t have to mean that the fight is over. Outsourced customer support services help you to win back customers who have drifted away for whatever reason. Similar to customer retention, the research has shown that former customers are more open to purchasing products than new customers. Winning back former customers is also less expensive than marketing to new ones. Let your outsourced support service agency put together a win-back campaign to reignite the interest of previous customers.
Promoting Seasonal Offers
It’s the holidays, right? So, it’s likely your business has some seasonal promotions that your customers need to be aware of. Outsourced support services will take the time to promote these seasonal offers to as many of your targets as possible. We know how integral this time of year is for any business and will create holiday campaigns that attract the right customers to the right products.
As the leading provider of outsourced call center solutions, 3C Contact Services teaches its partners the necessary customer service skills needed to engage and retain customers. Contact us today for more information.
