5 Ways Contact Centres Can Manage Rising Call Volumes in Pandemic!

Posted by Prachi Priya

A pandemic or a natural disaster can hit anytime and it is the responsibility of every business to prepare itself for every adverse scenario. If we talk about COVID-19 that has landed the world into an economic crisis, it highlights how important it is for every business to be prepared for the worst.

Nobody knows when a natural disaster might make it impossible for the agents to attend office and for the organization to survive. In such a situation, only those companies keep on offering efficient services that have flexibility in their work.

If we talk about call centre companies, they are been vastly affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. Since call centres work on manual-based services and require agents on-board to handle incoming and outgoing calls, thus any disaster or pandemic will hit the company hard with the unavailability of staff.

This highlights the need for call centre companies to be flexible. By flexibility, we mean that the companies offering outsourced contact centre services need to integrate cloud-based solutions to help their agents perform work from home tasks so that the outbound and inbound call centre services are alive in such hard times.

With the COVID-19 global threat raising an alarm for businesses to shift their work performance online, call centres are not apart. Although BPO companies are known for monotonous work tasks and non-flexible work environment, nevertheless, to fight such conditions, they need to find a way out!

COVID-19 has struck the world so hard that most people fear to lose their jobs with the increasing lockdowns and depreciating global economy.

This is why K Ganesh, Growthstory says, “This pandemic is a collective crisis, more so for the daily wage workers who have been rendered without work and therefore meals”.

After the pandemic, the world will surely look forward to a new way of living, and companies too will change their vision to service performance.

Well, we are talking about the paradigm shift of companies to REMOTE working!

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Contact centres have to handle multiple incoming and outgoing calls along with other outsourced services, which is why they need to work upon boosting their efficiency to live up to the customers’ expectations at such tough times.

Even in such scenarios, we come across some businesses that boomed dramatically and the reason behind was, “ONLINE SERVICES”!

Well, to provide superior customer service and to keep a check on cybersecurity, contact centres need to look after several things. Contact centres must handle increasing call volumes with the same ease as before in times of a pandemic. Failing to do so, the customers might permanently shift to the competitor!

Well, to ease business performance and handle high rising call volumes easily, we have some tips for contact centres. Here we walk you across the suggestions that contact centres might want to look:

Checking out the Possible Issues

To manage rising call volumes in a pandemic, outsourced contact centre firms need to analyze the issues first. Why? Well, this is because by analyzing the trends and issues amid the public, it is easy to resolve the same. By doing so much calls will lower automatically.

Companies need to understand the customers so that it is easy to deliver what the caller is looking for and this eventually reduces rising call volumes too.

Companies can also use real-time analytics that helps with alerts where agents get to answer customers more proficiently. In times of pandemic, advanced IVR systems new FAQs based on analytics, and forwarding customers to specific messages that are user-centric can help.

Contact centre companies should start integrating all these perquisites to their operations so that their organization survives any tragedy.

The use of virtual assistants should also be promoted as they also help to understand the customers by recording the chats and helping with analytics later.

Adequate Training for Agents

At times of a crisis, only those companies survive those have a team of well-trained agents to take care of the business processes. For outbound and inbound call centre providers, it is hard to maintain work efficiency amid lockdown or in a scene of a natural disaster where the agents are unable to attend office.

Nevertheless, a trained agent can help the business when she/he is made available with the right tools. Even in times of crisis, people will need some basic amenities and will keep buying from companies. So, in that case, if you think call volumes will not rise and that a call centre will not have any work, you are wrong.

Invoca-call-volume-data

Source- Invoca call volume data

At such times of a pandemic, it is vital to boost the agents to keep delivering top-notch services. Customers at such times check whether their service providers are reliable or not, so every business needs to have well-trained agents aboard to perform work from home efficiently.

Outsourced contact centre firms work for numerous partners and handle their customer support. Thus to check that there is no chance of customer dissatisfaction for the client, contact centres need to train and coach agents to perform business functions easily at home too.

How?

Well, train your agents to use AI, cloud-based solutions, social media, and other ways of performing work from home efficiently.

Remote Working

COVID-19 has raised the threat to the jobs of several people and may even lead to the closing of several offices. To fight such a pandemic, it is essential for contact centres to have a pre-planned strategy to fight the threat.

Remote working is been massively promoted today as thousands of people are compelled to work from home in such scenarios. Thus, taking care of the same, even contact centres need to promote WFH.

You must be thinking that contact centres have labour-intensive tasks and they cannot allow work from home facilities. Nevertheless, with the use of cloud-based solutions, even contact centres can keep their work going remotely.

Cloud-based contact centres can function with the help of an internet connection and each agent’s task can be monitored too over a virtual platform.

With remote working in-demand, even contact centres need to be ready with such solutions to avoid a lockdown to their offices forever.

The cloud service is safeguarded by passwords and automated security systems so BPOs have no threat of data breach issues too.

Self-Serve Options

In times of uncertainty, the user may get frustrated easily when she/he is unable to resolve an issue. In such a scenario if your business is unable to provide efficient call support services, you may lose the customer to the competitor.

This is the reason remote working for contact centres is being emphasized seriously. In such times the agents need to have FAQs and tutorials for the customers. This helps to forward the same to the needful when a query is un-resolved on the agents’ end. Maybe self-service can help!

Moreover, at such uncertain times, chatbots can help to answer customers 24X7 and forward these FAQs and tutorials to the users in need.

Doing so the call volumes can be handled easily to much extent!

Elevate Scheduling

Scheduling the right agents at the right place at the right time is vital. At tough times, an adequate agent answering the correct call can earn customer satisfaction, so contact centres should emphasize on optimizing scheduling.

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High rising call volumes can worry call centres at times of a pandemic. Nevertheless, outsourced contact centre firms should manage the staff and make real-time adjustments to win over rising call volumes.

Thanks for reading!

Tags: Outsourced Contact Centre Rising Call Volumes Inbound Call Centre Pandemic COVID-19 Remote Working Elevate Scheduling Self-Serve Options Adequate Training