The Key to Managing Contact Center Overflow During the COVID-19 Crisis

Making sure you have the right amount of staff at your contact center is a more significant undertaking than some might imagine. On the one hand, you need enough agents to handle incoming calls because each call is an opportunity to make a sale or establish a reputation for excellent customer service. Conversely, the more agents you have, the more payroll expense cuts into your bottom line. When you have more agents than needed, you can expect your profits to be considerably lower than they could be.

Balancing occupancy levels through effective workforce management is a critical part of any contact center. To low and your risk massive inefficiency and your cost per contact sky rockets. To high and you risk agent burn out and your customer experience suffers.

Workforce Management is a science that can get turned on its head when we fail to predict human behavior and major changes in the external environment that can throw a wrench in things. For instance, what happens when there’s some national or global crisis that triggers an abrupt surge of calls that your contact center wasn’t ready for? Kind of like the one we are living through right now.

The COVID-19 crisis has created enormous challenges for customers and business owners alike. Whether or not your contact center is struggling to keep up with calls, you should take comfort in the fact that ContactPoint 360 can handle your call overflow and act as an extension of your organization.

How COVID-19 Has Affected Contact Centers

With self-quarantine mandates, job losses and so many businesses closing, we’ve all been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Our economy has taken a significant hit and may take years to recover.

In the meantime, our social distancing and policy changes have resulted in people making more calls to handle their business. Some banks have done an amazing job relaxing payment requirements for people in need, and have watched their volume sky rocket within hours of those announcements. So the wonderful gesture, becomes a frustrating experience for callers.

Courier companies are seeing 200%-300% spikes in their business to help accommodate people in need. So many businesses are in this situation and have now moved to a “critical need” status as a service provider. For the distraught person, the challenge now becomes, I can’t get through to their contact center!

We’ve all been there, waiting in the queue for an indeterminate amount of time until an agent could take our call. However, due to the COVID-19 situation, the number of calls being placed by customers — many of whom get frustrated and hang up long before an agent could get to them — is astronomical.

While there’s some understanding due to the grim circumstances, the reality of the situation is that these businesses are at risk. When their customers can’t get through on the phone, these businesses could be reviewed poorly online or even lose customers altogether. And worst, some of these customers cannot access critical services that have become need and not want.

How can we help?

Let us become an extension of your organization. Our services and tools are the culmination of many years of experience in the contact center industry. Our senior management team has accumulated years of experience helping companies and businesses streamline their operations, support customer experience initiatives, provide collections with care support multiple sales initiatives.

With close to 1,000 agents working from home using Secure Remote desktop solutions, we can can become a seamless part of your team from both our On-Shore and Near-Shore locations and in multiple languages. We go to great lengths to recruit the most hard-working and talented agents in each market, so you can be sure that your customers will get world-class support along with a secure desktop solution that meet PCI and HIPPA standards.

Contact us today for a free assessment and consultation. We are ready to help!