Proven ways to deal with high call volume

Long call queues. Frazzled customer service representatives. Frustrated customers.

When unexpectedly high call volume hits a company, especially smaller ones with fewer resources on hand, the effects can be far-reaching.

From customer satisfaction rates dropping, to an overall impact on the customer experience, high call volume can pose a significant hallenge to contact centres scrambling to satisfy customer enquiries. And as Zendesk’s research has shown, when it comes to phone calls, customers demand a response in no more than five minutes.

So how do you go about answering high volume calls? There are clear ways to ensure that a call centre provides good customer service during periods of greater-than-usual inbound calls.

Whether that is being able to identify a permanent change in customer activity or taking proactive steps to reduce the amount of incoming calls through deflection, call centre managers and representatives have a host of tools they can use to keep those call queues manageable.

What is a high call volume?

Let us start with the basics: high call volume is when the amount of phone calls a contact centre receives arrives in bursts that are significantly higher than the predicted volume.

It is important to note that to be defined as high call volume, a spike in calls must persist over a sustained period of time, which, depending on your business, could be two to three weeks.

In general, the industry standard for high volume call centre is a 10 percent increase from the normal level. However, for small- and medium-size businesses, that figure can be significantly higher, depending on available resources.

Tips for managing high call volume

For many companies, dealing with a high number of calls is not as simple as adding headcount and moving on.

And it is not just private industry that faces this issue: think about all the government departments dealing with huge influxes of callers asking about securing unemployment assistance in the wake of Covid-19 shutdowns. Budget and logistical factors can make it difficult to add additional customer support, especially during a crisis.

However, some common tactics can blunt and, in some cases, resolve entirely these troublesome spikes in phone calls.

Here are some tried-and-true methods and business processes to deal with high call volume:

1. Forecast

   First, think about forecasting on a quarterly basis so you can make informed decisions about adding headcount to your customer service team and then establish data-driven forecasts that enable your team to drill down to monthly, weekly, daily and even hourly rates.

   For example, according to Zendesk’s 2020 Covid-19 Benchmark Snapshot:

2. • Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly 15 percent of surveyed companies have seen a 10 percent increase (or more) in ticket volume since February 2020 That bump in traffic has resulted in 25.3 percent of companies solving more tickets over the phone, which has in turn led to a 15.2 percent increase in representatives working the phones

   By leaning on forecasting, these companies have been able to quickly pivot to ensure their customers get the help they need during unprecedented times.

   One of the most powerful tools to build accurate forecasting is leaning on an analytics tool that will provide both historical and real-time data.

3. Self-service

   One of the most powerful tools at a call centre manager’s disposal is self-service.

   By creating easily accessible and accurate articles in a help centre, most often written by representatives themselves, a company can reduce the need for customers to get on the phone in the first place. This tool also aligns with what customers want anyway: the means to help themselves.

   In 2020, as companies have dealt with pandemic-related spikes in calls:

4. • 61 percent have added at least one new article to their help centre Nearly 16 percent have increased the number of self-service representatives

   Those investments can help improve call centre service.

5. Encourage customers to move to chat when things are busy

   Another valuable tool to consider in order to reduce the pressure on call centre telephone systems is chat, another channel that customers have increasingly gravitated toward.

   Nearly instantaneous, chat enables representatives to share self-service content with customers, which enables customers to help themselves while the live representative moves on to other customer issues. 

   Because chat can be embedded in a company’s app or website, companies can make chat easy for customers to find, making it more likely they will choose that option over phone interactions.

6. Give representatives the right tools

   Support managers should also think about making the most of the current headcount. One of the most effective ways to do so is by giving representatives better workflow tools such as an omnichannel ticketing system.

   Crucially, an omnichannel phone system provides visibility into past conversations with customers, which helps representatives resolve calls faster and more efficiently.

7. Let the caller know what is going on

   While self-service, chat and workflow tools, all features of contact centre software, will help support teams do a better job of handling or even eliminating high call volume, sometimes a company will still face more calls than its organisation can handle.

   If that is the case, be upfront with your customers:

8. • Communicate expected waiting times Point them to other channels
9. Use scheduling

   Customer service teams can proactively deal with high call volume by offering online scheduling.

   For example, Bank of America enables customers to schedule a phone appointment via its virtual assistant inside the bank’s mobile app.

   Businesses can also embed an appointment scheduler inside a messaging channel, such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

10. The callback

    Another effective tactic is to provide customers with the option of receiving a return phone call from a call centre representative.

    One study showed that 75 percent of customers prefer a callback to waiting on hold, and providing that choice offers a host of benefits: 

11. • Lower call abandonment rates Decreased costs
    • Most important, a better customer experience

    That said, be sure that callbacks happen in a timely manner.

How to identify high call volume

Identifying high call volume is not as simple as saying, “It seems like we are experiencing more calls than usual”.

This is where prediction, or forecasting, comes into play. Leaders of support teams must have a clear idea of trends in past call volume, which is highly dependent on the type of business.

For example:

• Is it a retail business that regularly sees upticks in calls after sales promotions or during the christmas season?
• Are Mondays typically the busiest day of the week at the call centre?
• How many calls does the support team typically field everyday?
• What are the average waiting and resolution times?

All that information helps managers establish a baseline rooted in data, which in turn plays a critical role in decision-making about staffing and other resources.

And remember: forecasting is not the exclusive domain of enterprise businesses with thousands of employees and large support teams. It is just as essential for small- and medium-size businesses to crunch the data.

How to deal with high volume calls

With forecasts in hand and an arsenal of deflections tools, a call centre software solution that includes self-service, live chat and workflow apps, support managers can prepare their teams to gracefully handle unexpected high call volumes.

And by meeting the challenge of high call volume with proven, data-driven tactics, businesses can set themselves up to manage the expected and the unexpected.