The best BPO companies are always working on different models and can adapt to what their clients actually need. In some cases, a business may require Seasonal Outsourcing. We know that when running a business there can be a consistent workflow, but there are times during the year where this workflow can change and increase temporarily.
This change in the workflow will depend on the industry, so seasonal outsourcing can be done during any time of the year. Holidays are just one example of when businesses can be at their busiest.
To find your seasonal peak is easy when you have enough time operating. You will notice an increase of the volume of orders, purchases, modifications, follow ups, payments and all other transactions that clients may need assistance with, and this increase brings a lot of additional workload to any business; this is why business owners see seasonal outsourcing as a great option to satisfy their own needs.
Trusted BPO companies have a variety of packages you can choose from, like customer service, data encoding, document processing, tech support and many more, there are a lot of advantages in seasonal outsourcing.
One of these advantages is cost efficiency. BPO companies are ready to provide temporary contracts and bring support during these seasonal peaks. This will allow you to save time and money in terms of hiring and training new personnel, as well as equipment and space to accommodate all your employees.
Another important aspect is customer service improvement or maintenance, no matter the workload you cannot let your customers down, and a BPO company can help you maintain a level of customer service quality and even improve it. When the old and new customers come, you would have already assured and immediate support, reassuring your customers with the quality of your services throughout the year.
During these seasonal peaks the flow of information that the business will need to process will be at its highest level, it is important to partner with a BPO company that can help you track all transactions without having to purchase expensive software and hire more personnel. Back Office support is key.
Flexibility is one of the best things about outsourcing, as most BPO companies already have the infrastructure, staff and software to help you manage this seasonal traffic and give your old and new customers the best customer service experience, or can quickly scale to handle the extra volume.
You can outsource once or twice a year, it depends on the needs of the business, and that is the beauty of seasonal outsourcing.
You would have to go through a few steps before you outsource this way:
Make a Plan
Planning and developing a strategy are key steps to understanding your business, as you can’t achieve your goal overnight. At least three months prior to your peak, you’ll need to have a clear forecast of the traffic you will experience, to find the resources and the best BPO company to help you provide your customers with a great service experience.
You need to identify the most frequent customer queries to have easy solutions and processes to overcome all these challenges without sacrificing good communication.
Identifying your seasonal peaks
This is based on observation mostly, you will need to forecast your personnel and customers needs based on past experiences, to infer from there what would be the best solution for your business.
Industry-wide past trends are really helpful. You can analyze them to identify or estimate when the peak starts, the duration period of the peak, and most importantly the demand you will need to cover according to your goals.
Get the help you need
This seasonal peak means heavy work traffic and stressed customers. This is where having some additional help comes in handy. BPO companies that provide seasonal help are one the best resources at your disposal.
You will have trained agents ready to understand your business and customers needs to help resolve the queries and demands as fast and effectively as possible. Empathy is a key virtue in any agent, they will need to listen patiently to the customers query and give the best and faster solutions possible, each agent represents the voice of your brand, so having top qualified agents becomes extremely important.
Prioritizing
It is important to identify all the urgent queries based on previous analysis for agents to resolve first.
Providing your agents with a full view of the customer information and queries to have well informed conversations is a basic need to have great quality customer service. Having fluent ways to solve your customer queries is vital at these seasonal peaks; emotions and stress are running high, so your customers will be looking for easy and quick answers.
Having an effective Q&A interaction can be helpful to solve, but more importantly, reduce the number of customer support queries.
Manage your customer’s expectations
If you are expecting a delay in deliveries due to high demand, notify them ahead, this way your customers will be clear on what to expect from you during this seasonal peak. This will reflect on less queries from customers inquiring about their order delivery, it is better to underpromise that to underachieve.
