A strategy for handling phone call peaks
Over at GenesysWire, Kelly Zunker observes how Sony and their retailers staffed up (or more accurately completely failed to staff up) for the caller demand generated by the PlayStation 3 launch.
He asks,
Incredible how significant this product is within our industry. It really begs the question of how to staff for such incredible peaks? In the region that I cover I deal with a lot of retailers and e-tailers that have peak issues to deal with all the time. They not only have very significant spikes around isolated events like this one, but they annually have their big holiday peaks that last from October through January.
He then goes on to explain how vendors build partnerships with call center outsourcers to deal with seasonal demand.
What seems to be missing, what begs the question is, what impact could an automated speech application have in dealing with spikes? Is spike handling all about simply adding low-quality staff from call center outsourcers?
Instead, let’s say I’m calling Wal-Mart to find out if they have a PS3 in stock, and they don’t. Is Wal-Mart doing themselves any good by simply letting you know that they don’t have any? How about giving you an opportunity to order one over the phone, at a special price, and giving you a confirmed shipped date before the call ends? Wouldn’t that dramatically turn a negative interaction into a better, more positive one? Because speech technology is there. This isn’t even moderately challenging.
With the widespread emergence of On Demand IVR and call center providers, it makes complete sense to always have a pre-provisioned overflow facility. While a technology vendor may cringe at this marginal approach to their business, this is the bread and butter for any Software as a Service company who can help you get this set-up in days, if not hours.
Technorati Tags: angel.com, automation, callcenter, customer service, customerservice, genesys, hosted, ivr, kellyzunker, ondemand, online retail, onlineretail, playstation3, walmart, retail, sony, speech, speech recognition, speechrec, wal-mart
4 Responses to “A strategy for handling phone call peaks”
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I wonder how much this will be need as SIP and VOIP become more widespread for IVR. I would think that those technologies could allow for growthon demand.
Hi Marshall,
thanks for your comment. As VOIP adoption increases there will be more options to connect to other people’s infrastructure.
The need for infrastructure remains, though.
Sam
Sam,
Good thread on my blog post but just thought you would want to know that “She” is really “He”.
Mr Kelly Zunker
Ooops! Mr Kelly, I apologize. I’ve corrected the pronoun. Thanks for dropping by!