Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

July 14, 2006

Handling Call Volume Spikes

By Rosanne D'Ausilio, Ph.D.


According to a recent report from Jupiter Research, the number of people online who are 65 and older will double from 11.5 million in 2005 to 23 million by 2011.
 
How many of you have older customers?  If not today, you will in the future…even if it’s only your customers grown up or older. 
 
Does your call volume spike on rainy days? If people are stuck in their house who do they call? No, not Ghostbusters! You. And sometimes they even want to chat more than usual?
 
What can you do? Be patient with your customers.
 
When you hear the same thing over and over again, it’s not easy, is it?  But it’s worth it. Be proactive; make a decision that for the next three calls you are going to be patient with your customers (we mean internal as well as external). 
 
Notice how those interactions went by asking yourself these questions:

+ Were the calls easier for you to handle? 
+ Was the customer surprised?
+ Did they feel taken care of?
+ Did the call close in a timely fashion? 
+ How did you feel after those calls?
 
When I am being patient with a customer (or a spouse, child, mother, father), I feel good about myself and I can maintain my perspective because I have chosen not to let anyone or anything bother me.
 
When you easily accomplish three calls, move it to six calls.  When you are comfortable with six calls, kick it up a notch to 12 calls. 
 
Before you know it, your stress level has decreased and you are looking forward to your daily challenge of being patient with your customers (people). 
 
It also helps to re-focus callers by using close-ended questions.
 
For instance, if someone is telling you about their weather, vacation, or _____ (fill in the blank), acknowledge what you heard and then ask a question that has a yes or no, or one or two word answer. “Can I confirm the spelling of your name as R-O-S-A-N-N-E?” I have to answer either yes or no. Then you can move to a more productive close. 
 
Don’t skip the part of acknowledging what you heard or they’ll keep repeating it until you do. If they tend to wander off again, ask another question that requires them to answer yes or no. 
 
These suggestions put you in control of the call versus being reactive to a customer. The more control we have, the more awareness we have. The more awareness, the more choices we have. The more choices we have, the more we make great ones.
 
Rosanne D’Ausilio, Ph.D., an industrial psychologist and President of Human Technologies Global, Inc., specializes in human performance management. 


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