With the holiday season comes string lights and eggnog – but also a seasonal increase in consumer demand. For some organizations, the holiday spike brings stress and supply chain issues. For others, it’s an opportunity to reach new customers or build relationships with existing, loyal ones.
Here’s how to ensure that your business or non-profit organization handles the year-end sales spike with ease.
Be Proactive, Not Reactive
Managing seasonal spikes is about anticipating demand increases based on past data and enacting policies and processes to ensure that customer needs are met. Businesses that wait for demand to spike before enacting an action plan will struggle with product delivery times, long call wait times, and low customer satisfaction levels. In contrast, organizations that anticipate demand based on past performance can allocate resources to additional staffing, training, and product delivery. This means they can seamlessly handle additional orders or requests – and develop organization-level solutions for problems that might arise.
Communicate With Suppliers
While your organization might be able to scale up to meet demand, remember that your success is built on the shoulders of myriad partners, collaborators, and suppliers. Liaise with suppliers or vendors to ensure that they can meet anticipated demand – and in a timely manner. Inform them well ahead of anticipated volume increases and keep them updated if demand shifts. The current supply chain challenges are significant, so confirm fulfillment timelines and continue to check in with your vendors. If your suppliers can’t fill your orders, this gives you time enough to create a backup plan – whether that’s diversifying your suppliers or managing customer expectations.
Ensure Your Contact Center Has Capacity
An increase in sales volume means an increase in customer support requests. Whether you’re a tech or communications firm handling troubleshooting requests or a non-profit fielding increased interest in donations or gifts, having the ability to handle a spike in calls seamlessly is key. Leveraging a solution such as ACD’s turn-key customer contact platform allows you to instantly spin up a distributed contact center of trained professionals to meet increased demand – and to seamlessly wind the service back down as requests dip following the holiday period. It’s an approach that allows you to quickly adapt to changing demand without the expense and inconvenience of hiring, training, and providing a workspace for a team of temp staff.
Talk to ACD About Managing Sales Spikes
If the missing piece of your holiday sales spike puzzle relates to your contact center, talk to the team at ACD about our one-stop customer contact solutions and how we can deliver support throughout your entire sales cycle. Ideal for both fully and partly outsourced contact center approaches, our two-pronged solution pairs leading SaaS technology with a team of US-based customer service agent to ensure seamless, efficient customer service for those all-important seasonal calls. To ensure your sales spike becomes an opportunity – and not a missed one – contact ACD today.
