TALKING

But things can also sour quickly . We have all sat in frustration waiting for an online retailer ’ s site to come back online because its servers could not handle the traffic . We have also all seen the damage that desperate shoppers can inflict on physical retailers . And with online retailers in particular experiencing record Black Friday sales year on year , such incidents will only become more common .

Real world scenario # 1

More specifically , they turn to their bank ’ s contact centre . That can be frustrating at the best of times but it is doubly so on days like Black Friday . Wait times are magnified . Harried contact centre agents , desperately trying to get through as many calls as possible , probably cannot give your query or complaint the attention it deserves .

With so much data at their disposal , banks anticipate these increased call volumes . And many do scale up in the run-up to , and aftermath of Black Friday by making sure as many contact centre agents as possible are on duty .

While that absorbs some of the pressure , it is often not enough to meet customer demand . That is to say nothing of finding extra floor space for temporary contact centre agents or the need to train them up simply for a week or so of work .

Online shoppers , meanwhile , might fall victim to Black Friday scams . For their part , retailers may struggle with the increase in transaction volumes or encounter payment processing issues . When any of those things happen , people turn to their bank .

Urgent customer conversations are critical in most businesses . You might , for instance , need to cancel your card immediately after a theft . Or you may have missed a payment that the business needs to remind you about .

Capacity scaling

Many contact centres struggle to take the right approach to urgent conversations . Some lack the resources to rapidly ramp up and deal with increased call volumes . Others face customers who do not answer calls from numbers they do not recognise . Yet the business still needs those conversations to happen .

If the traditional approach is not working , how can companies ensure that they reach the customers they need to as fast as they need to ?

Before answering those questions , it is worth examining why call centres struggle to scale quickly . A good example involved a bank promoting its insurance products by handing out leaflets at a taxi rank at the end of the month .

In and of itself , that was a good strategy . It was the right target market for that specific insurance product and the bank was meeting its customers in their daily lives . Importantly , by timing the marketing to just after payday , the bank reached those customers when they had money and were willing to spend it .

Ryan Falkenberg , co-CEO CLEVVA

Even if they have worked in a bank ’ s contact centre previously , there are still unique systems they need to be trained in . Scaling human capacity up and down to meet demand spikes is challenging , but what alternatives are there ?

Real world scenario # 2

Retailers can deal with most of those incidents inhouse . But things are very different when there is money involved . In a physical store , thieves might steal a customer ’ s phone before gaining access to their banking application and emptying the accounts , this is a fairly common occurrence in South Africa .

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