The holiday season is the merriest time of the year, but for retailers, it is also the busiest. To handle surges in customer inquiries, many retail businesses hire generic call centers, while others prefer specialized retail call centers. During this period, a significant influx of customer inquiries may arise across various channels—phone, email, chat, or social media. If you’re not prepared, you could lose customers. A call center can help keep your business running seamlessly over the holidays.
According to the National Retail Foundation, 20 to 40 percent of retail businesses’ annual sales occur in the last three months of the year. Additionally, LiveChat statistics show that retail websites receive 63 percent more visits on average during this period. Thus, it is crucial for retail brands to amplify their customer service, order taking services, and chat support before the rush begins.
Ensuring Outsourcing Call Centers is the Right Step
Running a retail company requires knowledge and management of various tasks. But are there functions that keep your in-house staff occupied, preventing them from focusing on core activities? Delegating non-core but essential tasks to a third party can be beneficial. This is where outbound and inbound call center services come in handy.
Regardless of how efficient your internal teams are, it is unlikely that your company will have adequate resources ready around Christmas or New Year to handle the increased customer service demands. This includes lead generation services, help desk solutions, order taking and tracking, 24/7 live chat support, and other BPO services.
The first step in ensuring that outsourcing to a call center is the right decision is to identify the most crucial tasks during this period. As a decision-maker, you likely know which functions need extra support and which can be delegated to retail call centers. Consider outsourcing services such as chat and email support, inbound and outbound call center services, and other cost-efficient yet monotonous functions.
Understanding your retail business inside and out will help you ensure that the call centers you partner with can meet your business requirements.
Benefits of BPO Services for Retail Businesses
If you haven’t outsourced your customer service and other BPO services yet, it’s high time you considered it. Here are some facts to help you decide:
- Increased Demand: During the holiday season, agents’ answering time typically increases from 10 seconds to over 1.5 minutes (Source: LiveChat).
- Additional Workforce: Your retail business may need up to 77% more staff to handle customer service during this period (Source: LiveChat). Instead of the time-consuming process of hiring contract staff, brands are using call center outsourcing to drive retail peak-season CX performance and maintain service quality during the busiest months.
Hiring contractual in-house staff is time-consuming, unproductive, and expensive. Instead, consider inbound call center services to handle customer requests promptly. With customer experience playing a crucial role in winning customer loyalty, hiring BPO voice process agents for phone support and non-voice process agents for chat and email support can be beneficial.
How Outsourced Call Centers Enhance Retail Businesses During the Holiday Season
- Scalability:
- One of the most significant benefits of BPO services is the ability to scale resources up for the holiday season and scale them back afterward. An outsourced provider can offer scalable solutions for lead generation, customer service, pre- and post-sales support, claims management, email services, and back-office functions, ensuring customer expectations are met while advancing your overall business.
- Improved Vendor-Retailer Coordination:
- Retailers need to excel in both B2C and B2B services. Vendor relationship management is critical to excellent retail performance, but it is often overlooked during busy periods. Outsourcing B2B call center services ensures vendor relationships are well managed.
- Encouraging Self-Service:
- Many customers prefer to help themselves. Telecommunication call centers provide omnichannel self-service solutions, enabling customers to resolve issues independently and freeing up time for more complex queries.
- Access to Advanced Technologies:
- Implementing new technologies in-house requires significant investment. Outsourced call centers offer work-at-home solutions, chatbot services, and automation tools that reduce human error and promote efficiency and productivity.
- Highly-Trained Agents Representing Your Brand:
- Top call centers comply with PCI DSS, GDPR, and other regulations, adding credibility to your brand. They have specialized professionals who focus on your business’s growth and success. From GDPR-compliant lead generation services to PCI DSS-compliant data security, outsourcing can enhance your business reputation.
Why Choose Fusion CX?
Fusion CX’s retail call center services are designed to help your business grow rapidly and meet ever-changing customer expectations. Our agents perform various functions under voice and non-voice processes as per your requirements. Our global delivery model, multilingual and multichannel support, added data security, and scalability make us an ideal partner for retail companies. To outsource your retail services, contact us now!
Also Read: 6 Ways To Provide The Elderly Customers With Quality Customer Experience
