The holiday season is the merriest time of the year, but for retailers, it is also the busiest. To handle the surge in customer inquiries, many retail businesses hire telecommunication call centers, while others prefer specialized retail call centers. During this period, a huge influx of customer inquiries might pop up 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, a staggering 20 to 40 percent of annual sales for retail businesses occur in the last three months of the year. Additionally, LiveChat statistics show that retail online sites receive 63 percent more visits on average during this time. 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 functions 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 might require up to 77 percent more workforce to handle customer service during this period (Source: LiveChat).
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 biggest perks of BPO services is scaling up resources for the holiday season and scaling down afterward. An outsourced provider can offer scalable solutions for lead generation services, customer service, pre-and post-sales support, claim management, email services, and back office functions, ensuring customer expectations are met while progressing your overall business.
- Improved Vendor-Retailer Coordination:
- Retailers need to excel in both B2C and B2B services. Vendor relationship management is critical for excellent retail performance, but it often gets 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, allowing customers to solve their problems 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!
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