24 days until Christmas: is your contact centre ready for the rush?

2020 has flown by in a blur of a pandemic, lockdowns, and vaccines, and it’s now that time of the year when everyone is rushing for their Christmas shopping, only this year is predicted to be very different. Coronavirus has not yet vanished and the race to a stable vaccine is still on, but Christmas, arguably the favourite time of the year for family gatherings, is going to be different for 2020. The pandemic is still active, and we still have loved ones and ourselves to protect, opening the door wider for Christmas shopping online. Most online retailers are bracing for an influx of online shopping, since the general sentiment around health safety in large numbers remains the same. 

What does this mean for contact centres?

Contact centres are customer service hubs. Black Friday sales and Christmas are one of the major busy peaks of the year, with this year predicted to be much more hectic online than any other year. This would mean that contact centres would be busier than their usual peaks, and would need to look at ways in which they can maximise their time and increase their productivity to effectively manage the influx. Click4Assistance’s customer service software solution is the perfect solution for this, since it’s lightweight yet feature packed with a robust and secure foundation, ensuring that your contact centres busiest days remain online.

Remote working: the answer to your prayers

Remote working has become the 2020 normal, since the pandemic lockdowns in March. Organisations across the country have found multiple ways to keep their businesses running, even when their offices are forced to close. Remote working, a common feature in digital transformation strategies for the last few years, has made this possible. Click4Assistance is built on the foundations of remote working, allowing your entire team to access everything they need from home, as though they were in the office. This seamless experience allows your contact centre to become more agile and responsive the next time a lockdown mandate is established.

The additional benefit of remote working with Click4Assistance is for hiring temporary team members, allowing your team to expand without forcing your physical office space to expand. Your newly trained team members can manage their live chats remotely, ensuring that your physical overheads are kept at a minimum. Every team member will be able to access live chat, video chat, social media direct messages and much more, all from the remotely accessible dashboard.

Skyrocket productivity to maximise time

Preparing for a busy period for contact centres usually means expanding the customer service team temporarily for this period and a small shuffle in duties, with more experienced team members taking the responsibility of more complex customer issues and escalations, while the junior teams manage the less complicated, simple customer queries. This is where artificial intelligence can help your contact centre’s productivity.

Click4Assistance’s Artie and Coni can help manage and greet incoming website visitors and immediately engage them, without human intervention. Artie can answer basic questions and assist with sales and navigation, while Coni can be used for specific product searches and helping a customer find what they need through a series of questions and multiple choice answers. They both work independently and are able to transfer to a human agent should the customer’s needs exceed their programmed thresholds. By immediately engaging website visitors, your human agents are saving that time, and the AI can transfer to the right department, reducing transfers and improving the overall customer service experience.

Click4Assistance has been helping contact centres like yours for over 15 years with their customer service software solutions. If you’re interested in deploying Click4Assistance, the UK’s premier GDPR compliant live chat software solution, to level up your contact centre in 2020, give us a call on 0845 123 5871 or send an email to theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our experts will be with you right away. Not ready to reach out yet? Discover how it works, try a demo, or better yet, try Click4Assistance completely free for 21 days