One support channel is overwhelmed with traffic. How can you balance response times effectively?

You need to measure in order to take appropriate action and see where your bottlenecks are. Trends might look like challenges around specific: - Products - Features - Specific channels (ie. chat) - Volumes - Type of ticket (work item, UI issue, bug, question, etc)

Importante analizar el tráfico. Cada canal tiene un comportamiento diferente por lo que el análisis debe realizarse para cada uno. En el caso por ejemplo del canal de llamadas debe revisarse el trafico por intervalos de 30 minutos. Esto debe darnos una idea de cuales horas del día por ejemplo tenemos mayor trafico. Luego debemos ir analizando las causas del aumento. Para esto se utilizan las tipificaciones de los contactos y por igual el acercamiento con los representantes de servicio. También funciona elegir algunas llamadas al azar y monitorearlas.

Flexible Scheduling: Implement flexible staffing schedules to ensure adequate coverage during peak times. This might involve part-time or temporary staff to handle surges in traffic. Cross-Training Employees: Train employees to handle multiple roles, allowing you to redistribute staff as needed during busy periods.

When a system is overloaded, it can fail. Equipping staff with adequate training and tools can help spread the responsibility across the team and reduce the pressure. Undue pressure can cause unforeseen damage, so it is best to mitigate against this by providing training and development.

Cross-training staff is ideal when your issue is product specific spikes due to traffic, product launch, or another fairly time boxed issue.

This isn’t just about customer satisfaction; it’s about your team’s well-being too. An inundated call center can lead to stressed employees, which isn’t good for anyone involved. 1-train your team across channels and languages ( aligned with their salary and type of contracts) 2- Keep an eye on service levels across all channels, incoming queries Balance is key. 3-Evaluate data every day : Mapping the Customer Journey to Highlight and Address Pain Points 4-Keep communicating with other teams, Engineers, product, etc to check if there is a leak of info / errors etc and how to address the issue technically 5-Promote your self-service options to clients (if any) like articles, video tutorials etc 6- Encourage users to use other channels

If the issue is known and expected to continue for hours or longer, notification in app and in voicemail recordings will be invaluable for reducing traffic. Be sure to include information on when they can expect either resolution or an update.

Ojo con la movilización de los clientes de un canal a otro. Si muevo a los clientes del canal de llamadas al canal de WhatsApp y esta llamada es abandonada mientras está en espera de ser atendido entonces podría afectar los indicadores de nivel de servicio y de abandono por lo que en todo caso lo ideal sería enviar alguna comunicación proactiva al cliente que lo invite a ir a ese canal alterno. Ahora bien, el canal alterno elegido, ya sea chat, whatsapp o correo, debe tener capacidad de atención suficiente para que no se encolen ahí también las solicitudes de los clientes.

Implement AI-powered chatbots to handle routine and frequently asked questions. This helps reduce the load on human agents, allowing them to focus on more complex issues. Use AI tools to analyze customer sentiment and predict potential issues, enabling proactive management of customer interactions.

If your volumes are the issue, and a lot of issues are question based, leverage self service options - like knowledge base articles, communities, and help centers, and automations - like chat bots if your volumes are high enough to make it feasible to manage and train.

Automatización que funcione. El colocar soluciones tecnológicas de autoservicio no debe ser una acción que se de por que sí. Esta debe ir acompa?ada de una buena estrategia de Experiencia del Cliente donde se asegure la omnicanalidad y brinde confianza a los clientes de lo contrario estos volverán donde le resuelven mejor aunque tengan que esperar más.

Make sure you're leveraging appropriate resources who can actually help, and make sure your staffed appropriately for your metrics. Pivoting fast and using teams creatively is great in a pinch, but shouldn't be your standard mode of operation.

Have manager level metrics that are being monitored on a daily and weekly basis, and have monthly metrics that are shared with leadership for trend analysis.

I learnt so much from my colleagues in Customer Care, but the one thing that ALWAYS impressed me was the juggle. It is often a myriad of factors that need to be adjusted, tweaked or implemented in these times. Be transparent with your customers, and your team (take front before front you!), utilize (and communicate) additional support channels and when it’s all over - figure out what caused the overload. Personally, I don’t agree that response time is the most impactful from a CX perspective- clearly communicate expectations and measure resolution!

One thing I found very effective during peak times is time management. Knowing the exact time your business is busy, will help you plan your time and arrange your staff accordingly. With my experience in a cinema, the busy days are on the weekends and when children are on holidays. There is need for more staff during the day till the close of day. Staff were also employed for emergency or busy weekends to also support the full time staff.. Time management and strategic planning is very crucial in delivering exceptional service.

In addition to metric monitoring and having multiple quick pivot options, have target goals against metrics. Make sure you have visibility with the right people for green, yellow, and red resolution metrics.