Partner Article

A Christmas Call Centre Tale

Zestive Greetings! It’s Christmas and in keeping with this time of year we thought we would tell you a festive story about three different approaches to handling your calls this Christmas time.

Our story is about three company directors who are leaving the office for their Christmas break, which of these men could be deemed as ‘wise’ should become clear in due course…..

It was a cold winter’s night as the three directors closed their offices for what is that most fabulous time of the year, Christmas.

The first, Mr Scrooge, was a rather traditional gentleman. He didn’t agree with the notion that customer service exists 24/7 and therefore left the office for a fortnight without a second thought of who will answer the telephone in the time that he and his staff are off. ‘Nothing goes wrong at this time of year and if it does it can wait until the New Year’, he thought to himself.

The second company director, Mr Grinch was all too aware that the Christmas period can make or break a company’s reputation and therefore made a conscious decision to take home the on-call mobile when he left the office. That way, anybody who calls his company can get in touch no matter what time of the day or night it is. ‘It’s not ideal, but I did want to advertise my company as being operational 24/7 every day of the year’ he considered.

The third company director was a Mr Claus. Unlike Mr Scrooge and Mr Grinch, Mr Claus decided to divert his lines to a call management centre, as he didn’t plan on being in the office for almost a fortnight. He’d spoken to his friend who had outsourced his calls successfully the previous year and remembered he’d said it was the first time in years he had fully enjoyed his break. Mr Claus was satisfied with his decision.

The choices that each of the directors made had a direct impact on their businesses.

Due to the fact that he assumes that he won’t receive many, if any, calls over Christmas, Mr Scrooge leaves the office without a second thought.

Unfortunately, as some of us know only too well, the fact that its Christmas doesn’t mean that incidents won’t happen and Mr Scrooge discovers this on his return to the office!

Not only has he had plenty of missed calls on his phone, resulting in loss of business and money, he also now has to deal with the complaints of those customers who tried to contact his company during one of the busiest times of year and were unable to speak to anyone. The reputation that he has worked hard for many years to achieve is left in tatters and his competitors have stolen customers directly from him. Not so wise.

Mr Grinch, on the other hand, doesn’t miss one call to his company throughout the whole of the festive break thanks to the fact that he took the calls himself.

And therein lies his problem.

By making himself available 24/7, Mr Grinch spent the vast majority of his time off answering non-urgent calls that could really have waited until he was back in the office. As a consequence of his willingness to answer all calls, he was unable to fully enjoy the festivities with his family and on returning to the office, felt as though he has not had a break at all. Again, not so wise.

Mr Claus decided to outsource his call answering over the festive period. This meant he could enjoy his time off without having to worry about customers ringing him directly, or worse still, not getting through to anybody. He could rest assured that his customers were receiving an excellent level of service but was also kept informed of the activity as he received a daily report to detail exactly who had called. By utilising the call centre, Mr Claus found that he could maintain a healthy work/life balance whilst the reputation of his company was upheld. A wise move all round!

I am sure you will agree that Mr Claus was indeed the wise man this Christmas!

We think that Christmas should be known as a time when people come together to help each other and it’s no different when partnering with a call management centre. It’s a big decision to make but if it benefits your company and your customers then it’s definitely worth putting on your wish list this year!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lemon Business Solutions Ltd .