As a business grows, so does the amount of customer inquiries. What might have started as a manageable load in the early days can quickly snowball into hundreds of mounting tickets. If not managed properly, this can lead to slow response times, inconsistent answers, frustrated customers, and overwhelmed employees.
When the quality of your customer service declines like this, your business faces long-term repercussions, such as lost revenue through customer churn, negative reviews, and a tarnished brand reputation.
So, how do you solve this problem? Here’s a guide from the UK’s leading telephone answering agent, Bizik, on managing high volumes of customer inquiries without sacrificing the quality of your customer service.
1. Implement an omnichannel customer support system
An omnichannel support system allows customers to reach your business through multiple platforms, including phone, email, live chat, social media, and SMS, all centralised within one system. This means that no matter how customers reach out; their history and data are accessible in one place.
This approach ensures that customers receive a consistent experience across channels. Customers won’t need to repeat themselves if they switch from one platform to another, and your team can resolve issues more quickly with access to previous interactions.
Plus, according to a Salesforce report, consumers appreciate using different communication channels depending on the context of their query. For instance, they may wish to resolve simple questions via social media, and for more complex matters that require back-and-forth conversation, they may prefer to call. So, by providing multiple ways for your customers to contact you, you will give them the best experience to suit their needs, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.
2. Use automation to manage routine inquiries
Automated responses can significantly reduce the number of customer inquiries your team needs to get through every day.
You can set automations to provide accurate and fully comprehensive responses to customers’ frequently asked questions, such as queries about your products, order status updates, and your shop’s policies. This means your customers will receive information instantly rather than waiting for a customer service agent to become available.
By automating responses to routine inquiries, your team can focus on more complex or sensitive problems that require human input. This will improve both your team’s efficiency and overall customer satisfaction.
3. Prioritise and triage inquiries
Not all inquiries are equally urgent. Implementing a triage system allows your team to organise tickets in order of priority. Here’s how you can categorise inquiries into different levels:
- High urgency: respond as soon as possible. For example, service outages and security issues.
- Medium urgency: respond within 24 hours. For example, billing questions and shipping status inquiries.
- Low urgency: respond within three days. For example, general feedback and product suggestions.
Triage can be automated using filters in your customer relationship management system to help your team ensure that urgent matters are addressed promptly while less critical inquiries are queued appropriately.
4. Optimize your team structure
Having the right team structure in place can be highly beneficial during peak inquiry times. Consider dividing your team into specific roles.
Frontline Support Agents should handle general inquiries and provide immediate responses, Technical Support Specialists should handle complex technical issues, and Customer Success Managers should address any escalated issues.
Cross-training team members can also be beneficial. When team members are familiar with multiple roles, they can step in and help other departments during peak times, preventing the chance of one area becoming a bottleneck.
5. Maintain your employees’ wellbeing
An often overlooked aspect of customer support is the well-being of the team. Customer service agents are much more likely to speak to customers with care and empathy when they are happy and relaxed rather than stressed and burned out from unmanageable workloads.
So, despite high volumes of customer inquiries, ensure your staff are still taking regular breaks to recharge during their shifts and using their full annual leave entitlements. You could also offer additional perks like fitness programs and mindfulness sessions to reduce the risk of people feeling overwhelmed.
It also helps to celebrate team achievements and acknowledge individual contributions to keep the team motivated and encouraged, especially when under pressure.
6. Adjust your service to meet demand
Your business may only experience high volumes of customer inquiries during certain times of the year, such as seasonal sales or festive periods. By analysing historical data, you can anticipate busy periods and plan accordingly.
Consider hiring temporary staff to help manage peak times, or it may be more cost-effective to outsource to a managed service provider. This ensures you can handle increased inquiries without compromising your usual service quality.
How managed live chat & answering services can help you manage high demand
Handling high volumes of customer inquiries without sacrificing quality requires organisation and a highly motivated team.
This can be difficult to implement when you’re already short on time due to high work demands. That’s where managed live chat and answering services can help.
Bizik will take care of all your customer service needs efficiently and cost-effectively. You won’t have to worry about spending time and money recruiting and training new staff. You’ll get your team of highly experienced customer service professionals ready to take on your customers’ calls from day one.
The service can scale with you to handle your demand, and there’s transparent pricing, so you only pay per second of calls you receive, giving you the best value for money on the market. Get in touch to learn more and book your seven-day free trial today.
