It’s the 24^th December at 4PM. A new customer calls, chasing a quote for services.

How have you planned to ensure delivery of the same service levels that you provide throughout the year?

Key question:

How do you deal with back-office support demands during the holiday season?

A key annual challenge that companies face is how to manage support demand during a season when everyone requests annual leave.

The answer:

Outsourced overflow support

In this article we will explore the different options available to manage seasonal and ongoing back-office support demands.

Scenario 1: Most companies

We can all relate to the feeling; you telephone a company on or just before a public holiday and the phone just rings out. You ask yourself, is anyone there? Have they all left for the holidays already? Do they not care about servicing their customer?

On average companies miss 25% of inbound telephone calls. At peak holiday periods, this is as high as 100%. Let that sink in - your company missing most, if not all, of their telephone calls.

Most don’t know there are options available and that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Scenario 2: Conscious companies

Some can relate to the other feeling; you telephone a company on or just before a public holiday and the receptionist answers immediately.

A welcoming friendly voice: “Good evening ABC Law, how can I help?”

Inside you think “I wasn’t expecting them to answer” (as if a business answering their telephone isn’t something you expect). Subconsciously it fills you with confidence in the organisation and its ability to provide the product or service you require.

The receptionist deals with your enquiry, collects all relevant details and releases you from the call elated with your experience and ready to go about your business. In the background, the quote gets produced by a secretary and emailed to the client.

Inside you think – wow, what a brilliant customer experience that was at this time of day.

Perception and reputation management is key

In an ever more competitive world, your reputation and how the marketplace perceives you are key to the growth and success of your organisation.

Having on-demand support available to your organisation can be the difference between servicing customers and retaining them or letting them down and risking that they go with another supplier the next time.

Reception

Our award-winning reception service helps companies protect their reputation and is available to manage customer contact 24/7 by telephone, live chat, email, SMS, social media and more.

Our team of over 200 friendly and experienced staff are ready and waiting at any time to help your customers through your business processes in a friendly and professional manner.

Whether it is switchboard overflow or a fully outsourced solution our agile workflows can be easily moulded to your company's processes to ensure we really feel like an extension of your team.

Secretarial

Our secretarial service is used by companies to ensure that the production of documents never stops.

Whether it is transcribing dictations, letters, memos, briefs or long-form reports, our 24/7 teams make sure that your document queue is clear each morning to allow you to start each day fresh.

Our team of over 300 secretaries work across more than 100 different case and document management systems, allowing us to file documents away for you in the correct area, ready for your use.

We offer both overflow support and a fully outsourced solution meaning that we are available as an ongoing concern or just when you need us.

PA

Our PA service is used to perform admin tasks of all shapes and sizes.

This ranges from contact & counterparty creation to client onboarding, risk & compliance, form submissions, lifestyle management and more.

Our team

Our team of over 500 UK-based support staff come from law firms, health & care, property & eCommerce organisations across the UK. We are broken down into teams either covering whole sectors for companies with a wide scope of services or more niche teams for those who specialise.

Across all services, the transmission of work is plug and play making it easy to get started and for you to access the support that you need when you need it.

We offer a free trial to new clients with the aim of proofing our value add before you start paying.

So, with the 2022 holiday season on the horizon, how are you prepared to manage customer demand?

If the answer is anything other than "with consistency", talk to us about how we can help.