SEE

Surviving and winning during Peak times

The challenge is clear. How do you ensure that calls and emails are answered, orders are taken, and the customer experience is good?

Answer – make sure you have enough trained, skilled, knowledgeable agents ready and waiting to take those orders and calls when you need them.

Easy surely? So, you’ll need:

  • Suitable contact centre space
  • Training and quality resource to train and monitor
  • Space to train
  • Equipment
  • Line capacity
  • Team leader resource
  • Access to a reliable local pool of resource at the right price

And the big one: 

  • Ability to flex shifts and resource according to ever fluctuating actual demand whilst keeping staffing levels at a sensible level and agents fully utilised

Juggling a complex contact centre solution that will be both cost effective and meet your customer’s needs is challenging and could be costly – both operationally and to your brand values.

Direct commerce clients are faced with huge variances in demand due to:

  • Catalogue and insert drops
  • End of season sales
  • One off campaigns
  • Christmas peak
  • Weather – good and bad – influence on shopping habits
  • Over performance of range or products
  • Competition

And all of this before you factor in any challenges in the supply chain or contact centre staffing issues such as absences or attrition.

Help is at hand!

Outsourcing, fully or just overflow and out of hours, can help you to achieve your objectives – maximum sales, excellent customer service and at the right cost.

Mpl contact, a UK outsourced contact centre provider has been working in this arena for many years and provides solutions to clients such as Scotts and Co, Gtech, and Theo Paphitis Retail Group to help them overcome these challenges and meet their goals.

The key to being successful is flexibility. Mpl contact offer both on-demand solutions, as well as fixed, dedicated teams to provide the best of both worlds.

One of our clients – a direct commerce company uses our services for all their customer order calls, and we provide a level of contingency support and capacity for customer service calls. They experience a 3-fold increase in sales in the crucial Autumn / Winter trading period, and as such need to be comfortable in our abilities.   

So how do we deliver?

Suitable contact centre space

We can immediately increase agent seats by around 40% of that which is currently operational, plus, by using our network of 2 additional sites we leverage increased capacity on demand by dynamically flowing traffic across sites where needed. With a cloud-based contact centre platform, new agent desktop builds can be rapidly deployed, along with the ability to free up admin space as needed for operational agents.

Not only are we able to provide a defined operational space for dedicated teams, that can be fully branded and identifiable, we have the additional benefit of capacity within the on demand bureau team.

Training and quality resource to train and monitor

With a team of in-house skilled trainers and quality team, we quickly assimilate and distribute knowledge and learnings, and using online tools such as Scorebuddy, provide robust and scalable performance management.

Space to train

Not only do we have physical space to train agents in a controlled environment, we also deploy tools such as gamification to reduce the reliance on classroom training and encourage greater engagement from agents. Our agent desktop is intuitive and easy to navigate, therefore reduces cumbersome systems training. Having a great deal of experience with client platforms, such as Magento also reduces the training time.

Equipment

As a provider of outsourced contact centre solutions, we are comfortable that when one client peaks, other reduces, therefore we can be reassured that investment in equipment will be utilised by this oscillating demand. It’s our obligation to have the right environment and facilities. With consistent sustained growth over the previous 5 years, we ensure we are fit for purpose to deliver.

Line capacity

Technically astute and knowledgeable, we are experts in contact centre technology and demands – we have to be – it is all we do, so you can be reassured that this box, and all other compliance and security needs, are well and truly ticked.

Team leader resource

Not only are our team leaders capable and flexible, we also often promote from internally – so we are always looking for our next shining star.

Access to a reliable local pool of resource at the right price

Ideally located close to a major city, with excellent relationships with local recruitment agencies, plus a good local reputation ensures we can recruit and retain good quality agents. Being based in the Midlands, with good local levels of employment, means that we are not exposed to the salary pressures of cities such as London and Manchester.  

Ability to flex shifts and resource according to actual demand

Experienced in-house manpower planning ensures that we have the right people in the right place at the right time. Our ability to flex dedicated team size, and support with on-demand bureau resource allows us to meet the fluid contact pattern.

Uniquely, retaining skilled resource in a bureau environment, where no commitment is needed by the client, means that when the need is there for a dedicated resource, we can redeploy from bureau, and backfill for more simple accounts.

But don’t just take our word for it:

COO quoted: “We selected Mpl Contact as they have demonstrated their ability to ramp up and down to support us with our seasonal and campaign peaks and have proven themselves capable of delivering a quality solution with an experienced and skilled operational team.”

Scurri