The Holidays: The Time of Highest Call Stress

The holidays are fast approaching, and that means lots of people doing some seriously last-minute Christmas shopping. There are various places where one can go to get their Christmas shopping done in a hurry, of course. The closer the 25th of December is, the more crowded the typical mall would be with people who are hurrying and fighting over that last critical gift to some obscure family member or friend they haven't spoken to in nearly a decade. Some people prefer not to go to malls to do their last-minute purchases, preferring to do things online. However, technology is not perfect and even the most robust website can sometimes encounter problems if too many people are trying to buy the same thing at the same time. That is where the average inbound retail sales agent comes in.

The average call center that handles an inbound sales account is liable to get a large quantity of calls around the holidays. For those that cater to the consumers, the calls swamp in the moment December hits. The call volume increases slowly at first, with accounts that normally only get a call or two per agent, per shift suddenly hitting double digits in the same time period. Then, once the magical date of December 10th (a rough estimate, with most agents and call centers reporting different dates every year) hits, the calls start going into the triple digits and nearly all the popular items are suddenly out of stock. This includes things like iPods, popular video game consoles, the latest games, and who knows what else. Most people are looking to buy, seeing the phone-in sales lines as their last resort, but a few are just looking for a little information.

For those who do sales for businesses, the rush comes before December. Businesses will turn to their suppliers, companies like TechData and Ingram Micro, for stockpiles. The average retail store will want to have a good stockpile of all the products they carry, no matter how unpopular, in preparation for the incoming hordes of shoppers come December. Most call centers that do sales for companies that act as suppliers get a large influx during the months preceding December, with a large bulk of calls coming in November. It isn't unheard of for calls coming in during December, however, because some businesses are as likely to go into last-minute shopping as the average consumer tends to.

Of course, for the agents taking in these calls, the stress and the hectic pace can be maddening. There are almost no breaks in between the calls, so the only time you can really relax your vocal chords would be if the customer is put on hold. In this sort of situation, the foremost thing an agent would be worrying about would be his own survival. There isn't a whole lot of pressure to close a sale during these times since most of the calls would be from people who want to buy, but the pressure comes from figuring out how not to snap at seventy-eighth customer that demands to know if there's an available iPod when the website says there aren't any.

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