Points to Consider When Bringing in Seasonal Support

For many businesses, their peak seasons are a long, mad rush. More orders; more questions from customers; more posts and visits to your site, forums, and social pages; more of everything. And as all of this is going on, it’s typically the time your support teams take vacation.

To deal with this rush, you need to ramp up with seasonal support. Since your customers don’t know whether they’re speaking with a seasonal representative or a regular, ongoing support-team member, they expect the same quality support no matter who’s assisting them. So it’s essential to help these agents deliver your high standards. Here are three additional points to keep in mind when it’s time to bring in seasonal help.

Delegate the low-hanging fruit. Think of your seasonal support agents as your triage crew. They’re there to alleviate the burden from your existing support members. Create projections based on the volume you’ve seen in previous peak seasons. By carefully determining the support levels you’ll require, you’ll make best use of the supplementary resources of your seasonal crew. One approach is to have seasonal agents focus on the lower-level inquiries, which typically are faster and easier to handle, and can help queues from getting too long. More complex tickets can be funneled to the more experienced agents. This will keep response times down and service levels up.

Put your FAQs and KBs to use. Your department has hopefully established a comprehensive set of frequently asked questions and a robust knowledge base that your seasonal agents can utilize. Your FAQ should cover product or service information as well as details on your help desk system, CRM software, and other tools in use. This is a good time to review these resources and make sure they’re up to date. If so, it will be invaluable in orienting any seasonal agents to your offerings and practices as well as assisting your customers.

Cover all the bases, not just the phones. It might be easy to focus on clearing out an active ticket queue. But, to continue the baseball metaphor, these relief-team players shouldn’t be limited to one position. You want workers who can help across all communications channels, from email and chat and social to, perhaps, in-app or in-game support. Consumers will be coming at you from every direction, so ensure that your seasonal agents are experienced in providing omnichannel support. If you’re serving customers in multiple languages, you’ll want that checkbox ticked off as well.

Ultimately, you’re looking for seasoned professionals who can help you ramp up and scale back as needed, with a thorough understanding of various support channels and tools, and a solid understanding of (and even a passion for) your business. If they’re available to handle day and night hours, including weekends and holidays, and can handle multiple languages, you’re good to go.

It’s not an impossible ask. In fact, ModSquad provides the simplest solution when you need to supplement your support team during crunch times. Make life easier for yourself and for HR (no onboarding, training, and downsizing), IT (no additional setups), and your finance team (thanks to our flexible, cost-saving approach). Pay only for the hours you need, and get the talent you and your customers deserve. Give us a call today and let’s plan for your busy season together.