External contact center in an on-line store

Because of the growing popularity of on-line shopping e-stores have to process the ever-increasing number of orders. Customers expect not only a convenient contract form, but also a fast response to their questions. How can we overcome this challenge during the pre-Christmas shopping fever?

Flexible adaptation of resources to the traffic
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Free Shopping Day – the number of orders at on-line stores on just these few days at the end of November and in the beginning of December increases up to several times compared to the average traffic in this period. According to a survey carried out by Criteo on-line sales in Polish stores increase before Christmas by nearly 90%. Maintaining high quality of customer service when fluctuations are so large is a serious challenge for e-business. At this time of the year Internet entrepreneurs are usually forced to increase the size of their team or choose to use external resources.

An outsourced contact center may take over the entire communication with customers of the given e-commerce or supplement activities carried out by the store on its own. In this model an Internet entrepreneur uses external resources flexibly without incurring any employment or infrastructure investment costs.

"In December we increase the number of consultants who assist e-commerce clients nearly 10 times. Because we work with companies from various industries we are able to allocate resources flexibly, depending on the the workload in a given project. Another factor which guarantees the availability of the required staff when the scale increases to such a large degree is an efficient, well-prepared and planned recruitment and training process", says Ewa Czarnecka, the Operating Director of Voice Contact Center.

Multi-channel service
An external contact center may cover all customer contact channels or only the selected ones:
email, phone, chat, contact form and social media.

"Customers usually hire us to handle their email and phone communication. Our consultants undergo thorough training during which they acquire knowledge which allows them to professionally advise a customer and solve any problems related to an order", Ewa Czarneczka adds.
External consultants have access to the on-line store’s systems, which allows them to track information related to a given user, e.g. their status and order history. A client who uses our services can at any time generate reports or view statistics on the effectiveness of activities carried out by the contact center.

Service quality
The outsourcer operates based on KPIs determined together with the on-line store, among others concerning the time during which emails sent by customers must be replied to. The contact center is not only responsible for providing staff needed to handle the given traffic volume, but also for ensuring that consultants are effective.

"To handle e-commerce projects we primarily recruit people who are creative, willing to contact the client, learn quickly and are able to effectively react to various problems reported by on-line store users", Ewa Czarnecka sums up.

The work quality of every consultant is constantly monitored by project managers and leaders. The assessment focuses mainly on the effectiveness of an employee as well as on the time they spend on handling one contact.

Launching a contact center service in an on-line store usually takes from a few days to several weeks. The time depends on the scale and complexity of the project and on the integration of activities with the client’s IT systems.