5 Simple Steps to Cope with the Busiest Online Shopping Day of the Year.
The United Kingdom had its most intense online shopping day of the year (December 8th) as millions of people swapped the high street for the click of a mouse. A huge £320 million was forecast to be payed online during the day.
The peak shopping hour being between 1pm-2pm as people log-on in their dinner breaks to find their Christmas presents and £28 million looks possible to have been spent during this time alone. This is twice the amount spent during the peak hour (midday) on Monday 11th December 2006.
Here are 5 ways that internet businesses can help cope with the huge demand using their non-geographic telephone numbers (0845, 0800, 03 numbers etc):
1. Online call statistics package work alongside non-geographic telephone numbers and allow businesses to see the total quantity of calls coming into the business, busy times and calls that where missed etc. to their phone numbers. This information can then be used to help businesses organise their staffing better during hectic periods / days of the week.
2. Call queuing functions are frequently linked with call centres and very large corporations. However, these days many small businesses are providing call queuing with their non-geographic telephone numbers to allow them to receive more enquiries, deal with their enquirers in an effective way and boost their sales. Big and small businesses could queue up to 100 callers at any particular time. Call queuing functions are also used as a chance to play customers marketing messages.
3. - Voicemail to email functions let companies to receive their voicemails as an audio file to an email address of their choosing. This would help to ensure that any missed calls during busy times would get dealt with by the correct person, straight away.
4. Call divert is a popular feature that is used with non-geographic numbers and allows companies to specify different landline/mobile numbers that callers are directed to in the event of an emergency / landline problem. Companies can even decide the amount of phone rings before forwarding the enquiry to another number – which might be a home/mobile number or call answering service out of hours etc.
5. Call management systems are all dealt with online with any changes put into action straight away – allowing businesses flexibility over their phone systems to increase the number of sales and enquiries.
As this information displays, businesses can simply take advantage of the busiest online shopping days of the year and it doesn’t have to cost them huge amounts to do so – just a clever telephone number and more individuals to help count the takings!