As usual, this holiday season is expected to be huge in terms of sales. In fact, it already has been, with holiday e-commerce sales alone in the first 24 days of November reaching $18.9 billion worldwide, according to SDL. For entrenched enterprises and large organizations, this is par for the course, but for a small business, this could be a huge opportunity for growth — as long as it’s ready to handle the increased activity the holiday season entails.
For example, a recent blog post from Mike Reinhart, senior product marketing manager at 8x8 (News - Alert), suggests that waiting for increased seasonal demand to max out your business phone system will result in lost business. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix for this scenario: Upgrade to a cloud-based contact center.
Put simply, a cloud-based contact center can help businesses better manage the holiday rush by providing the information needed to manage seasonal demand in real time. Then there’s the fact that they can handle more than a call center alone since they manage e-mails and Web chat in addition to phone calls.
In fact, a cloud-based contact center’s ability to manage multiple channels is another of its major strengths as it offers many options for customers to reach a business. Of course, cloud contact centers are able to handle a high volume of calls, e-mails and chat interactions — meaning if a certain channel is getting the majority of the action, customers are still able to get through — while still routing customers to the appropriate person who can best handle their needs.
Perhaps best of all is the fact that some of the best cloud contact centers can interface seamlessly with customer relationship management (CRM) systems like Salesforce and NetSuite (News - Alert) for easier communications tracking and logging. In fact, Reinhart posits that combining CRM systems with, say, 8x8’s virtual contact center can result in further boosting sales and conversions for an even more successful holiday season.
Edited by Alisen Downey