5 Simple Steps to deal with the most hectic Online buying Day of the Year.

The UK had its busiest online shopping day of the year (December 8th) as millions of people exchanged the high street for the computer. An incredible £320 million was forecast to be payed online throughout the day.

The peak shopping time being during 1pm-2pm as workers log-on in their dinner breaks to search for their Christmas presents and £28 million looks set to have been spent during this hour alone. This is twice the amount spent during the peak hour (midday) on Monday 11th December 2006.

5 ways that businesses can cope better with the huge demand with their non-geographic telephone numbers (0845, 0800, 03 numbers etc):

1.         Online call statistics package work in tandem with non-geographic telephone numbers and encourage businesses to see the total number of calls coming into the business, busy periods and calls that where missed etc. to their phone numbers. Businesses can then use this information to help businesses organise their staffing better during busy periods / days of the week.

2.         Call queuing functions are frequently associated with call centres and very large corporations. However, these days many small businesses are using call queuing with their non-geographic telephone numbers to allow them to take more enquiries, deal with their enquirers in an effective way and increase their turnover. Large and little businesses can line up to 100 callers at any particular time. Call queuing functions are also used as a chance to play customers advertising messages.

3.         - Voicemail to email functions  enable businesses receive their voicemails as an audio file to an email address of their choice. This would help to ensure that any missed calls during busy periods would get dealt with by the correct person, straight away.

4.         Call divert is an excepted feature which is used with non-geographic numbers and allows companies to identify alternative landline/mobile numbers that callers are pointed to in the unfortunate occurrence of an emergency / landline failure. Businesses can choose the number of phone rings before forwarding the enquiry to a different number – which could be a home/mobile number or call answering service out of hours etc.

5.         Call management systems are all controlled online with any alterations put into action straight away – giving companies flexibility over their phone systems to increase the amount of sales and phonecalls.

As this information shows, businesses can easily be ready of the busiest online shopping days of the year and it wont have to cost them huge amounts to do so – just a smart telephone number and more individuals to help add up the takings!