Calls at Christmas

31-Oct-2007

Christmas may still be some time off, but recruiters to the contact centre industry are already gearing themselves up to cope with their busiest time of year.

According to Louise McCarthy, head of the commercial division at Meridian Business Support, during the last quarter of the year some retail clients will double the number of staff required.

With companies such as Argos, Littlewoods and Currys just some of the household names to rely on temporary call centre staff to deal with the rush of Christmas orders, perhaps that is not surprising.

However, James Spencer, managing director at Contact Centre Recruit, says that the pre-festive season increase in demand for contact centre staff is no longer restricted to retail. "It used to be the typical retailer, but now we are getting it from banking, insurance, holiday and financial," he says. Spencer estimates that there is a 25% increase in demand at this time of year, peaking in the first week of December — a figure that could be as high as 240,000.

Spencer says that while retail still makes up the biggest chunk (70%), banking and insurance now takes 20%, and holidays (10%). "People want additional credit cards (and lose more of them) at Christmas, and make more insurance claims," he says.

Although online spending at Christmas has continued to rise each year, Dave Pollard, business recruitment manager at Specialist Call Centre Services, says there are still things that people prefer to do over the phone.

"People don't like to give their credit card details online, they prefer to give them over the phone," he says. And many customer service departments don't offer a facility for customers to contact them by email.

"So many companies have customer service problems because of the increased volume that they need more and more people to cope with the increase," Pollard says.

While Spencer says that between 10 and 20% of the extra demand will be met by call centres abroad, the remainder must be met by finding staff in the UK. The sudden surge in demand for staff means that recruiters can find it difficult to track down people with the right skills, he says.

"You can pay £6 an hour to get someone to man the phone, but you need people who are customer focused, who can manage the customer from start to finish and can deal with complaints as far as they can." Spencer adds: "Clients want people with soft skills and personality."

Spencer says that as a result some clients are prepared pay a bit more at this time of year to get the best people, with wages spiking by around £2 an hour on average — bringing them up to £8-£10 an hour.

McCarthy says that while adding 75p to the hourly rate "can often secure people for three months", money is not the only solution to meeting clients' needs. "The biggest one is creativity," she says. "If you can be flexible about shift patterns at the weekend, or on hours then we will get you the quality people you need. It's very much a partnership with the client."

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