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The holidays are just around the corner. In many countries, they’ve already begun! As we move into the second half of the year filled with celebrations and festivals, you need to prepare your business for the holidays in a way that keeps both customers and employees happy.

How to Make Your Business Holiday-Ready

The holiday season makes for the most profitable time of the year (for most businesses) and brings you the opportunity to bring new customers on board. As we move into the holiday season, it helps to prepare beforehand and get your affairs in order.

Here are 6 ways to prepare your business for the holidays:

1. Plan your marketing and promotions
2. Establish vacation policies
3. Create call flows with holiday schedules
4. Hire and train seasonal workers
5. Take care of things you’ve been putting off
6. Update your website for the holidays

1. Plan Your Marketing and Promotions

The first step is to get your marketing plans and promotions in place. Use data gathered over the last year to determine what worked best for your customer profiles and what they now expect from your business. Some areas to get started:

• Holiday content marketing — Put out relevant content for your customers about how they might use your product or service during the holidays (knowledge base, how-to guides, etc.)
• Holiday promotions — Run special offers and deals for the holidays to bring in more customers
• Updated company contact information — Reassure existing customers that your business will be reachable during the holidays and provide them with resources for off-hours assistance (chatbots, online ticketing and support center, etc.)

Plan your holiday marketing strategy to keep customers happy and maintain business continuity during the holidays.

2. Establish Vacation Policies

This is one of the most important policies to have in the workplace. If you don’t have one, now is the time to write it. And if you do have one, it might be worth reviewing and/or updating it, if necessary.

A vacation policy guides employees and teams on how to take time off during major national holidays. You may base your vacation policy on a first-come, first-served or seniority basis, and you can even offer employees who choose to work on the holidays a reward for their time.

Establishing these guidelines beforehand will ensure you offer a fair vacation policy with clear expectations.

3. Create Call Flows With Holiday Schedules

Your business might have specific holiday schedules not just during the holiday season but throughout the year. It could be employees taking vacation and time off or your whole business taking a day or two off for national and public holidays.

It’s a good idea to create call flows for your holiday schedules to determine what happens to incoming calls during these days. Holiday call routing lets you route incoming calls during specific holiday schedules to different phone numbers or locations. You can add special holiday greetings and voice messages with updated company information that callers will hear before they are routed to a satellite office, remote workers, or voicemail.

Check out our guide on how to set up holiday routing with Global Call Forwarding.

4. Hire and Train Seasonal Workers

You may need to hire extra staff to work during the holidays. This could be on-site seasonal staff or remote customer service staff to ease the burden on full-time employees. Without proper training, your seasonal team may prove more burdensome than helpful. This is why it’s essential to hire early and spend enough time training them properly.

5. Take Care of Things You’ve Been Putting Off

At the beginning of every year, we think of new ways to improve how customers interact with our business to increase sales and customer satisfaction. If your teams drew up such plans but haven’t implemented them yet, now is a good time to get things moving. As they say, “just in time for the holiday rush!”

6. Update Your Website for the Holidays

Lastly, make necessary updates and changes to your website and test to make sure it functions properly. Your website should run smoothly — especially the product, pricing, checkout, and payment pages — so that it can properly handle existing and new customer traffic.

Getting in the Holiday Spirit

As you prepare your business for the holidays, don’t forget to get into the holiday spirit and celebrate with your teams, in whatever capacity is appropriate. This is a time to take a step back after weeks of preparing and be present in the moment.

Need a call routing solution for the upcoming holiday season? Chat with our representatives online or call us at +1 (561) 908-6171. Happy holidays!

Are your sales and customer support teams struggling with high call volume? Do they need to manage incoming calls from different locations? Is bad call handling leading to a dip in sales?

These are a few situations where effective call management can improve the productivity of your teams while also enhancing caller experience.

Call Management: Definition, Features, Benefits

What is call management? Call management is the process of managing inbound and outbound calls with the help of technology and systems.

By managing calls effectively, your business reduces the time spent on waiting in a call queue, dealing with the wrong department, or overburdening agents in a particular location.

Businesses can use call management software and technology to improve the way callers interact with their teams and improve efficiency and productivity. How? In this article, we will go over:

• What is Call Management, and Why is it Important?
• How Does Call Management Software Work?
• Call Management Features and Tools
• Benefits of Using a Call Management Software
• How to Improve Call Management for Business
• Choosing a Good Service Provider

What is Call Management?

Call management refers to handling incoming calls using technology and call center solutions to route them effectively. You can use call management software to intentionally decide how incoming calls will be handled in your business.

For example, your business might offer customer support for different regions and therefore have regional support centers. Call handling can determine the best way to handle these calls either by advanced routing or by using an automated call distributor.

Why is Call Management Important?

Most customers will hang up and cut off a call after just 0-5 minutes. One of the most common customer complaints is waiting in a call queue for long periods and dealing with a confusing automated voice system.

Customers who struggle to get support will find a new company with better customer service options. And your business will lose a valuable sale and customer. Part of building strong customer relationships is to make your business’ support team accessible and responsive. Customers need to know that your business and employees are reliable; this will make them comfortable doing business with you.

How Does Call Management Software Work?

Call management software comes with various tools and features to help you organize your call flows and manage the way callers interact with your business. You can get such software and features from a cloud phone service provider like Global Call Forwarding. These features are customizable and can be personalized to meet your business communication needs. And since they work over the cloud (using VoIP technology), you can use and manage them from any location.

Call Management Features and Tools

So, what to look for in a call management system? Each provider offers different features and tools within their call management solution. Here are the top features to look for:

• International Call Forwarding — Forward incoming calls to any location anywhere in the world.
• Advanced Call Routing — Route calls using predetermined rules and routing strategies.
  • Time-based Routing — Route calls based on the time of day the call comes in.
  • Geographic Call Routing — Route calls based on the caller’s location.
  • Sequential Forwarding — Send incoming calls down a line group, starting with the first person in line each time.
  • Round Robin Call Routing — Send incoming calls to a hunt group and the next person in line.
  • Holiday Call Routing — Use holiday schedules to route calls to different locations during holidays.
  • Simultaneous Ringing — Ring multiple phones with one number
  • Call Transfer — Manual call transfer.
• Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) — Automated call distributor that routes calls to the right department based on predetermined rules.
• Call Flow Builder — Create custom call flows to handle inbound call volumes.
• Advanced Interactive Voice Response (IVR) — Automated voice response system to interact with callers and help them reach the right department.
• Hosted Call Recording — Record inbound and outbound calls and store them
• Call Tracking — Track where your calls are coming from (locations, campaigns, etc.)
• Call Detail Records and Monitoring — Information of all inbound and outbound calls to help calculate KPIs and metrics.
• CRM and Helpdesk Integrations — Integrate and connect different systems and applications to create one centralized business communication system.
• Softphones — Web-based phone application to let users place calls from any location and device.

Check out all the features offered by Global Call Forwarding.

8 Benefits of Using a Call Management Software

So, what can call management software do for your business?

1. Better management and handling of incoming calls
2. Improved caller experience with efficient call flows
3. Access to call handling features and tools
4. Reduced number of lost or abandoned calls
5. Access to analytics and reports
6. Improved employee performance
7. Low costs and increased productivity
8. Better customer service overall

How to Improve Call Management for Business

Whether your business experiences consistent high call traffic or fluctuating call volumes, you can use various call features and tools to manage your traffic better and improve caller experience. Here are some key tips to improving call handling for your business:

1. Integrate call features (routing, IVR, etc.) into your existing phone system
2. Use call tracking and call records to understand when and where your calls come from
3. Identify key high call volume periods (certain hours of the day, holidays, seasons, etc.)
4. Build custom call flows and map out how calls should optimally move within your system (check out our call flow templates for ideas)
5. Use advanced call routing to handle incoming call volumes.

Choosing a Good Service Provider

How to choose the right phone service provider for your call management needs? Research and compare. Look at what different cloud phone service providers have to offer and reach out to their representatives to learn more. Look for:

• Variety of features to meet your needs
• Easy to use service (request a demo)
• Reasonable and competitive prices
• Accessible and responsive customer support.

Want to learn more about call management features offered by Global Call Forwarding? Chat with our experts online or request a demo today!

Well-designed and efficient calls flows can help your business offer uninterrupted and reliable service when your customers need it the most. We’ve put together 6 call flow templates and examples to help you understand the different ways your business can manage incoming calls.

Creating the Right Call Flows for Your Business

In order to create efficient call flows within your business phone system, you first need to understand how a call flow works.

A call flow is a map of what happens to a customer call made to your business phone system. In other words, when a customer calls your business, how does the call move within the system? You want calls to move in an efficient way that helps the customer. This means fewer interruptions, less wait times, and accurate routing.

The purpose of call flows: to help the customers resolve their questions or queries quickly and in the easiest way possible.

It is important to pay attention to how calls flow within your business so that you can improve caller experience and provide better customer service to your customers.

What to Keep in Mind When Creating Custom Call Flows

How you set up your call flows depends on why people call your business. So, before you get started, you need to first identify what callers need from your business and how you intend to offer that.

Most call flows are simple and follow a standard structure. For example, if you have customers calling only for customer support, then your call flow is simple:

But if you have people calling for different reasons, you might need to create an IVR menu with options and a flow for each option:

A call coming into your business can move down different routes based on what your caller needs and what your business wants to provide over the phone. Here is an example of some call flow options available:

But this structure may be limiting for companies with more complicated communication systems, such as international companies and businesses with remote, distributed teams.

However, advanced cloud telephony tools and call routing techniques give businesses more options and flexibility to improve caller experience. These features let you add different call flow and routing rules to a business phone line so you can help callers reach the right department sooner.

You can use a call flow builder to control better how calls flow within your system.

6 Call Flow Templates to Help You Set Up Your Business Communication System

As we mentioned earlier, how you set up your call flows determines how customers interact with your business, which in turn improves customer satisfaction rates.

Let’s look at 6 call flow templates that can help with efficient call management:

1. Standard call flows
2. IVR user menu
3. Time-based routing
4. Geographic call routing
5. Holiday call routing
6. Advanced routing systems

1. Standard Call Flows

A standard call flow is a basic, simple, and straightforward flow structure. Here, your business may only have one business phone number and want to use phone support for customer service and sales.

You can set up the call flow to send the caller to either your main office or customer support center, where they interact with an agent. You may also only need someone to transfer the caller to the right department within the company. And if your teams are busy, you can set a backup that sends the caller to your voicemail box.

Use cases: Companies with small in-house and in-office teams (solopreneurs, start-ups) or small-to-medium-sized businesses.

2. IVR / Voice Menu

If you have to route calls to 2 or more departments and across locations, then you will need a more complex call flow with an IVR menu. An IVR system is an automated interactive voice response system that answers the call, welcomes the callers, determines the purpose of the call, and transfers them to the appropriate department or person.

You can set up the call flow to start with the IVR greeting, followed by menu options such as press 1 for sales, press 2 for customer support, and so on. Then, based on the caller’s input (the number they press), they will branch out into the next part of the call flow.

In the below example, the IVR call flow is set up as:

• To make appointments, press 1 > send call to the main office > if call fails to connect (line is busy), send calls to remote office as per time of day (TOD) routing rules
• For customer service, press 2 > send call to offshore call center
• For company hours and location information, press 3 > play pre-recorded message (announcement) with updated hours and location
• To leave a voicemail, press 4 > play pre-recorded voicemail message (after-hours message) and send voicemail to designated email.

This way, callers can choose the help they need, and be transferred to the right person or message.

Use cases: Companies with global customers or local and remote teams spread across different locations.

3. Time-Based Routing

Businesses that have customers and teams spread across different locations and time zones will need to route calls from one location to the other effectively. These businesses might have different phone numbers for the countries or regions where they offer services and support. And you do not want your customers calling the wrong number or calling during off-hours and not getting support.

This is where time-based routing (also known as time of day routing) comes into play. You can use time-based routing to route calls to different locations and numbers based on the time the call comes in. Let’s work this through an example:

Your company’s main customer service is located in the US in the Eastern Standard Time EST (GMT-4). But you have customers in other US time zones such as Central Standard Time CST (GMT-5), Mountain Standard Time MST (GMT-7), and Pacific Standard Time PST (GMT-7).

If customers from these time zones call during their business hours, your customer service team might receive calls outside of their working hours. What happens to these calls? You have a couple of options. You can hire remote agents who handle calls made during off-hours. You can then forward incoming calls during those times to your remote agent list. Or, you can send those calls straight to voicemail with a message “Sorry, we’re closed for today but please leave a voicemail and we will get back to you soon.”

This way, customers calling at any time can still get some form of support.

You can use this type of routing to adopt a follow the sun support model and offer 24/7 uninterrupted service.

Use cases: Companies with global customers or local and remote teams spread across different locations.

4. Caller ID Routing / Geographic Call Routing

Caller ID routing (also known as geographic call routing, location-based routing, and geo-routing) routes calls based on the caller’s location and caller ID. Businesses with global coverage will find this feature and call flow template helpful in organizing their calls effectively.

With caller ID routing, you can decide what happens to customers calling from specific countries, cities, or regions. In the below example, we demonstrate what happens to calls coming in from different countries:

• Calls with an Indian caller ID (dialing code +91) > send the calls to the APAC office
• Calls with an Australian caller ID (dialing code +61) > send the calls to the Australian office
• Calls with an UK caller ID (dialing code +44) > send the calls to the UK office
• Calls with an US caller ID (dialing code +1) > send the calls to the US office

And for all calls, if the call fails to connect (i.e. lines or agents are busy), we play a pre-recorded voicemail message (after-hours / busy message) and send voicemail to the team’s email.

This way, callers get support in a time zone and even language they prefer.

Use cases: Companies with global customers or local and remote teams spread across different locations.

5. Holiday Schedules and Routing

Holiday call routing lets your business create holiday schedules and call flows. In other words, you decide what happens to your calls when your teams are on holiday. This can be national holidays observed by countries or a particular employee’s vacation.

Each provider has this set up differently. With Global Call Forwarding, you start by creating holiday lists and schedules where you want specific call routing rules to apply. Then, you use our time of day routing feature, to decide what happens to calls within that particular holiday list.

In the below example, we create two holiday lists:
Summer hours (specific hours during specific time of the year)
National holidays (US-based national holidays).

Then, we decide what happens to the calls that come during the summer hours or national holidays. We can either route calls to:

• Remote offices open during the summer hours
• Agents in other countries who do not observe national holidays
• Pre-recorded voice message informing them about the online knowledge base or support center
• Voicemail

With this call flow, customers who need help even during a holiday can quickly get the support they need.

Use cases: Companies with global customers or local and remote teams spread across different locations.

6. Advanced Routing Systems

You can add advanced routing features to any of the above call flows. These features work alongside hunt groups or call groups. In other words, you can decide what happens once a call connects to a particular department or group.

You start with creating a group or list for each team or department — separate groups for each department or remote teams. Each group will have a series of numbers or phone lines, both in-house and remote. And then, you set call forwarding rules for that team.

Here are the top advanced call routing solutions:

• Sequential call flows — Incoming calls move down a predetermined list of available agents or employees. Every new call starts from the top of the line.
• Round robin — Incoming calls also move down a predetermined list but every new call goes to the next person in line.
• Simultaneous ring — Incoming calls ring on multiple phones and lines, which is everyone within a hunt group.

Adding these routing rules will help your teams manage incoming calls effectively and provide support quickly and accurately.

Improve Call Management with Call Flows

Ready to think about your business’ call flows and where you can improve call management? Start here! Global Call Forwarding has a call flow builder tool that can help you visualize and design realistic call flows (simple or complicated) to support your virtual phone system. Speak with our representatives or chat with them online to learn more!