Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
What's Happening with Customer Service Holiday Hiring Trends
The holidays are on the way. And with that come decorations, family gatherings, religious traditions, and gift shopping. To support this last pursuit, businesses are staffing up to ensure holiday customers have the help they need to select, buy, and otherwise get assistance with their purchases.
Indeed, human resources services company Randstad U.S. itself plans to hire more than 25,000 seasonal workers this holiday season. It’s advertising customer service, finance, and warehouse jobs in Charlotte, Columbus, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Memphis, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Hebron, KY.
"With the rise in e-commerce, we've seen a shift in how companies with seasonal business cycles hire additional workers to prepare for the holiday rush," said Greg Dyer, president of Randstad's commercial staffing business. "Instead of more in-person retail workers, we're seeing companies greatly increase their hiring for customer service roles like call center representatives. We're also seeing high demand for warehouse support workers, especially to help process and fulfill online orders."
However, Zendesk has this to say about holiday agent hiring: “There’s an intriguing difference in holiday agent adds in 2016 versus 2017. Retailers added 22 percent more agents between the beginning of Q3 and the end of Q4, in 2016. The figure for 2017 is less than half that at 10 percent. Comparing the end of Q4 and the beginning of Q1, the increase in agents is 28 percent in 2016 and 18 percent in 2017.
“Retailers added significantly fewer agents during the holiday season in 2017, despite larger ticket volume, than in the previous year, channel over channel.,” Zendesk continued. “The dramatic increase of tickets submitted through alternative channels such as chat, Facebook, and Twitter (News - Alert) is catching some organizations off guard and could be one of several explanations for this lack of proper staffing.”
Edited by Maurice Nagle