Crazy Call Day

It is late October and the phones are slow. There are a few people looking to store, a lot of current tenant issues calls and a few stray truck rental inquiries. Many of our reps are seeing some of their lowest reservation per hour averages of the year. This is to be expected. Although some would say it seems a little slower than last year. But then our memory is always is clouded by our current state of mind.

And then yesterday at about 4 PM Central the phones went crazy. We had a spurt that lasted about two hours that overloaded our capabilities. Because of that we had several people on hold and lost a few phone calls. We are normally well equipped to grab people from other areas at PhoneSmart to cover the phones when we hit an odd and unpredicted call spurt. Yesterday was one of those spurts you don’t usually even see in the summer. And it only lasted about two hours.

What happened? Did several store managers have to leave the office at the same time and cause a flood of calls. I know I jumped on the phones to help pull people out of the on-hold queue and took several calls for the same store. Is there enough pent up demand that an unpredictable bump in volume is still likely to occur even in the slower months?

We will be watching to see what happens. We hate to see a situation like this, as it ruins our otherwise outstanding speed to answer stats and calls answered rates. How are things going in your markets?