Research reveals: Availability at the weekends is profitable!

As an office service provider, with 24h-availability on 365 days a year, we invest a lot of effort and time in explaining to our customers the importance of being available at weekends and outside of classic office hours. Experience informs us that call volumes are pretty high at night, at the weekend and on public holidays, and we receive positive feedbacks from callers who gratefully remark that hardly any other company is available to them at these times. Here then, is the opportunity to gain competitive advantages by distinguishing oneself from competitors, and thus by transforming ‘customers’ to ‘fans’.

However, many companies and managers are having a hard time imagining the benefits of being available 24/7 on 365 days a year. This is why we welcome the representative research study “Customer Service At The Weekend” of Verint Systems and Call Center Verband Deutschland E.V. (CCV) which endorses our own experience of many years: Customers welcome the opportunity of being able to contact a company at the weekend.

Such constant availability is certainly most important to consumers with regard to emergency services. Particularly, customers under the age of 30 years who represent 84% of this sector. But also other sectors, e.g. technical support services are expected to be available to their customers at the weekend or late at night; after all, 30% of consumers think it is absolutely essential to be able to place an order out of hours and at the weekends.

The study points out  that the telephone is still one of the most popular ways of communicating. This should come as no surprise, as direct and personal conversation is usually the most efficient way to get information and place requests. The rising number of full-time employees in Germany is the reason for many people having less time during the week to solve their personal questions and problems with companies. For this reason, they shift their concerns to evenings or the weekend – preferable Saturday and Sunday afternoons. This, why, therefore it is important for companies to be available particularly during at these times.