How the Cloud Has Changed Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day and as expected many of us were making a mad dash to chocolatiers, scheduling brunch reservations, and of course, visiting flower shops. Similar to the holiday season, lines at retail stores were longer, parking lots were packed, employees seemed frazzled, customers were frustrated, and supply was quickly dwindling. While this is highly noticeable to the in-store shopper, the increased wait time on the phone is not quite as easy to see but can be just as frustrating for consumers. This is especially true when buying flowers for mom. $1.9 billion is spent annually on flowers for Mother's Day, and 69% of all gifts given are flowers. All these flowers must be delivered through just 16,182 florists nationwide. Flower shop contact centers typically only need a handful of representatives to answer phones, take orders, make changes, and answer questions. This all works fine until there is a rush of people placing orders in February (Valentine's Day) and May (Mother's Day). How can a typical flower shop handle this deluge of incoming calls? Enter scalability. Scalability is one of the top reasons why more contact centers are switching from on-premise to the cloud. Cloud-based contact centers can scale up or down quickly, allowing businesses to match resources and costs to needs. During Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, the amount of inbound phone calls skyrocket. Cloud software allows flower shops to quickly and easily add phone lines; this means that they can hire more people to answer the phones for peak times without having to pay for those extra phone lines the entire year. For any size contact center that experiences growth, peak seasons, or an unexpected influx of calls, the ability to scale quickly is a must. Whether it's selling flowers or providing resources and support during natural disasters, scalability is a huge factor to consider when evaluating a contact center solution. With the cloud, there is no on-premise equipment required to scale up and down, which is why so many companies are moving their contact centers to the cloud. Click here to read the top 10 reasons why companies are making the switch. Subscribe to the Five9 blog in the upper right hand column to keep up with the latest blog posts from Five9