10+ proven ways to manage high call volume

Picture this: It’s Monday morning, and you’ve just settled into your chair with a steaming cup of coffee. You’re ready to conquer the day. But then, the phone rings. And rings. And rings some more. Before you know it, you’re juggling calls, scribbling down notes on random scraps of paper, and frantically clicking through multiple software windows, trying to find customer information. Your coffee? It’s gone cold. Your stress level? Sky-high.

The scenario you’re facing is called high call volumes. It’s a stress-inducing experience that can fluster even the most seasoned customer experience professionals. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this article, we’ll explain how to proactively reduce high call volumes and provide 13 strategies you can use to manage them.

What is high call volume?

High call volume occurs when your customer service team receives more inbound calls than expected. High call volume is context-specific — it differs depending on the size and industry of the business. But across the board, it’s typically defined as a 10% increase in expected phone call levels.

What causes high call volume?

High call volumes can occur due to internal or external factors. For instance:

• Product or service issues: If there’s a problem with a product or service, many customers may call in for support simultaneously.
• Seasonal spikes: Certain times of the year, like holidays or sale periods, may naturally result in higher call volumes.
• Promotions or new releases: Launching a new product, feature, or service can generate a lot of interest and a surge in calls.
• Technical issues: If your website or app is down or there’s another technical issue like an outage, many people may call customer service for assistance.
• Changes in policy or procedure: Announcements of changes to terms of service, pricing, or other policies can prompt a high volume of calls from customers seeking clarification.
• External events: Natural disasters, public relations crises, or other significant events can lead to a sudden influx of calls.

A spike in call volume has a domino effect on customers and staff alike. Longer wait times result in agitated customers, which leads to increased stress levels for your team and a potential drop in the customer service quality. 

After all, it’s challenging to maintain excellent service when your reps are on back-to-back calls with frustrated customers. High call volumes are unavoidable in customer service, so you should plan for them with the right combination of tools and systems.

13 smart strategies to manage high call volume

Reducing high call volumes requires a system built on three pillars: a plan of action, a data-driven strategy to address customer concerns proactively, and the right technology. 

1. Keep your customers informed of upcoming changes  

Planning a feature upgrade or service downtime? Inform your customers in advance to reduce the influx of calls on launch day. The last thing a customer wants is to wait in a call queue for 30-40 minutes to find out information that should have been made available to them.

Inform customers at every touchpoint (email, SMS, social media, and in your product) so they can’t miss it. Provide as much information as possible to reduce the likelihood of customers calling with follow-up questions.

For instance, if you’re introducing a new product feature, let your customers know by sending multiple emails leading up to the launch, having a dedicated banner in your product that links to a help center article, and even linking to it in your team’s email signatures if you frequently communicate with your customers over email. 

Also let your customers know if they need to turn the feature on manually or if it will be automatically available in your platform.

2. Build out self-service resources to decrease call volume

Customers prefer self-service resources over contacting a support team. 91% of customers in a recent Zendesk survey say they would use a knowledge base if it met their needs.

You can decrease call volumes by building effective self-service options for customers. 

Drew Schuffenhauer, Support Lead at Quo, emphasizes, “Having something like a help center or blog that’s accessible by customers to at least get some basic questions answered is really important to reduce your call volume.” 

Setting up a help center from scratch can seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Start by answering questions customers are already asking. You don’t have to answer every possible question prior to launching your help center, and you can expand it over time.

3.  Offer multi-channel support 

If phone support is the only support channel you offer, it’s probably why your call volumes are so high. An easy way to reduce your call volumes is to offer support over other communication channels, like chat, text, and email. 

“They would help as well because there would be other avenues of support someone might want to try before calling in,” says Drew.

When you meet customers where they are, you can improve their perception of you. For example, a study from Statista shows that 47% of respondents have a more favorable view of brands that respond to customer service questions over social media.

Pro tip: How to build an SMS support channel

You probably understand the importance of SMS as a support channel, but you might be unsure where to start.

We’ve published an eight-step guide to help you start an SMS support operation from the ground up, from the goals that matter for an SMS program to the automation workflows that enable you to do way more with much less.

4. Set up backup call routing

Do unanswered calls currently go to voicemail? If so, consider setting up a more advanced call routing system by forwarding calls to an external number. This allows customers to speak to a live representative who can help them with their inquiry — even when your team is busy. 

Depending on the severity and scope of the customer’s situation, you could also set up a dedicated emergency or crisis line attached to a different number. Forwarded calls to this number can be handled with a higher priority rather than getting stuck in the general call queue.

Another smart option is to route overflow calls to an AI voice agent. For example, Quo’s AI agent, Sona, can greet callers, answer questions, and capture messages — at a fraction of the cost of a virtual receptionist or full-time team member. Plus, every call Sona handles is automatically logged, recorded, and summarized right in your Quo workspace.

💡Want to explore options? Check out our guide to the best AI phone answering services.

5.  Set up ring orders for your different support levels 

Depending on the support system you offer, you can set up ring orders for each of your support tiers.

Ring orders allow you to specify which team members should receive incoming calls first, after which additional team members can receive those calls if they remain unanswered. 

Ring orders are useful for bringing all hands on deck when call volumes spike. They help you handle calls at scale and  ensure your support managers won’t be looped in to take calls when call volumes die down.

6. Schedule support shifts based on call volume 

Your historical data is crucial for preparing for a spike in calls. Look at your data and analyze the periods where customer calls are the highest. 

You can use these metrics to forecast expected peak periods and schedule your customer service team accordingly. Adequate staffing and shift coverage will give your team members a better workflow, which will reduce call volumes. If more customer service representatives are available at the right times, they will be able to manage the high call volumes easily.

Phone systems like Quo show you where you need additional staff with data insights like weekly heatmaps.

7. Troubleshoot the root cause of high volume issues 

Running into support bottlenecks because of the same issue? Sometimes, high call volumes occur because there’s an underlying problem affecting your customers.

Let’s say you discover a certain percentage of your customer interactions are related to billing issues. You can then automate billing so it’s easier for people or build out better documentation so customers understand charges more clearly. 

You can use AI call tags in Quo to analyze your customer support data and see if there’s a common theme that’s causing support bottlenecks. It could be anything from technical issues, like product bugs, to billing issues — like double charges or a complicated cancellation process. Once you’ve identified the root cause of the issue, figure out the easiest way to fix it. 

Fixing the root cause of high volume issues is a proactive method to reduce high call volumes. You’re solving problems for customers before they even occur.

8. Save your team time on after-call work

When your team is handling high call volumes, post-call tasks like updating records, logging details, or scheduling follow-ups can create major slowdowns. Automating these tasks helps reps close out one call and jump into the next without missing a beat.

OpenPhone streamlines after-call work with: 

• Call summaries that highlight key takeaways from each conversation and suggest clear follow-up actions. Instead of replaying entire calls, reps can quickly review the summary and act.
• Speaker-labeled transcripts that make it easy to find key parts of the conversation. This gives reps the context they need without sifting through an audio recording — especially helpful when juggling a long queue.
• CRM integrations that automatically log calls, texts, transcripts, and summaries into tools like HubSpot or Salesforce. This eliminates manual data entry and ensures nothing slips through the cracks.

9. Use online appointment scheduling to reduce call volume

Another way you can proactively reduce your call volumes is by automating basic tasks that don’t require your customers to call your team. 

For example, with service-based businesses, appointment scheduling is a necessary task that can cause a large amount of support overhead. With appointment scheduling software like Calendly, you can give your customers the ability to book, reschedule, or cancel their appointments without having to call your team each time.

If you use Quo, you can save your Calendly links in snippets so your team can share them with customers in seconds. Simply paste your booking link into your snippet, then save your text template for future use.

10. Handle missed calls with auto-replies

Sometimes, you might have planned your staffing perfectly, but your team members are still overwhelmed, which leads to a lot of missed calls.

Automatically respond to missed calls by text, or you can automatically send SMS messages to customers informing them that they can schedule a callback. 

With auto-replies, you can make customers feel valued by reducing their hold times while also setting expectations with them about your current capacity. It’s a thoughtful approach that can retain your customers and mitigate potential frustration with your team. 

If you have a Quo number, check out our Help Center guide to how you can set up auto-replies.

11. Coach your team to manage high-volume calls 

High call volume is a high-pressure situation where you have to balance tackling a mountain of calls and prioritizing customer satisfaction. So it’s important to ask, is your team equipped to perform effectively during high call volume periods?

Even if your most experienced support employees are able to handle support calls with ease, you may have to step in and provide strategies that equip your team to manage the challenge of spiking call volumes.

Here are a few ways you can coach team members to manage high call volumes:

• Knowledge-sharing sessions: Ask your team members to share their tactics for successfully handling high volumes of calls. Go through tips and strategies to manage stressful scenarios.
• Call shadowing: Train team members with call shadowing. Create a buddy system for new employees and veterans on your team. Trainees can listen in on their mentor’s calls and ask them about their call handling techniques with customers in a post-call debrief. 
• Call reviews: Call reviews involve listening to past call recordings and discussing what went well and what could have been better. Use call transcriptions to highlight keywords and phrases often appearing in high-volume scenarios. 

Even with great coaching in place, make sure the workload is equally distributed across your team. Dig into the data and look at call volume distribution among your team during high-volume days. Are calls evenly distributed, or are a select few employees carrying the bulk of your support calls? If that’s the case, you’ll need to bring the rest of your team to their level.

12. Have a custom phone menu during surge periods

When you’re dealing with high call volumes, a custom phone menu can set the right expectations for your customers and route them to your team effectively. Phone menus can also automatically screen out spam calls, as robocalls can’t select menu options. 

One way you can set expectations with customers using a phone tree is by setting up a greeting message when they call in. Let them know that you’re currently experiencing high call volumes, the reason for the spike in calls, and how long they should expect to wait before connecting with your team. That way, they won’t get frustrated listening to hold music without any context.

Also, offer your customers a callback option on your interactive voice response or IVR system. Prompt your customers to leave a phone number in a voicemail to receive calls.

13.  Prioritize your VIP customers with a separate number 

Another call reduction strategy is segmenting your customers and offering different support numbers based on their priority levels. 

Prioritize your enterprise or VIP customers with a separate number so you can attend to them in a different queue. You can set this up more easily with conditional call routing, so important customers are automatically routed to a support manager.

You can tag your VIP customers in Quo with custom properties so your team knows who’s calling when they dial in. 

Manage high call volumes or avoid them entirely with Quo (formerly OpenPhone)

Customer service can be hard. The more you grow, the more challenging it can be to satisfy all your customers without overwhelming your team. 

The right platform can make your customer service operations a lot easier. That’s where Quo comes in — it’s the best business phone solution that helps teams manage high call volumes efficiently.

With Quo (formerly OpenPhone), you can:

• Set up a phone menu to route your calls
• Track and analyze your call volume with analytics to determine the best strategies to reduce the number of calls
• Use custom properties and contact notes to integrate personalization in every support interaction

With the right phone solution, you can focus on delivering great customer service and not worry about frustrating customers with long wait times. 

Ready to avoid high call volumes entirely? Get started today with a seven-day free trial.

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