Retail stores may have had their busiest shopping day of the year last week during Black Friday, but Monday will be the busiest day of the year for the contact centers at the Unum Group.
The Chattanooga-based insurer is bringing in extra staff, supervisors and even food for the workers to handle what company officials call "Red Hot Monday" when call volumes jump 20 to 30 percent higher than normal days.
Monday is a perfect storm for the call centers handling inquiries after a long weekend as consumers arrange year-end plans.
Monday is especially busy because it follows four days of being off around the Thanksgiving holiday, combined with open enrollment for many plans this time of year and people trying to arrange wellness visits or medical procedures now that yearly medical deductibles may have been met or services are needed before the end of the year.
"We anticipate we'll receive about 37,000 calls on Monday, and we're simply not staffed normally to handle that number of calls so many of our business partners will send back contact center alumni and other supervisors and others will help us in other ways so we can handle the huge volume of calls," said Preston Rogers, assistant vice president of Unum's customer contact centers. "Everyone at Unum is committed to delivering a great customer service and on Monday it's an "all hands on deck" kind of day."
About 700 customer service personnel work out of Unum facilities, including more than 200 in Chattanooga, handling the influx of calls ad online inquiries. The daily volume is equal to filling Madison Square Garden with customers and having each person call twice. On average, each contact center employee answers 65 to 75 calls on Monday.
Rogers said the calendar brings together the heavy call volume for a variety of reasons.
"This is our open enrollment period so many of our clients are calling in to complete the enrollment process," Rogers said. "It's also near the end of the year so we have a large number of people filing their wellness claims to get those completed before year end; and any are calling to check on their benefit payments at this holiday time of the year."
Much of the call volume simply reflects people catching up after Unum has been closed for four days because of the Thanksgiving holiday.
"We try to exercise simplicity, empathy, and expertise with every interaction – even on the busiest day of our year," Unum spokesperson Kelly Spencer said.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.