Peak season, and what it does to your phone
Delivery peak is unlike other seasonal businesses in one specific way: the extra calls are mostly not new business. Volume rises, service degrades slightly under load, and the phone fills with people chasing consignments — so your busiest period is also the period when your line is least able to take an order.
The mix inverts
For most of the year a courier line carries a healthy proportion of people wanting to book something. From late November that ratio flips: the same line now carries a majority of status enquiries, exception calls and redelivery arrangements, all generated by volume you have already been paid for. Every one of them is queued in front of the caller who wanted to place an order, and that caller does not wait.
Why more drivers does not fix it
Capacity on the road and capacity on the line are separate problems solved separately.
The very thing you added capacity to do generates the calls that overwhelm the office.
They arrive in the fortnight where every question is urgent and every answer is specific.
The people who know the business are already working the most hours they can.
Decide the priority order before peak, not during
Someone has to know which calls matter most when everything is ringing at once. A new commercial account is worth more than a status enquiry; a same-day collection is time-critical in a way a redelivery is not. That ordering is obvious in October and impossible to think about clearly on the twelfth of December, which is why it should be written down and agreed while nothing is on fire.
The bit that costs you into January
Retail customers who could not get through during peak do not simply try again — they are the accounts you lose for the following year, and you will never see the call that caused it. Peak is not only a service problem; it is the period when your competitors acquire the customers you failed to answer, and you find out about it in a quiet February.
Frequently asked
The call mix inverts. Most extra calls are status enquiries and exceptions generated by volume you have already been paid for, and they queue in front of anyone wanting to place an order.
No — capacity on the road and on the line are separate problems, and more deliveries generate more exception calls into the office.
The priority order. A new commercial account outranks a status enquiry; a same-day collection outranks a redelivery. That is obvious in October and impossible on 12 December.
The accounts you lose for the following year. You never see the call, and you find out in a quiet February.