What to do when calls suddenly spike: preparing for peak hours and seasons
Sado AI team · · 4 min read
In short
Preparing for a peak takes three steps: measure, calculate and have a backup plan. Pull calls by hour from your telephony report and find the hours, days and seasons when they rise. Work out how many operators the busiest hour needs. Then pick a method: overlapping shifts, part-time staff, moving outgoing calls to other hours, fast callbacks to missed numbers, or sending the overflow to an AI operator. Warn the team before an ad goes out.
When peaks happen
If you know a peak is coming, you have time to prepare. Most peaks repeat every day, week or year; only a few come out of nowhere:
- During the day: for example, when work starts in the morning and after lunch. Find your own hours in the report.
- During the week: often the first day after the weekend.
- By season: before holidays, Ramadan, Navruz, the new school year, New Year, sales.
- After advertising: the day a post goes out on Instagram or Telegram, or a TV ad airs.
- Out of the blue: a delivery runs late or the website breaks, and everyone calls within the hour.
How to measure a peak
- Export the last 4–8 weeks of calls by hour from your telephony or virtual PBX report.
- For each hour, write two numbers: calls received and calls missed.
- Mark the three busiest hours and the two busiest days.
- Look separately at last year’s seasonal days: holiday and sale weeks.
- Work out the missed share: missed ÷ received. In a peak hour it usually jumps.
How many operators you need: a worked example
For example, on a normal day the busiest hour brings 40 calls averaging 3 minutes. That’s 120 minutes of talk an hour. An operator talks about 40 minutes an hour; the rest goes on notes and breaks. So you need 3 people.
If calls triple on a sale day, that’s 120 calls and 360 minutes, or 9 people. These numbers are only an example: use the ones from your report. Finding six extra people for one day is hard, so covering a peak with people alone is slow and expensive.
Ways to cover a peak
| Method | Upside | Downside |
|---|---|---|
| Overlapping shifts | More people in the busiest hour | Only helps with the daily peak |
| Part-time staff | You pay only for the hours you need | They must be found and trained |
| Moving outgoing calls | Operators are free for incoming calls | Reminders and surveys are delayed |
| Fast callbacks to missed numbers | The customer isn’t lost completely | They still wait, and some call elsewhere |
| Overflow to an AI operator | No queue, no hiring | Complex questions still go to a person |
A week before the peak: checklist
- Marketing has given the date and time the ad goes out.
- The shift schedule matches the busy hours, and nobody’s holiday falls that week.
- Prices and sale terms are updated on the cheat sheet and in the AI operator’s facts.
- It’s decided who calls missed numbers back, and how fast.
- A report is planned for the day after: how many calls came, how many were missed, how many were called back.
How an AI operator handles a peak
An AI operator answers every call in about a second and runs more than ten calls at once, so there’s no queue even on a sale day. It gives prices and terms from the company’s facts, takes orders and bookings, and transfers complex questions to staff.
You pay only for talked minutes: 800 so‘m a minute, with no monthly or setup fee. In quiet months you don’t pay for an idle line. Work it out: pricing and the calculator on the home page. Compared with people: AI operator vs call centre.
Questions
Does an “all operators are busy” message help at peak times?
It holds callers for a while, but not everyone is willing to wait long. Better to call every missed number back quickly, or use an AI operator that answers at once.
When should we look for seasonal operators?
At least 3–4 weeks before the peak: you need time to find, train and test them for a week. The first-week plan: a new operator’s first week.
How do I know how long a peak will last?
Check last year’s reports and recent sales: how many days calls stayed high. If you have no data, log the first peak hour by hour.