Bank Holiday Operating Hours

Hello

I'm hoping you can help with our little dilema.

A little background info.....

I'm the marketing manager for an outbound telemarketing company. Primarily in the automotive and insurance sectors making contact with their existing customers - generating leads, making appointments etc, etc. We have 11 full time agents and 6 part time agents working, each working 5 days over 7. Our hours of business are 9.30am-8pm Monday to Friday and 9.30am-4.30pm Saturdays. Our average leads per hour rate runs at 2.6 per lead, per man hour.

The dilema....

We were open yesterday - August Bank Holiday and our leads rate dropped to 0.9 per man hour!!

So....please share with me your thoughts on opening on Bank Holidays throughout the year. Your thoughts will help discussions when agreeing a decision on this for future bank holiday opening hours.

Thanks very much

Hello, I have also experienced lulls during a bank Holiday - we have allowed agents to take half day holidays, particularly those agents that have a large number of holidays remaining and we are approaching the year end. Potentially also if you know that Bank Holidays will negatively impact upon performance it might be possible to close yourselves on those days and set the expectation with staff that part of their yearly holiday allocation will be dedicated to Bank Holidays - how do you think the festive period will impact?

Hey DAS

The thing I would do ASAP would be to put a business case together highlighting a number of aspects as to why it isn’t a viable idea to open on a Bank Holiday.

Look at cost of opening those days Vs business generated as well as Staff productivity and the impact on staff morale.

If you can put a strong enough case together I am sure the powers that be will make the right choice.

Even if they disagree at least further down the line if those same people can't then ask why no one told them it wasn’t a good idea to open.

Joe