We are an IT support business based in London, and seasonal changes have a large impact on our business. Coping with seasonal changes within a business can be tricky. You may find yourself with resourcing issues (too many or too few staff). Or experience peak and troughs in your customers demands. Here are a couple of points I've tried in the past - hope they help! 1. Ensure your staff holidays/training are, as practicable as possible, in line with the trend of customers so you are not over (or under) resourced. This helps maintain service-levels (because staff are therefore available later in the year when there is sufficient customer demand). 2. Push activity out of busy periods, into the quieter periods. Again smoothing resource demands. This helps keeping salary costs in-line with revenues, and service levels are maintained. 3. Perform marketing activities (offers, discounts) if acted upon within December (or other holiday season). 4. Use last years performance statistics to estimate the impact on your business this year. 5. If possible, try to keep your marketing topical (i.e. on the lines of what your audience is likely to be thinking.... for Christmas: presents, holidays, parties). 6. Outsource some of your services, and run a skeleton staff over the Christmas period. (e.g. If you run a small helpdesk, outsource this temporarily) 7. Enable staff to work from home. Sometimes its cheaper to pay an on-call rate than keep your office manned. 8. Survey your customers likely needs over the Christmas period. Provide them incentives to encourage them to make a decisive purchasing decision. 9. Look for alternative revenue streams whose seasonal demands compliment your current streams. (e.g. Sell headache tablets!) 10. Restrict your service-offering, informing customers of the services available over the quieter period. IT Support
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