September 7, 2025
What is High Call Volume? 11 Ways To Effectively Manage It
High call volumes can be a blessing and a curse for small businesses. On one hand, it’s always good to be busy – but on the other, all that time handling calls is preventing you and your team from tackling other essential tasks.
What counts as "high call volume" for small businesses? ☎️
The definition of “high call volume” varies from one business to another. If there’s only one of you to answer the phone, answering five calls in a day might feel like a super-high volume of calls. Whereas if you’ve got a full-time receptionist, they might be able to handle a dozen-or-so calls an hour without breaking sweat.
As such, we prefer to define high call volume as a sustained 10% increase on your regular activity levels. So if you receive ~30 calls a day on average, an additional 3+ calls a day over the course of a week (or longer) would push you into “high volume” territory.
Common reasons for high call volumes 📈
While some days are naturally busier than others, if you’re receiving higher-than-usual call volumes over a sustained period, there’s almost always a clear reason for it. Or sometimes multiple reasons. These range from positive issues – like peak trading periods and successful marketing campaigns – to negative ones like website outages and a lack of FAQ content.
Peak periods
Arguably the single biggest cause of high call volumes is peak demand for the products or services you sell. To give a simple example, Google Trends shows us that search interest around HVAC-related services peaks during – guess what? – the summer months:
This type of spike in calls is easier to deal with because it’s so consistent.
For example, if you know that a specific time of year is always busy, you can take measures to cope with the increased demand by employing short-term staff or working longer hours.
High-performing marketing campaigns
The whole purpose of marketing and advertising is to boost awareness of your business and interest in your services. So a successful campaign should lead to an upturn in website visits, in-store queries, and calls. As such, if you’re planning a major promotion or discount, make sure you have the resources to manage the increased interest.
Website outages
On a less positive note, you might also find yourself inundated with calls if customers can’t access your website to book appointments and find answers to their questions. Expect extended periods of website downtime to result in more calls to your business.
Lack of quality FAQ content
Even if your website is functioning just fine, it might not provide all the necessary answers about your products and services. For instance, if you haven’t published any FAQ content for a newly launched service, would-be customers might have to call you to learn more – what does it involve, how long does it take, and how much does it cost?
Limited operating hours
If you temporarily reduce your office hours to account for things like annual leave or staff sickness, it stands to reason that you'll have to deal with a more intense burst of calls during your remaining business hours.
External events
Sometimes, you might receive high call volumes due to matters that are completely beyond your control – like an emergency restoration business seeing a spike in calls after a natural disaster. Keep a close eye on current affairs to give yourself the best chance of reacting promptly to these types of events.
Consequences of high call volumes 😓
In an ideal world, high call volumes would only mean one thing – more customers. But in reality there can be wide-ranging consequences, from reduced customer satisfaction to an increased risk of employee burnout.
Long wait times for callers
The term “high call volume” suggests you’re receiving more calls than you and your team can deal with. This likely means individual callers will have to wait longer and/or call back multiple times for you to pick up the phone.
Lower customer satisfaction
Unfortunately, the longer callers have to wait on hold, the less satisfied they’re likely to feel about their customer experience. If they’re frustrated before they get through to you or an employee, they may also be harder to deal with. So you’ll spend longer speaking to them, leading to increased wait times for other callers – it’s a compounding problem.
Higher risk of burnout
Dealing with all those calls gives you less time to tackle other stuff – attending callouts, sorting paperwork, ordering supplies, and everything else you need to do to keep your business running.
Trouble is, all that work still has to be completed by someone, at some point. Which means you and/or your team end up working longer hours, leading to a greater risk of burnout.
More mistakes
The busier you are, the more likely you are to get things wrong. Especially if you’re feeling burned out. To make matters worse, you’ll waste a bunch more time fixing errors, leaving you even busier than you were before 😫
More missed opportunities
When high call volumes continue over an extended period, you’re inevitably going to miss a call or two. Unfortunately, every time you fail to answer the phone professionally and in a timely manner represents a potential missed opportunity to win a new customer. Depending on the value of services you sell, a single missed call could cost you hundreds of dollars.
Tips for effectively managing high call volumes 💪
The bad news is that high call volumes can pose a bunch of problems for your business. The good news is that there are lots of ways to effectively deal with those higher volumes, from leveling up your FAQ content to implementing an answering service.
Handle routine queries with an AI answering service
The most effective way to instantly overcome the challenge of high call volumes is to start using an AI call handling service like Rosie AI.
With Rosie AI on your team, you never have to worry about missing another call. Your AI agent will answer calls around the clock, even handling multiple calls simultaneously. She can answer frequently asked questions, book appointments, capture customer details, and more – and if she can’t deal with a query, she’ll pass the caller on to a member of your team.
Plus you can train Rosie AI on your website data, Google Business profile, pricing information, and other documents so your agent provides a custom service that fits the needs of your brand and audience.
And with prices starting at just $49 per month, Rosie is way cheaper than employing a full-time receptionist to answer incoming calls.
🤓 Learn more: 10 Benefits of Using an AI Phone Answering System For SMB
Prioritize high-value and/or urgent calls
It makes sense to prioritize calls so your team spends more time dealing with high-value and/or urgent queries. This requires some sort of technology, like an AI receptionist or interactive voice response system. That way, you can focus on supporting customers who are facing an emergency or leads who are displaying clear buying intent – and less time speaking to tire kickers.
Implement voicemail filtering
Voicemail filtering involves automatically routing spammy or unwanted voicemails to a separate folder. This can be achieved through some business phone systems, call filtering services, and third-party apps. While this doesn’t directly tackle the issue of high call volumes, it does at least mean that your voicemail inbox doesn’t get clogged with irrelevant messages.
Manage caller expectations
A little transparency goes a long way when it comes to keeping callers happy. Rather than leaving them on hold for an undetermined amount of time, let them know how long they can expect to wait for their call to be answered. And if they don’t want to wait around until then, give them the option to request a callback (or simply suggest they call back later when call volumes are lower).
Build an FAQ hub
The easier it is for customers to find answers on your website, the less likely they are to call you. That’s why smart businesses take the time to create high-quality content around frequently asked questions. For best results, house all your FAQ content on a single page – and link to it from other key pages on your site, so visitors know where to find answers.
Add an AI chatbot to your website
Another way to help customers find answers on your website is to add an AI-powered chatbot. Similar to AI answering services, an automated chatbot can handle basic queries 24/7/365, freeing up your human employees to deal with more complex and/or high-value inquiries.
Enable online appointment booking
Sure, you love it when someone calls to book an appointment. But think how long you spend answering those calls. Wouldn’t it be better if customers could do it themselves? By offering self-serve online appointment booking, you can keep generating leads and sales without all the manual effort.
Offer queue callbacks
It’s in your best interests to leave callers on hold for as little time as possible. One solution is to offer a callback option, so customers can ask you to call them back at a more convenient time. This reduces the number of people in your call queue, so everyone wins. Plus you can prioritize higher-value queries by asking the reason for each callback request.
Forecast staffing demand with workforce management tools
Sometimes, high call volumes are 100% predictable – such as during periods of increased seasonal demand. But not all demand trends are quite so easy to spot.
Consider using workforce management tools to forecast staffing needs in advance based on historical call volumes and patterns. With this approach, optimize your staffing schedule to ensure you’re not understaffed when demand is highest. And, at the same time, you can avoid overstaffing at quiet times.
Consider outsourcing overflow calls
Implementing an answering service isn’t the only way to cope with high call volumes without growing your team’s headcount. Another solution is to outsource incoming calls to a call center, helping you manage demand without sacrificing customer experience quality (that’s the idea, at least).
Call centers are flexible, scalable, and capable of handling pretty much any volume of calls. However, they’re generally too expensive for most smaller businesses.
🤓 Learn more: Answering Services vs Call Center Services: Which To Choose?
Grow your team
You can use some or all of the above methods to cope with the occasional short-term spike in call volumes. However, if demand remains high over an extended period – say, a couple months or more – it’s a good sign that the time has come to expand your headcount. After all, people are clearly interested in what you’re selling!
The bottom line ✍️
Unless you’re a brand new business, you should have a decent idea of what an average call volume feels like. If you’re suddenly regularly exceeding that level, it’s time to take action.
The best solution is to choose an AI answering service to act as the first line of customer support for incoming calls. Your AI agent can deal with basic queries (and even some more advanced issues), freeing up you and your team to focus on other tasks.
But don’t just take our word for it – see for yourself.
Start your free Rosie AI trial and get a 7-day call handling free trial on us!
FAQs
What do high call volumes mean?
High call volumes can suggest several things. You could be entering a period of peak seasonal demand or seeing increased interest following a successful marketing campaign. Or it could be a sign that your website isn’t adequately answering customer queries, forcing people to pick up the phone instead.
How many calls can a receptionist handle?
The number of calls a receptionist can handle varies based on factors like call complexity and the receptionist’s experience level. However, it’s not unusual for receptionists at high-demand businesses to deal with ~20 calls an hour, equating to well over 100 calls across a typical business day.
Is high call volume a good thing?
High call volume is often a good thing because it suggests your business and services are in high demand. However, it can also mean that there’s a problem with your website, forcing people to call you rather than find their own answers. Or you could be receiving a ton of complaints, which would obviously be a bad thing.