Your contact rate per order is the number that matters.
Not tickets per day. Contacts per hundred orders tells you whether your operation is working — and whether more support capacity is the answer or the symptom.
Contacts per hundred orders.
Track it weekly and it becomes the most useful diagnostic in the business. If it rises while orders are flat, something upstream broke — a carrier, a listing, a delivery promise, a payment page.
Most retailers respond to rising contact volume by adding support capacity. Sometimes that is right. Often the contacts are telling you about a fixable problem, and the cheaper answer is to fix it.
Novatek reports the rate, the drivers behind it, and which of them are fixable at source — even when the honest conclusion is that you need less support, not more.
What drives it up
| Vague delivery promise | Every day of uncertainty produces "where is my order" |
|---|---|
| Poor dispatch notification | The single largest removable driver in most operations |
| Ambiguous returns policy | Generates a contact before the return, not after |
| Thin product data | Pre-sales questions that a better listing would answer |
| Carrier exceptions | Unavoidable volume, but proactive contact halves it |
The arithmetic nobody does until October.
A sample retail account through a peak period. The point is not the numbers — it is that the capacity curve has to be planned backwards from the peak, with ramp time built in.
A peak team has to exist before the peak.
The most common retail mistake is treating seasonal capacity as something that can be switched on. It cannot: recruitment and training run on their own clock.
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Peak −10 weeks
Forecast and shape
Last year’s curve, this year’s expected volume, and the contact rate you are planning against. The team size falls out of this, not out of a budget line.
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Peak −8 weeks
Recruit the cohort
Seasonal headcount recruited against the same written profile as permanent staff. A lower bar in October is felt in November.
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Peak −5 weeks
Train and assess
Full onboarding, including the assessment. Seasonal agents handle the same contacts as everyone else, so they get the same standard.
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Peak −3 weeks
Live on baseline volume
The cohort works normal volume for three weeks. They arrive at peak experienced rather than newly trained.
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Peak
Full capacity, heavier sampling
Quality sampling increases during peak, because this is when standards slip and when it costs the most.
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Peak +2 weeks
Ramp down, keep the best
Returns volume outlasts sales volume by weeks. The strongest seasonal agents are offered permanent roles — which is why they come back next year.
Answering and doing, in one place.
"I have raised that with the warehouse" is half a service. Where you grant access, the same team completes the operational action inside your systems.
Order & delivery
Status, amendments, address changes, delivery exceptions and proactive updates before the customer asks.
Returns & refunds
Eligibility checked, return processed, refund issued to the original method, customer told a realistic timescale.
Pre-sales
Sizing, compatibility and stock questions answered fast enough to still matter to the purchase.
Order operations
Manual orders, bulk amendments, failed-payment retries and exception queues.
Catalogue & listings
Product data, descriptions, attributes and marketplace listing maintenance.
Disputes & claims
Carrier claims and marketplace disputes opened, evidenced and worked to resolution.
What retailers ask
If the answer you need is not here, ask us directly — you will get a specific answer rather than a brochure.
Yes, and the honest version of that answer includes lead time. Peak capacity has to be recruited and trained before the peak, which means committing roughly six to eight weeks ahead. A team that appears the week before peak is a team that has not been trained.
Both, where you grant the access. A support answer that ends in "I have raised it with the warehouse" is half a service. Our teams process the amendment, the return or the refund inside your systems as part of the same contact.
Workflows are designed so payment card data never enters a support conversation. Agents do not request it, store it or handle it, and refunds go to the original payment method only.
Marketplace messaging, disputes and listing operations are all within scope where you provide access, and each marketplace has its own service-level rules that get built into the SOP.
How many weeks until your peak?
If the answer is under eight, we should talk this week. Bring last season’s volume curve and we will work backwards to the team you would need.