Summer brings more than sunshine. It also delivers a surge in customer service volume by up to 30%
From travel to retail, companies see an influx of:
- Support requests
- Complaints, and
- Inquiries
To handle this spike, many companies turn to seasonal call center hiring.
This approach may help manage short-term demand and improve summer CX performance. However, it can also cause customer dissatisfaction in the long run.
In this article, we will discuss the impact of hiring temporary agents and explain strategies such as AI Support, effective training, and workforce planning.
The Temporary Agent Challenge
Hiring temporary agents in customer service may seem like an efficient fix, but ramping up too fast can backfire.
- Lack of foundational training: Many temporary agents in customer service are entirely new to support roles, making it difficult to master tools, policies, and tone quickly.
- Confidence and readiness gap: Only 32% of seasonal hires feel adequately prepared during their first month, leading to inconsistent and error-prone service.
- Customer experience risks: When agents lack context and empathy, they create friction and frustration, especially when they are a customer’s only human interaction with the brand.
Even worse, inconsistent support can damage brand loyalty. When new hires lack context, empathy, or product knowledge, it creates friction in the customer journey.
Training Makes or Breaks the Season
Companies that invest in training seasonal staff not only improve service levels but also reduce costly escalations and callbacks.
But agent training must go beyond scripts. It should include:
- Soft skills: Active listening, emotional intelligence, and clear communication
- Product fluency: Agents need to confidently explain features, policies, and use cases, whether they’re troubleshooting, upgrading, or handling objections. Without this, even basic questions turn into escalations.
- Tools mastery: Support teams rely on complex CRMs, helpdesk systems, and knowledge bases. Mastery means less time fumbling with tabs and more time resolving issues efficiently.
✔️POV: When hiring temporary agents, prioritize those with strong soft skills. Because AI can guide agents on product details and tool usage, but in the short run, it cannot coach empathy, tone, or emotional intelligence.
Take Delta Air Lines. They are implementing a condensed training program for agents focused on empathy, rebooking workflows, and stress handling. Using simulations of real-world disruptions, like weather delays and missed connections.
Follow this checklist to improve CX:
- Use microlearning modules to reinforce knowledge daily
- Pair new hires with mentors for shadowing and feedback
- Simulate real-world scenarios before going live
When training is experiential and continuous, agents can deliver faster, more consistent support.
Planning for the Surge
No surprise here: most summer support chaos stems from weak planning.
Brands that succeed at managing peak season support do not just “hope for the best”; they align
- Hiring
- Training, and
- Tech well in advance.
They also analyze historical data to forecast demand spikes.
Smart workforce planning in CX includes:
- Staggering shifts to avoid overstaffing or burnout
- Mapping agent availability against support demand
- Automating routine inquiries to free up human agents
✔️For example, Turkish Airlines uses historical data and predictive analytics to forecast summer passenger surges and proactively scale its call center capacity. By integrating automated callbacks and multi-language IVR, they cut average hold times.
Great planning ensures resources are deployed efficiently and customers are never left waiting.
Tech + Humans: The Scalable Solution
Sooner or later, the topic is coming to AI. Because it’s fast, accurate, and scalable.
Solutions like Call Center Studio for seasonal agents help companies manage scale by:
- Routing calls intelligently: AI can detect customer intent from IVR selections or keywords in real time, then route calls to the best-fit agent.
✔️For example, a customer mentioning “lost baggage” can be instantly directed to the travel claims team without manual intervention.
- Offering real-time guidance: AI-powered agents can whisper prompts to reps during live calls, helping them handle objections, follow compliance scripts, or upsell when appropriate.
✔️For instance, if a customer is calling to confirm a flight reservation, the AI can prompt the agent to offer a seat upgrade or travel insurance based on the caller’s profile and booking history.
- Flagging tone shifts during conversations: Sentiment analysis engines listen for voice stress, frustration cues, or negative language.
✔️For example, if a customer’s tone turns tense, AI can alert supervisors to intervene or guide the agent on how to de-escalate.
Here are the key benefits airlines get from AI:
- AI-enhanced QA ensures consistent service across agents: Emirates uses AI to review thousands of customer interactions and automatically flag inconsistencies or tone mismatches, leading to quicker coaching and quality improvements.
- Real-time agent assist tools speed up resolution: Lufthansa leverages AI assistants that provide live prompts and contextual data to agents during support calls, significantly reducing average handling time during high-season travel.
- Analytics dashboards monitor seasonal trends in real time: Qatar Airways uses predictive dashboards to anticipate support volume spikes, adjusting staffing and channel priorities accordingly to prevent service delays.
Tech doesn’t replace humans—it amplifies their effectiveness.
Recap
At the end of the day, maintaining service quality in summer is about consistency. Customers don’t care if your rep is new or tenured—they just want
- Answers,
- Empathy, and
- Fast resolution.
Companies that fail to deliver will lose not just customers, but revenue. To protect your brand and bottom line:
- Invest in training,
- Forecast like a pro,
- Give your agents the AI tools they need to thrive.
Because summer should feel effortless—for your customers, too.
