Friday Plans Customer Service — Operational Guide and Best Practices

Contents

1 Friday Plans Customer Service — Operational Guide and Best Practices

Overview and Purpose

Friday Plans Customer Service supports a consumer-facing scheduling and membership platform launched in 2017. Our remit covers inbound inquiries, last-minute amendments, refunds, membership upgrades, and event logistics for events and bookings that typically spike on Fridays and weekends. The customer service operation handles approximately 120,000 customer contacts per year, with a seasonal peak of up to 12,000 contacts in a single weekend during November–December promotional cycles.

The primary objectives are clear: achieve a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score ≥4.6/5, Net Promoter Score (NPS) ≥50, and maintain First Contact Resolution (FCR) of 80–85%. Financially, the team supports recurring revenue streams ($9.99/month and $79/year membership tiers) and transactional revenues averaging $45 per booking. Every policy, script, and SLA is designed to protect lifetime value (LTV) and reduce churn to below 4.5% annually.

Operational Hours, Staffing, and Scheduling

Core support hours are 08:00–22:00 local time on Fridays and weekends, expanded to 24/7 during major promotional weeks (e.g., Thanksgiving week, last two weeks of December). Staffing is planned using a peak-load model: 1 support agent per 2,500 active members during normal weeks and 1 per 1,200 active members during peak weeks. For an average base of 300,000 active members, that translates to 120 agents on normal Fridays and up to 250 agents during peak events.

Shift design incorporates 8-hour shifts with 30-minute paid overlap for real-time knowledge transfer and 15% shrinkage built into capacity planning. Example schedule blocks: early (07:45–16:00), mid (11:45–20:00), and late (14:45–23:00). Agents are assigned using weighted rotation so that no agent exceeds three consecutive Friday late shifts without an intervening weekend off. All schedules are published via the workforce management tool by Wednesday 17:00 each week.

Contact Channels and SLAs

Friday Plans supports omnichannel contact: phone, email, live chat, SMS, social (Twitter and Facebook), and in-app messaging. Published SLAs are: phone answered <60 seconds (target), chat initial response <90 seconds, email/tickets replied to within 12 business hours, and social messages acknowledged within 4 hours. Refunds and cancellations are acknowledged within 24 hours and fully processed within 48 business hours for ACH and 5–7 business days for credit-card reversals.

Customer-facing contact details: phone +1-800-555-0172 (U.S. & Canada), [email protected], and customer portal at https://www.fridayplans.example.com/support. Headquarters for escalations: 1250 Evergreen Ave, Suite 400, Portland, OR 97214 (for reference and courier deliveries). Emergency operations line for partners: +1-800-555-0199 (24/7 for verified partner escalations).

KPIs, Reporting, and Quality Targets

Key performance indicators tracked daily and reported weekly include: CSAT (target ≥4.6/5), NPS (target ≥50), FCR (80–85%), Average Handle Time (AHT) 240–360 seconds (4–6 minutes), contact volume variance, and occupancy (target 65–75%). Monthly dashboards include trend lines (90-day moving averages), agent-level QA scores, and backlog age distribution. We maintain a maximum ticket backlog threshold of 2% of weekly contact volume; exceeding this triggers a rapid-response staffing plan.

Quality assurance applies a 15-point rubric: greeting, verification, ownership, resolution clarity, policy compliance, and closure. Agents are sampled for QA at a rate of 10% of their handled contacts with a minimum of 30 scored interactions per agent per month. Coaching cycles are weekly for performance <85% on QA and quarterly for high performers with advanced skill mapping for Fridays and weekend handling.

Technology Stack, Integrations, and Data Policies

Core systems: Salesforce Service Cloud for case management, Zendesk Chat for web live chat, Twilio for telephony/SMS, and Intercom for in-app messaging. The public API endpoint for ticket creation is https://api.fridayplans.example.com/v1/tickets; partner integration keys rotate every 30 days. Average SaaS costs: Salesforce licenses at approximately $150/user/month, Twilio telephony at $0.0085/minute for inbound U.S. calls, and Zendesk Chat at $49/agent/month for the plan in use.

Data retention and compliance: transactional data is retained for 7 years for audit and tax purposes (effective policy 2020), with personal data purged on request in line with GDPR and CCPA. All customer data at rest is encrypted using AES-256, TLS 1.2+ in transit. Backups run nightly with a 30-day on-site rolling window and three-tier offsite snapshots retained for 3 years. Breach response playbooks require 72-hour notification to authorities when applicable.

Process: Handling Common Friday Scenarios

High-frequency Friday scenarios include last-minute booking changes (≥35% of Friday contacts), venue cancellations (8% annualized), and promotional spikes (Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined can produce a 520% day-over-day increase). For last-minute reschedules, the standard operating procedure allows two fee-free changes within 72 hours of the booking, after which a $5 processing fee applies. Cancellation refunds follow the 48-hour ACH / 5–7 business-day credit card timeline stated above.

For surge events, the staffing playbook includes three tiers: Tier 1 (intra-day reassignments), Tier 2 (overtime + split-shifts), and Tier 3 (third-party overflow vendors). The overflow vendor pool is maintained at 15% of standard capacity and can be activated within 90 minutes. During the 2023 Black Friday surge, the rapid-response plan reduced average wait time from 23 minutes to 5 minutes within four hours of activation.

Training, Escalation, and Continuous Improvement

New hires receive 40 hours of mandatory onboarding (product, policies, systems) plus 20 hours of shadowing over the first 14 days. Quarterly continuing education requires 8 hours focused on policy updates, empathy training, and ticket complexity handling. Tool-specific certifications are required: Salesforce Service Cloud Administrator basics, Zendesk Support Specialist, and an internal Friday Plans Quality badge (issued after scoring 90% on an internal exam).

Escalation matrix is tiered: Tier 1 agent → Team Lead (within 30 minutes) → Operations Manager (within 2 hours) → Executive Support (within 24 hours). For priority incidents (supplier outages, safety incidents), the SLA to engage Executive Support is 60 minutes. Continuous improvement is driven by a biweekly retrospective on Friday metrics and a quarterly product-support alignment meeting with product, ops, and marketing to adjust scripts, refunds, and pricing thresholds.

Friday Shift Lead Checklist: publish staffing ROTA by Wednesday 17:00; verify IVR routing and holiday overrides; confirm overflow vendor activation protocol; run pre-Friday load-test on API endpoints at 09:00 Friday; ensure QA sampling plan and coaching slots scheduled for Saturday morning.

Critical Contact & Escalation Info: General Support +1-800-555-0172; Partner Emergency +1-800-555-0199; Support Email [email protected]; Developer API docs https://api.fridayplans.example.com/docs; HQ Escalation Address 1250 Evergreen Ave, Suite 400, Portland, OR 97214.