Australia Post Hired 3,900 Casuals For Peak. You Should Hire A Customer Support Team In The Philippines.

The workable way to hire a customer support team in the Philippines is through an employer of record. The people answer your tickets, on your systems, to your standards, and a provider carries the employment, the statutory contributions and the laptops. Outstaffer publishes that service from $250 a month per employee on top of salary, on our pricing page, to be argued with.

The reason to look now rather than in December is that the demand has already moved.

On 15 October, Australia Post told retailers its parcel volumes had risen 7.8 per cent over the preceding four weeks, that it expects seasonal growth of 6 to 8 per cent, and that it will handle more than 120 million parcels this season against 111 million last year. The figures come from its Peak Halftime Huddle briefing, network operations head Shane Plant on the record, reported by Inside Retail.

It is also recruiting 3,900 Christmas casuals.

Australia Post priced the surge at one extra person per 2,300 parcels

Run that arithmetic. Roughly nine million more parcels than last year, 3,900 extra people hired to move them, about 2,300 additional parcels per casual across the season. That is what the country's largest logistics operator thinks the surge is worth in headcount.

Now put the same percentage on your business. A thirty-person online retailer does not get a smaller lift than the national average. It gets the same 6 to 8 per cent, and every one of those orders arrives with a delivery expectation attached.

On its own peak planning pages Australia Post tells merchants to push app tracking so fewer "where's my order" enquiries reach them, and notes that 61 per cent of shoppers say fast delivery makes them more likely to buy during a sale. Demand and enquiry volume are the same curve. You are budgeting for one of them.

What does the support load look like in November?

Take your normal ticket volume, add the order growth, then add the part nobody models: peak buyers are disproportionately first-timers, and they ask more per order than regulars do.

Why a support team in Manila beats a Christmas casual

A casual hired in November is trained in December, useful in January and gone in February. You pay the recruiting cost, you pay the training cost in your own hours, and next October you pay both again. The ticket volume that arrived with this year's growth does not leave with the casual.

An employed support person in Manila is the same role without the annual reset. That is the whole argument, and it is the logic that applies to the first specialist marketing hire most founders defer until the year they cannot.

Which parts of the queue can actually move?

The triage, the tracking chases and the returns admin, which is most of the volume. Escalations and anything touching a refund decision stay with you. The role-by-role version of that question covers the rest.

The honest case for hiring the casual anyway

The labour market just made the casual easier to find. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released September figures on 15 October showing employment down 39,300 and underemployment up to 6.3 per cent, with unemployment at 4.7 per cent. More people are looking for hours than were a year ago. A ten-week casual is a real option, and the cheaper one if your peak genuinely collapses in February.

So the question is whether it does. If your December is twice your August and your March looks like your August, hire the casual. If every peak has left a permanently higher baseline, you have spent three years solving a structural problem with a seasonal instrument.

Related reading

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What I would do this week

Pull your ticket volume for the last three Novembers against the three Augusts before them. If the gap grows year on year, support headcount is a permanent line you are funding with temporary people.

Then price it. Sign up and run the role through before Black Friday rather than after, because a support team in the Philippines takes weeks to stand up and your peak will not wait for the shortlist.

The thing I am curious about: how many founders have ever counted the enquiries per order, rather than the orders?