I'm one of those people who watches the Super Bowl just for the commercials. At $3.5 million for a 30-second spot in this year's Super Bowl, you have to assume that only the best of the best will be present. Given the sheer volume of eyeballs on those ads, you have to anticipate that the companies will receive an influx of calls, tweets, emails, etc., not long after their ads air. (In fact, with the number of ads that have been leaked this year, they're probably already seeing them.)
So what does this mean for the contact center? Staffing and scaling to support the influx of communicactions from customers - whether they be good, bad or indifferent. You don't want your customers to reach out and be met with tumbleweeds blowing through your contact center.
You may think that it's not too important to staff up just to hear people say how cute, funny, inappropriate, or brilliant your Super Bowl ad was. But consider the case study from Super Bowl 2009 when customers flocked to Twitter to share their feelings (good and bad) about GoDaddy's racy ad. As the tweets grew in volume, a competitor began offering a "Twitter special" to anyone who transferred. While the exact number of customers who transferred isn't available, it seems as though there were a number who did.
As Shashi Bellamkonda, the Social Media Swami of Network Solutions said afterwards,"The world today has changed. Companies can no longer hope to lob a message across high walls hoping that it reaches some part of the audience and not have a channel to get feedback on it."
One of the great things about the power of the cloud is the abililty to scale based on demand. So if you were able to spend $3.5 million for a Super Bowl ad (and a large sum to produce a worthy spot), or if your company has any other high-profile opportunities, be prepared to scale, just in case.