Make no mistake about it. During the always-busy holiday shopping season, consumers put a lot of stock in their customer experiences. If your customer service style isn’t up to snuff, your business will suffer in the long run. People don’t quickly forget bad experiences. If you’d like to ensure the growing of your brand well into the new year, be sure to step up your holiday customer service game!
Here are three ways to do it:
1. Remember that quickness is key.
Busy, busy, busy – these three words best describe what the holiday shopping season is all about. What that means is that your customers are looking for expeditious customer service now more than ever. Do your best to keep hold times to a minimum. Return phone calls as promptly as possible. Whatever you do over the course of the next month, do not keep your customers waiting!
“Customers do not like it when their call is kept on hold or is transferred too many times,” explains Laduram Vishnoi on Acquire.io, “In order to save their time and your resources, you must enable your agents and executives to solve cases. For this, you have to provide them the authority and empower them so that they can come up with a quick solution—rather than a referral to a superior.”
2. Offer help when help can’t be offered.
How is this even possible? Utilize your company website by making it as informative as possible. Update your FAQ section, post helpful blogs and be sure to clearly display your holiday business hours. This will enable visitors of your site to find answers to questions they may have wanted to ask a live representative. You may also want to provide pertinent information in the outgoing messages you leave for callers outside of your regular business hours.
“If you’re switching to reduced support hours during the holidays, make sure it’s easy for your customers to find the answers they need on their own,” advises Peggy Emch on Olark.com. She goes on to suggest placing helpful links in your in-app notifications, offline chat messages and email signatures.
3. Stock up on staff.
It only makes sense. With more customer traffic comes the need for more customer care. That means you may need to book extra hours for the staff members you already have and/or even hire seasonal staff members to help out with the holiday rush. Don’t forget that your customers are looking for quick and accurate assistance during the holidays.
“The holiday season will duly get its fair share of aggrieved and confused shoppers, and the ‘all hands on deck’ approach will surely provide enough support to see you through the peak time,” says Vishnoi, “Just make sure you provide your makeshift support members with the content (data and information), authority (to make decisions), and few basic know-hows (answers to most common questions) so that they get geared up for the extravaganza.”
For a dose of MeloTel’s holiday customer service style, please don’t hesitate to contact us at 1-888-MELOTEL or use the Live Chat feature on our website!
