Plan Ahead for Holiday Customer Service

Customer service during the holiday season is very different from customer service during the rest of the year. Today’s customers expect much more from their customer service experience, even more so during the holidays. If you want to stand out in a good way in your customer’s mind, you need to plan ahead for the holiday season.

Make sure your customers have options

This can be done at anytime, not just before the holidays. In fact, the more options you have for your customers to get the help they need, the better. Assess whether or not you need more customer service reps to help the holiday season run more smoothly. You may want to outsource some or all of your holiday customer service to a call centre. This would help ensure that your customers have shorter wait times for service during the busy holiday rush.

You may also want to consider offering more self-service options for your customer service. This doesn’t just apply to automated telephone systems–you can use chat bot technology to help your customers find answers to common problems while they’re on your website. And don’t forget to offer service via your social media platforms. More and more people are turning to social media for quick resolution to their problems, so give your customers one more way for them to get the help they need.

Plan ahead

Even if the holiday season isn’t your busiest, you may run into issues with staff scheduling and time off for actual holidays. Plan to provide adequate coverage for the holiday customer service crush. Look at previous holiday seasons to see how much customer traffic you can anticipate and either schedule more customer service staff to work or use a call centre to handle the excess calls.

Prioritize and plan for problems

Not every customer will have a pressing concern when they call during the holidays. Try to plan ahead and have readymade solutions for as many potential problems as you can. This can be achieved by having teams of employees dedicated to each problem. Once your customer’s needs are addressed, the appropriate team can then take action to get quick results.

For more great customer service tips, visit the Answer 365 blog regularly.