How to Get Your Customer Service Ready for the Holiday Shopping Season

For many businesses, the holiday season means more sales - of course, provided they can handle heavier traffic on their website and more inquiries from customers. Managing customer service during this busy time is quite a challenge, that’s why you should prepare for it while you still have time.

Get your website and your employees ready for common questions now, so they can focus on solving more complex issues -- that require more time -- while in contact with the customer. Here are 8 things you can do to make sure your customer service is ready for the Holiday craze.

Learn from past years' experience.

Part of preparing your business for the upcoming holiday season includes learning from your previous experience. Do you have more calls and online chats than usual? What time of day are customers more likely to reach out to you? Were you able to send all the packages in time or you didn’t have enough people to pull it through?

Look over past activity and review the numbers from your analytics and reports. Assess the time you get the most website traffic and calls. This will let you to predict peak times which can be used to set up shifts for handling the additional number of customers.

Besides numbers, people are also a great resource. Speak with managers from the support, management, purchasing and shipping departments. They can provide you insight on past years’ experience. Such as, do you have enough of a certain product in stock because it’s quickly sold out? Or could employees use some help during specific hours or certain days?

Have enough people working on your support team.

If it’s too late to hire people and train them for delivering great support for your business, there’s still something you can do! You can pull customer service agents from the less busy hours and have them help during the peak times. Consider your analytics and plan support accordingly.

If you’re not able to do this because you still need these people on their regular shifts, you can temporarily involve employees from other departments in customer service. This could be a great way for people to integrate within the company.

Let’s assume most employees know the basics of your product and with a little help from customer support agents assisting them, they can provide stunning service to your customers, too. Imagine people from marketing and support working together during peak times before the holidays! It could be fun and enlightening for members of both departments to have a broader understanding of each other’s areas of expertise.

Have someone responsible for your social media.

If you don’t already have someone on staff to monitor and manage your social media accounts, assign a colleague to jump-in during the holidays. When people have a problem with their order or a business doesn’t answer them right away, they could be quick to talk about it on social media.

During the holiday season you can also expect more inquiries on your social media platforms, in general. You don’t want your Twitter and Facebook to be full of customers’ posts sounding like this: “Where's my order?,” “What about my shipping?,” “When will my package be delivered? I haven’t received anything in 3 days!”

It’s wise to have one person responsible for managing all social media channels and answering customers’ questions. Social media is best handled in a streamlined manner. If you don’t have a social media manager, designate one person who is responsible for managing social media during the holiday season.

Let your customers help themselves.

Your website should contain details on all the ways a visitor to your site can contact your customer service team. Without the ability to quickly determine how to contact your business, no matter how hard your customer service agents try, the experience won’t be great. Customers will start off their experience irritated.

One way to deliver great customer service is to let customers help themselves before they reach out to you with inquiries. Make sure your website contains an updated FAQ section. Whenever something changes about your policies, make sure that section is up to date. This also helps your agents by allowing them to focus on more complex issues, instead of answering repetitive questions like “how long will my shipment take?”

Focus on the customer, not the sale.

If you want to deliver great customer service, you need to focus on the customer’s needs, instead of making a sale. Why? Focusing on a customer rather than a sale itself will boost customer service and increase customer satisfaction. This will inevitably translate into sales and maybe repeat sales! Pushing customers to buy things they don’t really need won’t benefit your business. In the long-term, it’s always better to have customers feel comfortable with you. When your community feels relaxed, knowing that you’re always by their side to help them, they’ll be more likely to buy.

The right form of communication.

Positive communication is a must-have for customer service. But there are other things that customer service reps should be sensitive about, depending on their audience.

There are two types of customers. The first group needs to hear everything about the product from you and requires you to be by their side during the process of decision-making through guiding them to the sale. The second group goes into the store or online and simply looks for a product. This group likes knowing you’re there to help whenever they need you but there will be less involvement from your team unless an issues arises.

The faster you recognize what kind of a customer came to you, the better experience you will provide them. The better experience you provide, the more likely they will be to buy from you, now or in the future.

Take care of your employees.

Studies show that recognition drives productivity. Sixty-nine percent of employees would work harder if they felt their efforts were better appreciated. During the holiday shopping season, employees have to work more hours and perhaps deal with unhappy customers, so they naturally feel more stressed and overworked. You can help your employees to be more productive and less stressed at this time. Provide lunch at the office, have a nice chat with your team, consider an incentive system or a small holiday bonus. Showing gratitude will make your employees happier and this feeling is then easily shared with your customers, which naturally translates into a better customer experience.

If you want to make sure your customer service is ready for the holiday shopping season, use this little cheat sheet I’ve prepared: Holiday Shopping Season cheat sheet. How does your business get your customer service team ready for the holidays? Share this post with your suggestions and we’ll re-post it on BBB’s social media channels!

BBB’s News and Opinion Blog serves as your source for business topics and industry news like tips on hiring for your small business and ways to grow engagement with your audience using social media. For more information you can trust, visit us at bbb.org/boston, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

About Olga Kolodynska, Content Writer

Olga is responsible for preparing articles and monthly newsletters. If she’s not working on her newest post, she’s probably hiking somewhere in the Polish mountains. You can read more of Olga’s work on the LiveChat Blog.