Tips to Provide Superior Customer Support During Holiday Season
Holiday season is here and it’s time to buckle up to provide outstanding experiences for each consumer this holiday shopping season. When you show your consumers that you care about them, you build a deeper sense of trust and create brand loyalty, which is vital to establishing a base of returning customers.
We’re offering you some small suggestions which can help you handle your clients during the holiday period in a very efficient and effective way.
CREATE A CONCRETE PLAN BEFOREHAND AND BE PREPARED
The first thing you need to provide excellent customer support and keep your customer’s trust in you is to make a PLAN!
Start making a strategy to handle customers. Begin with analyzing the customers’ data from past years’ experiences. It’ll help you in predicting the things that could possibly go wrong and give you an ample amount of time to make the necessary changes.
It’ll give you an idea of how many customer service employees you may need to handle a surge in inquiries. Create a list of questions that customers asked you frequently and understand what your shoppers needs.
LIVE CHAT
There are multiple channels tools and software available that your customer support team can use. But during the holidays, the best way to support your customer and resolve their issues are
Live chat has the highest consumer satisfaction rate at 92% and 79% of consumers prefer to live chats because of instant responses.
Live chat allows your team to resolve issues and give instructions to your shoppers in a quick manner. It provides your customers with an easy way to get answers instantly and prevent your phone lines, mails from being clogged.
USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROVIDE SUPPORT
67% of consumers have engaged a brand’s social media for customer service needs. So, social media can also be a great channel to provide excellent support to your customers. Social media response times are certainly an important metric to focus on and include in a customer service strategy. Not only can it strengthen the relationship with a customer, but can boost sales in the right context!
PROACTIVELY INFORM CUSTOMERS
One of the most effective ways to create customer confidence is to practice proactive customer service. When you practice proactive customer service, you’re letting the customer know in advance about a problem and sharing what you’re doing about it. And, providing updates along the way is important as well.
A study by inContact found that consumers were generally positive with proactive service. In fact, 87% of adults surveyed are happy to be contacted proactively by companies regarding customer service issues.
To avoid the backlash from missed expectations, businesses should be proactive in letting their customers know what will be the shipping and delivery time and what you’ll be doing to provide them the best service.
STAY HUMBLE
Try to serve your shoppers in a positive way. You may receive harsh words from your shoppers. Many may just be upset or angry about a minuscule thing, but it will be your team’s duty to solve it. So, you might as well train your team to rectify and tackle the issue with a smile rather than a grumpy—and not my problem type—attitude.
MAKE IT EASY FOR CUSTOMERS
The most common question during the holidays is ‘Where is my order’. The best way to keep your customers updated about their orders is to provide them tracking update. There are many apps which help you to send tracking updates. In this way, your customers can find the answers they need on their own and there’ll be fewer queries by your customers.
Also, update your FAQ page so that your customers can find the necessary answers.
It’s vital to have a strategic plan to provide impeccable customer service to nurture existing customers and win the loyalty of seasonal shoppers. Great user experience can help you build strong relationships with your customers and bring more sales. With these tips, you can try to handle the holiday rush and deliver exceptional service to spread the holiday cheer around.
