Support teams in every industry are always affected by seasonal disparity especially when it comes to customer support during the holiday season. More often than not, customers are inclined to be a bit demanding as they deal with the stress of the approaching holidays. It may take longer than one holiday season to build a culture of remarkable customer support experience, but if you want to create one this season, start by truly caring about what it means to be considerate and attentive to a customer with some simple service tips that will help take the edge off the holiday crazy!
Check previous yearly trends
The first step is knowing what to expect and checking what your volume was like during the last holiday period. Was it higher than most months or does it diminish? Plan your schedule according to historical data, and don’t leave it until the last moment!
Address the schedule
Based on the expected volume, it is better to plan out a maximum coverage schedule. It’s also best to sort this early so that everyone can make their own travel and family plans. Make sure to clarify with your supervisors on holiday constraints.
Have a plan for rapid scaling
Let’s say everything goes horribly wrong, you should know how to communicate for any emergencies. Anyone working alone should know who to call should the tasks at hand get excessive. Don’t let anyone be martyr from handling a thousand tickets.
Stay customer-obsessed
Always focus on what your customers want by remembering it is better to underpromise and overdeliver to succor handling customer expectations and set the stage for a positive experience. Try avoiding irrelevant escalations and always know when to draw the line with abusive or unreasonable customers.
Make things Simple
Surprise and charm is a great strategy on every other day but during the holiday rush, some customers need resolution and answers fast. Let your customers rant but consider their frustration, sometimes people just want to be heard when they are frustrated. Give them an empathetic ear and never dismiss their concerns.
Align Customer Support and Marketing teams
Always keep an eye on how the support team is responding to the messages and complaints on social media channels as they are the ones on the frontlines during holiday hours. Organizations that pride themselves of having outstanding customer support services put more emphasis on the most foundational level — agents who truly care and are interested in all their customers.
Take care of your team!
Burnouts are real and holidays are a great time to mull over dishing out incentives to support agents and recognizing a team’s performance because they usually deal with a higher volume of stressed customers! So they could use the love.
Become Ultra-efficient
While it’s easy to say that customers are just unreasonable this time of year, the best customer support approach during the holiday season is to anticipate and understand your customers’ raised stress levels and work to provide the same outstanding service you do all year long because that is the best way to win and retain their hearts.