Its that time of the year again where we see online shopping hit another all time high for the holiday season with Black Friday and Cyber Monday approaching in a couple of days. With sales figures hitting the roof, customer service teams must ensure their workforce and operations are prepared for the holiday Ecommerce rush.
Yes! they have to be nervous. According to a joint National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics survey, last year 58 million people shopped online, spending $19.62 billion over Black Friday to Cyber Monday. For businesses, this unbelievable sales flood can be a troublesome and painful experience if not prepared. So, what can you do to mitigate such risk?
Be prepared to scale
No matter how well prepared are you, call spikes will happen. And if those spikes lead to longer wait times, it will result in a poor customer service experience for callers. To control, such situations, determine early on where can you scale and have additional resources available to help with the influx of calls. You can also consider outsourcing your customer service to handle the holiday and seasonal spikes.
Increase number of service hours
Unless you already offer 24*7 customer support, you need to extend your service hours. Added number of staff will make the process easier too. Similarly, you can increase service days by having a team work on the weekends to accommodate customers that need support on the weekends.
Prepare your customer service reps
Customer-service representatives need to have the ability to resolve basic inquiries on the first interaction. Agents should be given thresholds in regards to how much they are authorized to refund consumers who are dissatisfied with a product. Empowering staff to work through customer issues with authority will create deeper, more personal interactions and spare consumers the frustration of being bounced around between different people.
Integrate your calling with a CRM
During the holiday peak season, you are going to need to integrate a CRM with your process to handle the sheer volume of customer information that has to be recorded and kept for future reference. If you already use a CRM, check for its features and capabilities, it it needs an upgrade.
Test your backend technology
On such rush days, technology is notorious for breaking down. Make sure your website can handle increased number of shoppers. According to research, 69% customers abandon carts online due to difficulty in checking out. Have multiple payment process available, test your payment systems. It’s probably the most important item to test before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Quick turnaround of customer service
According to Deloitte 2017 Global Contact Center Survey, customers said providing accurate service and information quickly was at the top of the list as a good customer service experience. Be sure to focus on fast call resolution times. One of your biggest efficiency metrics to focus on during the holiday season should be resolving a customer issue or answering their question as quickly and accurately as possible.
Have an omni-channel customer service experience
A customer will be happier and satisfied with easier and quicker methods of reaching customer care service. Customer care support needs to have an intuitive, multi-dimensional customer care interface with email, chat and call options which will help streamline the customer care experience.
Provide a Multilingual customer service feature
As per reports, 74% of customers were more likely to purchase from a company that offered post-sales support in their language. With efficient and excellent customer support, comes communicating with a customer across language barriers.
The best tip of all is to ensure you’ve got a holistic plan of attack to ensure you are prepared for the coming weeks. VSynergize has helped top Ecommerce companies with customer support and retention during the holiday season; managing services ranging from customer care sales, email and chat support, web testing, chatbots and extending support during rush hours. We can get you started in 24-48 hrs to be hands-on ready by adopting strategies to help you deliver fast, quality service, and handling customer information securely. Contact us today via email at info@vsynergize.com or call on +1-732-481-9424. You can hit Black Friday and Cyber Monday out of the park.
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