Put the Spark Back in Your Holiday Customer Service

I really enjoy all the summer holidays, especially the most recent one we celebrated! The Fourth of July is a wonderful time to bond with your family and friends, count your blessings, and appreciate the freedom that the United States is known for. While they are usually a time of relaxation for me, I know it is not always the case for certain businesses. The holidays and the days after that are usually very busy with many call centers. It’s during this time that many call centers experience a mad rush of calls, emails, and chat sessions from customers. While this can be seen as an opportunity for businesses to show what they are really made of, the holiday madness can bring its share of challenges to the call center industry. They include dropped calls, long waiting times, low team morale, and increased agent stress. These challenges, if not managed properly, can leave customers dissatisfied with your service.

So how can call centers rise above the busiest times of the year and turn it into an opportunity to showcase an excellent customer experience? By planning ahead and getting the whole company to work as a team. Let’s take a look at how you can light a fire under your call center’s holiday customer service!

Learn from the past

The first thing that you need to do when planning ahead is to review what happened in the previous holidays. By pulling out important data like the volume of calls and customer satisfaction ratings during the peak season, it will be easier for your company to come up with a game plan. Forecasting will help you determine what kind of training and tools you’ll need to meet the seasonal demand.

Be straightforward with your customers

The peak seasons can be quite stressful for your customers so make sure to communicate early and frequently. Keep them in the loop if you’re changing customer service hours for the holiday through email blasting, social media, and a pop-up on your website. This is the perfect time to put your FAQ page front and center so that you can give your customers a self-service option.

Implement omni-channel support

Although most customers still prefer to use the phone to get in touch with customer service, this is the ideal time to introduce and implement multi-channel support. Provide your customers with different ways they can get customer support such as chat, email, and even social customer care. If you can integrate these channels with your call center operations, you should be able to lighten the load of the phone agents and have a better chance of increasing customer satisfaction.

Empower your team

If you have agents working during the holiday, make sure to equip them with the skills and tools they need to handle to massive volume and all the stress that comes with it. Train them on how they can solve customer concerns fast, without compromising on accuracy or quality of the service. Once you empower your team with the right skills and confidence, they will be more capable to deliver personalized service to your customers. It’s also important that you boost employee morale by engaging with them and implementing a generous incentive program that will make the holiday work worth it.

Step into your customers’ shoes

Lastly, try stepping into your customers’ shoes to understand what they’re going through during the holiday. For sure, most would rather spend the time relaxing and eating with family and friends, but instead, they’re on the phone contacting one of your agents because of a problem or glitch they want fixed ASAP. Think of this as the main reason why most customers who call during and after the holiday sound more impatient and aggravated. The solution? Put your customers at ease by responding immediately. Avoid giving vague responses or putting them on hold for long periods of time.

Remember, it doesn’t have to get crazy this time of the year. By anticipating customer needs and making sure that the whole team is on the same page, call centers should be able to handle the holiday workload successfully.

Through my career in the contact center space, I have had the opportunity to work with companies of all sizes, and I’ve seen some who plan for holidays and some don’t. I’d love to discuss with you how CHCG can help in your seasonal planning efforts and overall omni-channel contact center strategy.