With the holidays fast approaching, regular folks are not the only ones excited. Companies also look forward to the season as it means more customers. But with all those customers coming, you might find your hands full handling service requests. Here is how you can maintain your holiday customer service going during the season.
Holiday customer service challenges
One of the challenges that businesses encounter during the holidays is a limited customer support team. This goes both ways. First off, your current workforce might be too small for the increase in support request numbers.
That workforce can still shrink during the holidays. Many of your staff will likely request a few days off to celebrate Christmas. And these employee vacations don’t happen at the same time. Thus, you will find yourself with fewer service agents in more instances than you might like.
Long hold times
This limited workforce will result in longer resolution times for customers. Due to the volume of requests, customers will have to wait for a while until an agent takes in their request. Individual handling times can also take longer due to the limited resources that agents have.
All of these waiting can leave your customers frustrated, making them more likely to switch to other businesses. As such, you end up losing the profits that the holidays are supposed to bring. Meanwhile, the extended operation time to accommodate the greater number of service requests will cost you a significant amount.
Improving your holiday customer service
With all that business opportunity, your team should be ready to respond to holiday customer calls. As is with any customer boom period, plan how you will deploy your support team. Here, it would help to analyze the trend from previous years before making your next move.
Use the sales data from the past few years to anticipate the volume of customers for this year. You would also want to check key performance indicators to see the different areas where you were doing well and where you need to improve. Don’t forget to talk to the veteran members of your support team. You will get a more qualitative picture of the experience your team has when handling the holiday rush.
Also, consider the recent events that can affect your projected customer outcome. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly pushed people towards online shopping. And that will likely go further with the Christmas rush, which will affect how you should provide customer support.
Planning staff vacations
Employees taking leaves during the Christmas season is something unavoidable. After all, even they would want to celebrate with their loved ones. But you can lessen the impact of these leaves on your holiday customer service by planning when to schedule them.
One way to do this is to stagger the schedule of your employees like the one above. For example, a part of your staff will have their vacation this week, while the next group will have theirs during the next week. You might also want to have a vacation blackout period when no one is allowed to take time off.
Discuss this vacation schedule at least six weeks in advance. This way, your team will have enough time to determine when to take theirs. You would also want to take vacation requests well ahead of time to ensure that they will fit the schedule.
Providing incentives for your holiday workers
Another great way to ensure that you will have enough staff during the holidays is by using a volunteer system. The idea here is that your employees will work in exchange for other perks. Some of the incentives that you can offer include:
- Half and whole days off: You can offer these time offs during non-peak days to give your team more rest periods.
- Overtime pay/holiday differential: In this case, you can offer a special rate that is different from the usual overtime rates that you provide.
- Holiday draw: You can create a raffle based on the number of holiday work hours that each employee makes. For this raffle, the prize should be something significant.
Make sure to lay out the rules for these incentives clearly, so your team would know what to expect.
Hiring additional holiday customer service staff
Getting additional staff is another way that you can fill the holiday customer service gap. Here, you have two different options. You can hire seasonal personnel directly or get an outsourcing company to take care of the extra labor. Each of these methods offers different advantages that should suit your needs.
Hiring seasonal staff
The main draw of hiring seasonal employees is that you get to scrutinize applicants yourself. This will ensure that you get the right people. But be sure to do the hiring months in advance to ensure that they will be trained properly and ready once the season starts.
When screening candidates, you need to be clear about the details of the work. In particular, explain the scheduling. Since it is the holiday season, many seasonal hires would be looking for a flexible schedule that will allow them to join the celebrations. You would want someone who can keep up with your schedule while still giving them some room.
Onboarding your seasonal employees should focus on getting them started quickly. It would be a good idea to have them begin when the volume of customer service requests is still low. This way, they can better grasp the work and be prepared for the added requests. Have your regular staff guide them to help them settle in faster.
Outsourcing the work
With outsourcing, you don’t need to go through the lengthy hiring process. Instead, the outsourcing company will be the one providing personnel for you. Companies like Virtua Solutions deploy fully-trained personnel who can work immediately for you.
However, you still have to plan how you will outsource part of your holiday customer service. Some pointers to remember are:
- Flexible deployment: The outsourcing company should help you determine the most cost-effective way to deploy your outsourced team. They should also inform you when it is time to scale up or downsize the team.
- Multilingual offering: This is essential if you are catering to an international customer base but don’t have time to train seasonal staff in speaking a different language.
- Range of services: Go through the list of services the outsourcing company provides and see if they have most of the services you need, such as social media moderation and chat.
- Legal and security risks. Talk with the outsourcing company to learn more about how they protect customer data that go through their servers.
- Detailed reporting: The company should give you not just the basic metrics but also a more detailed analysis of the customer service performance and areas of improvement.
By considering these points, you can be sure that the outsourcing company you sign up with can do the job. It would be a good idea to look into several providers and compare their offers to determine which one would best suit your needs.
Get ready to provide the best holiday customer service
Being able to provide adequate customer support during the holidays will go a long way in keeping your patrons happy. By following these holiday customer service strategies, you also ensure that your team can do their work effectively while preparing for the season. Get your team ready and have a great time doing business this season.