5 Tips to Prepare Your Customer Service for Holiday Shopping Season

As the holiday shopping season approaches, sales volumes and turnover increase sharply. Though it is a positive tendency, it may also mean a tough time for companies who haven’t prepared their customer service for the rush in holiday traffic.

When the number of customers searching for the best deals on your website or in-store intensifies, your old customer service strategy could be faltering. It is crucial to ensure that your support team provides a seamless customer experience and knows how to work during such periods.

The growth of holiday sales is directly proportional to the growth of consumer questions, feedback, and even complaints.

A recent PissedConsumer Black Friday survey showed that more than 46% of customers are preparing to shop both online and in stores, and more than 50% of them are prepared to leave a review about their shopping experiences.

How you treat your customers – especially your frustrated ones – matters a great deal.

Here are 5 practical tips to improve and prepare your customer support to deliver a holiday-proof customer experience.

Reinforce Your Sales Presence

In the holiday season, the best defense is a good offense. It means if you make your customers happy while they shop, they won’t have any reason to reach out to customer service with complaints.

During the 2022 holiday season (Nov 1 - Dec 31), online spending by consumers reached $211.7 billion, a 3.5% YoY growth. This year, according to findings from the Black Friday survey, 41.3% of shoppers are also interested in exclusively online shopping for holiday deals.

Not only is free shipping and convenience drawing in online customers but so is the ability to ship directly from the site to family and friends.

So, hire extra seasonal salespeople for your brick-and-mortar locations, but reinforce your website, warehouse, and customer service departments, too. Update your sites, check for bugs and issues, and prepare for traffic and glitches.

Even something as simple as a missing confirmation can ruin the shopping experience, as one reviewer for Shein noted online after paying for the product:

“I placed an order on the Shein black Friday sale and I never get any confirmation via email I didn't even get a tracking number…”

The smoother the shopping experience, both in-store and online, the happier your customers.

Prepare a FAQ

When questions do arise, many shoppers, especially younger and tech-savvy individuals, will search for answers online before calling up your customer service representatives.

Create a FAQ that is clear and easy to find and understand. Include information about returns, refunds, and exchanges.

If time and financial resources allow, consider working with a new AI chatbot to help guide customers to the correct answer through technology rather than human intervention. Using AI customer service can streamline the process dramatically and create happy customers.

In fact, as the Zendesk report states, 69% of customers are happy to work with a bot to resolve simple issues – a significant increase over previous years.

Open Multiple Communication Channels

Online reviews often cite customer frustration with trying to contact someone when a need arises. Companies can prepare for this frustration (and keep negative reviews off a reviews website) by opening multiple communication channels.

You can expect an increase in phone calls during your holiday customer service rush. You can also expect people to be disappointed if they must sit on hold and wait to connect over the phone with a customer service representative.

The more ways customers can get help quickly, the more satisfied they are. And when customers are pleased with customer service, they are more likely to make another purchase.

Develop Triage and Escalation Strategies

Recent studies show that customers expect to interact with a human immediately when they call a company. However, while every customer wants a solution immediately, there are some situations that take precedence.

Develop a clear system for how customer representatives should triage customer concerns and complaints. Where do urgent calls go? Is there a department that handles simple issues that just need smoothing over?

And don’t forget to develop a clear protocol for how and when issues should be escalated to the next level.

One Hoverboard.com customer experienced this very thing when a single employee went above and beyond what the rest of the department had done to resolve the issue with a Christmas gift:

“One person answering emails was helpful after I gave them a deadline before I disputed the credit card purchase with CapOne. Thanks to that individual .. they should be promoted.”

Increase Your Training

It’s not enough to have more people ready to answer phone calls. Those customer service representatives need to know what to do, what to say, and how to treat customers. More than 60% of customers are willing to walk away from a company after one bad experience.

You can’t afford to make a mistake – and that means your customer service representatives can’t make a mistake either.

How do you avoid mistakes? By training customer service representatives on exactly what they should say and do when interacting with customers. Write the manuals, practice, and invest in your people.

To ensure efficient use of customer service tools and applications, arrange regular training sessions for your staff to help them keep updated on the latest features and functions. The better your team trained, the happier your customers will be.

You may greatly strengthen your customer service for the approaching holiday shopping season by implementing these five strategies into practice.

Your company can ensure a smooth and rewarding consumer shopping experience by focusing on proactive steps, maximizing staff training, and creating a deliberate FAQ.

Such actions will help build lasting loyalty and satisfaction during this period.