With the holiday season right around the corner, it’s time to start preparing your customer support team for the hustle and bustle. During this time of year, many shoppers are feeling overwhelmed and rushed, so it’s more important than ever for your team to handle support requests as fast and efficiently as possible.
Read on for some key strategies to prepare your customer support team for the busiest time of the year, and ensure fast response times when it matters most.
Stress the Importance of Speed
Responding quickly to support requests is always an essential part of great customer service — especially during the holidays when demand is at its peak. Fast response times are also directly tied to other support metrics like overall customer satisfaction rate, so it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
According to a report from HubSpot, 83% of customers expect immediate responses when they reach out to a company. Make sure to stress to your team the importance of prompt responses to support tickets — but never compromise on quality.
Forecast Demand and Plan Accordingly
Without a general idea of the ticket volume you’re going to receive, it can be hard to adequately prepare your support team for the holiday season. There are several demand forecasting methods you can use to predict the amount of support requests you’ll get during the holidays so you can avoid surprises and unnecessary costs.
Start by analyzing your own historical data and holiday ticket volume for the past few years. You can also look at seasonal patterns and changes in your industry as a whole. From there, scale your support team up or down to meet the expected demand.
Tackle High Ticket Volume With Outsourcing
Hiring remote seasonal workers can be a great way to manage a high volume of support requests. Plus, hiring temporary support staff from different time zones means you can offer immediate support outside of typical business hours.
Be careful, though — if you do decide to outsource part of your support team, it’s important to spend time onboarding and vetting new candidates. After all, every member of your team is a representation of your brand and should set a positive impression with every customer interaction.
Offer Omnichannel Support
Customer queries may come from a variety of platforms during the holiday rush, like social media messages, live chats, emails, and phone calls. Customers typically engage with businesses through three to five platforms both before, during, and after a purchase.
Your clients still demand consistent, timely service regardless of the communication method they’re using. With a software solution like Zendesk, you can integrate all tickets into one organized platform to deliver prompt support across all channels.
Build a Self-Service Knowledge Base
Instead of reaching out to your support team for help, many customers can get the answers they need on their own as long as the information is readily available. Building a self-service knowledge base with FAQs and troubleshooting guides can reduce simple, repetitive queries and save a lot of time for your support team so they can focus on more complex tasks.
Because the holiday season likely means an increase in support tickets, now is a great time to build your knowledge base and put your team in a position to succeed.
Enhance Your Customer Support with Aktie Now
These steps can not only help your support team tackle large ticket volume and speed up response times, but can also help enhance the overall experience for your customers.
If you’re looking to level up your CX in time for the holidays, Aktie Now is here to help. We’re a team of CX pros with years of experience helping businesses improve their customer support by implementing and optimizing the Zendesk platform. Contact us today to learn more about how we can prepare your support team for the holidays.
