by Jennifer Williams
The upcoming 2021 holiday shopping season is forecast to be epic. People are eager to make up for time and gatherings lost to the pandemic last year. Additionally, the pandemic radically accelerated online shopping trends and consumer expectations.
In customer service, nothing, NOTHING beats the human touch.
In the past, retailers hid contact information on their website, there were extremely long hold times on the phone, and even longer response time to emails. Now, automation is an expectation. Customers want, and expect, a fast response. Even “within 24 hours” is no longer acceptable to the average online consumer.
Is your business prepared for consumer expectations going into this holiday season? Here are four ways to make sure your customer service program will meet your customers’ expectations!
1) Leverage automation to help your customers help themselves.
Integrating a BOT into your automated solutions ensures no wait time for your customers and easy hand off to a human agent if needed.
Bots reduce WISMO (where is my order) inquiries, and other simple requests. This frees up your agents to address brand interactions that require a human touch allowing for more meaningful conversations with customers who need the most help.
When you consider an automated solution, we recommend #Freshworks to meet your customer demands. Their suite of products make it fast and easy to delight customers.
2) Prepare for spikes to happen before BF-CM and last through the entire season.
The holiday season brings a surge in order related contacts with pre-purchase questions. You can smoothly accommodate a seasonal surge without having to increase or strain your core in-house staff by hiring an experienced, outsourced customer support team.
This ensures your business can handle the spike in volume without compromising the support your customers expect from your brand. Offering your customers convenient and prompt support during a stressful time will leave a lasting positive impression and lead to more brand loyalty.
3) Focus on real-time chat over other kinds of interactions.
Your resources are well spent on real-time chat staffing. Consumers don’t want to deal with the frustration of long wait times for phone support and email channels anymore. They want instant answers to all their questions.
Online ordering creates more urgency to support customers – live – throughout their shopping experience.
Live chat is both convenient AND personal. Support that delights customers during seasonal demand is a win-win for you and your customers.
4) Create more meaningful interactions with empathetic human agents.
In customer service, nothing, NOTHING beats the human touch. And not to toot our own horn, but this is where Scout+ shines.
Our customer service agents are selected for their ability to flex technical and human skills seamlessly. Our experience with multiple brands means we can hit the ground running with minimal training, ready to field your customers pre-purchase questions to recommend products, or escalate complicated issues to brand stakeholders.
Not only will outsourcing to handle volume spikes benefit your customers, it is much more cost efficient in the short term, and profit boosting long after we’ve finished the job in all the repeat business.
Needing to expand your workforce for Black Friday through Cyber Monday? In-house is expensive but Scout+ offers scalable solutions, allowing companies to easily and effortlessly scale its workforce up and down.
Scout+ is ready to handle that high demand, and delight your customers during one of the most anticipated, stressful, and joyful times of the year. Let us help you make the most of that opportunity.
Are you ready to see if Scout+ is a good match for your needs? Contact us for a stress-free, pressure-free conversation.
Jennifer Williams is a Marketing Behaviorist at Verilliance.com, building lean marketing strategies based on consumer and decision science.
