Businesses generally, and retailers specifically, are about to enter a period that can best be described as the holiday rush. High volumes, which started over the Black Friday period, will persist throughout the festive season. The challenge for businesses is to manage the subsequent increase in customer interactions while maintaining high levels of customer service.
And so, as the period offers businesses the chance to attract, delight and retain customers, there’s also a risk that poor customer service and contact centre frustration does the opposite. Here are some practical tips for businesses to handle peak periods such as these effectively:
Plan for the surge
There is no substitute for meticulous planning. By using multi-channel workforce management tools, businesses can analyse their historical data to predict their staffing needs for the busy season. This approach means that businesses will have adequate staff numbers during particularly high-volume periods such as Christmas and New Year. Access to, and analysis of, historical data on these days allows businesses to plan accurately.
Empower your agents
Giving your contact centre agents as much contextual knowledge as possible is crucial. With the right tools, agents can quickly access accurate information, which provides a personalised experience for customers while enabling faster response times and higher first contact resolution rates. Quickly and positively resolved queries make for happy customers. The opposite is also true.
Invest in self-service options
Implementing user-friendly self-service options goes a long way towards helping businesses manage high-volume contact centres. These include conversational chatbots, step-by-step guides and even video tutorials for common issues. If customers can find more generic answers quickly and on their own, it reduces pressure on customer service teams during busy periods. Of course, if a customer cannot find a resolution, they need to be able to switch seamlessly to an agent who is empowered with knowledge and context.
Consistency and personalisation
Customers have choice and a good customer experience gives them a reason to keep choosing your business. Consistent messaging across all channels that is also personalised improves the customer experience. The capability to leverage customer data to make relevant suggestions, or just to be able to greet a customer by name, goes a long way towards building consistency in how a customer interacts with the business.
Close the loop
While this may seem obvious, it builds trust and improves brand perception. Once an interaction is over, follow up with a customer to ensure their issue has been resolved to their satisfaction. In a competitive environment, a customer will remember a brand that cares about them.
Understand the correlation between agent performance, cost and customer experience
Agents are human, meaning it is crucial to acknowledge the impact of high-stress periods. This ties to the importance of planning. Overworked agents are not going to handle calls well, which has a direct impact on customer satisfaction.
There’s an important interplay between agent performance, operational costs and customer experience. Well-trained, fresh, motivated agents can significantly improve customer satisfaction while reducing costs through their efficient handling of customer interactions.
Factors like coaching, career planning and manageable work hours directly impact agent performance, which in turn affects handling time, first-contact resolution and ultimately customer satisfaction.
Choose the right partner
By now it is clear that a well-functioning contact centre needs to have the right tools, system and management in place. Whether it is the ability to leverage the best omnichannel tools or the need to engage in a contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) model, the value of partnering with a provider that offers advanced tools and expertise in contact centre management cannot be overstated.
Working with the right partner will allow businesses effectively to measure customer satisfaction, agent performance, interaction volumes and the effectiveness of self-service tools, and much more. This allows a business to make good, data-driven decisions to improve customer service, especially during peak periods and holiday rushes.
Whether you require a basic solution or a full-function omnichannel operation, our highly experienced professional service team will help you evaluate the best fit for your needs and your digital journey. Contact us today.
About Telviva
Telviva is a market leader in cloud-based communications and strives to enable better quality conversations for businesses through context-driven unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and contact centre as a service (CCaaS). Seamlessly integrating voice calls, PBX, video conferencing, instant messaging, contact centre and business intelligence into one single service, Telviva simplifies collaboration, boosts productivity and enhances customer experiences. Delivered as a managed service, the secure solution integrates with CRMs and other cloud tools, providing historical context for informed interactions. For more, visit www.telviva.co.za.
- The author, Martie de Beer, is contact centre executive at Telviva
- Read more articles by Telviva on TechCentral
- This promoted content was paid for by the party concerned