The end-of-year period has always been a pivotal time for customer service teams: increased activity, visibility actions, stock management, multiple orders, increased number of questions.
All of these issues lead to a number of problems to be anticipated:
- How many requests do we expect to have?
- Do we have enough human resources to respond to our customers?
- What if the number of requests is higher than expected?
At SEIF, we give you some good practices to optimise your customer relations during this festive period while maintaining customer satisfaction!
Estimate the volume of requests to be processed
There are several ways to estimate the volume of requests over a given period:
- Analyse your customer data by looking at last year's figures and compare them with your company's current context: growth, events, promotional activities and current events: crisis, events, etc.
These are all elements that will weigh up your data. - Ask your sales team for information, as they may have already drawn up a forecast or quantified objectives.
- Estimate the number of customers and the average number of contacts per customer.
For example: 1 in 4 customers contact you (i.e. 0.25 requests/customer) and you have 10,000 customers. Estimated volume = 0.25*10,000= 2,500 requests - Also think about the average time it takes to process a request, i.e. the time an agent actually spends working on a single file.
This will give you a clearer picture of your organisation. Don't forget that digitalisation is the key word!
Choose your partners carefully
You may need help during this time and there is no shortage of customer service outsourcing providers!
There are many outsourcing services that can provide you with help and/or support on an ad hoc basis. The important thing is to choose the one that best suits your needs, your business and your mindset.
It is up to you to decide on the strategy of this outsourcing:
- Flexibility on the workforce? If you are not sure how many extra staff you need, choose a provider who can increase or decrease the number of staff easily and quickly.
This can also allow you to adjust the size of your team in case of sickness or other reasons.
You will need to prepare a solid brief in advance to facilitate the onboarding of these people and optimise their efficiency at the start.
- High volume processing? Some service providers only work above a certain ticket volume threshold. Find out in advance about the commitments and the level of service you should demand.
- Is the quality of exchanges important? If your company is mainly focused on relational quality, customer personalization, and listening, there are very specialized partners in this field, go for it!
At SEIF, we like Tête à tête, Onepilot, Webhelp, Assist digital, Manners...
There are many customer relations companies that can complement your team and ensure that your objectives are met while maintaining your DNA. Don't be afraid to take the plunge.
And take the time to establish your precise brief, your objectives for this period, the indicators of your customer relationship that you will monitor with your partner, how often and also your budget.
On this point, you can decide to manage it by staff time spent, by number of tickets, or by overall budget allocated to the period.
Have an emergency exit in case of overload, the famous b plan
It's D-day and what you fear is happening: your team is already underwater.
Don't panic! Here are the 2 best ways to save yourself:
- Adapt your automatic messages
- The first thing to do is to inform your customers that your response time will be a little longer than usual. This will channel their expectations and show them that their request is being taken into account. A best practice in customer relations!
- Deactivate all your asynchronous communication channels (chats, incoming calls, etc.): from now on your priority is to control your service, not to overload it.
60% of consumers expect a response to a chat within a minute. So chats are good, but if no one can respond in time, it's better to send an email!
Only reopen this channel once you control your main channels (emailing for example).
Update your help centre and macros
There is no need to remind you of the benefits of self-service for your customers and your team.
The help center is a good way for your agents to focus on the most complex cases and leave the basic requests for your help centre and allow for a more personal customer relationship.
An outdated FAQ could give your customers the wrong information, or worse, increase the volume of contacts. Not to mention the image it creates. The customer journey must be seamless!
An up-to-date helpdesk will allow your customers to find an answer to basic questions on their own, without having to contact your department. Customer relationship management also requires an efficient self-service.
Finally, if you have macros that you send to your customers on a regular basis, make sure that the content is up to date. These template responses are designed to save your team time!
Automation of tasks, not to be neglected!
If you exceed your response time, don't wait to send an automatic message to warn your customers after a certain period without a response from you. This will always be more appreciated than no news from you.
- Do you know about chatbots?
If you are still several weeks away from the rush period, you can set up your chatbot: a chatbot like Hello my Bot will quickly answer the most common questions about your product/service.
The idea is not to replace human interaction, but to relieve your team who can focus on the rest of the more complex requests. Intelligent automation is not to be overlooked!
Play together and be synchronised with the rest of the company
Make a list of emergency contacts for each department you work with on a daily basis (technical team, marketing, finance, etc.). You can also make a holiday schedule to know who is present each day, who is on call, with emergency phone numbers and times.
For example, you can think of the following situations:
- If during the Christmas period, the technical team cannot solve your customers' technical requests... what is your plan B?
- If your accounting team is absent to make refunds, what new circuit can you imagine?
- There is wrong information on the website and the web team is on holiday, how do you get around this?
- You need to make an important decision urgently, but no manager is available. Who takes the decisions now?
Keep it simple!
Don't start a new channel two weeks before the turning point: the time for experimentation is over! It's time to review your existing processes and fine-tune the details.
So if you suddenly get the idea of integrating chatbots to improve your customer interactions, put it off until January:
- It's likely to destabilise your team in a context where they need to be trusted.
- You will lack the bandwidth to correct the slightest unforeseen event linked to this new channel
Prepare customers
If you already know that your service will be closed for a period of time, or that your opening hours are different from the usual ones: don't forget to interact with your customers through customer marketing (website, emailing, posters...)
Be transparent: you will not be open for a certain period? be comfortable with this and invite them to contact you before or after this period, specifying your response time if you can.
Pampering the teams
This time of year is always a trying time for customer service teams: customers in a hurry, demanding, a hectic pace, a sometimes tense atmosphere...
If you remain open during the festive season: small croissants on Christmas morning, a small buffet on New Year's Eve or simply a short coffee break with several people... is always welcome! Putting the customer at the centre is important, but so are your teams.
But that is not all, of course: if tensions are too great and create crisis situations, dialogue and exchange remain the best means of calming the situation. Don't hesitate to provoke these moments.
The mind set
We quote Jonathan Lefèvre: "The team we build is the company we build". Thank you Jonathan!
The important thing is to maintain an essentialist approach to customer service at this time, while not neglecting the customer experience: keep what works and put on hold what doesn't. The idea is not to make a mistake, but to make a difference. The idea is not to abandon current projects, but to postpone them until the right moment!
Happy Holidays
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