5 Ways to Prepare your Customer Service Team for the Holiday Season

Brace yourselves: holiday shopping season s well underway. And as online orders begin to increase, so does the pressure faced by customer service teams: eCommerce brands experience a 75% spike in support tickets during the holiday season. And while you can’t control the challenges your customers will face this holiday season, you do have a say in how your customer service team prepares for them. From delayed packages to damaged goods and returns queries, your customer service team will be confronted by queries at every stage of the customer journey: read on how to mitigate and even reduce them.

What are the benefits of effective customer service during Peak Season?

Effective customer service, or a lack thereof, has a bigger impact on your business than you might think throughout the holiday shopping season:

• 80% of consumers will switch to a competitor after more than one negative customer service experience (source: (Zendesk)
• If the company’s customer service is excellent, 78% of consumers will do business with them again after a mistake (Salesforce Research)
• 68% of consumers say they are willing to pay extra for better customer service, particularly during high-stress shopping days like Black Friday​ (HubSpot)
• Online retailers can grow revenues between 4% and 8% above their market when prioritizing better customer service experiences (Bain & Company)
  
  

So, not only does having increase customer satisfaction and retention; it also has a concrete impact on your business’s bottom line.

So, without further ado, here are 5 ways to prepare your Customer Service Team for the holiday season :

1. Align your customer service communications with your brand

‍‍Your website is branded to a T. So is your social media, your packaging. But what about your customer service communications? Many brands forget that the relationship between your customer service team and your customers is integral to the customer experience as a whole – it’s not just a transactional exchange.

Customers want to feel reassured that they are in the safe hands of your brand; not some nameless customer care representative. Such a craving for support is heightened for the post-purchase phase, during which customers– particularly first-time buyers– anxiously await their parcel, uncertain about what might happen to it.

Picture this: a shopper has a terrific experience upon purchasing on your website, immersed in your brand identity, only to be met with a cold, generic email when you ask about the delivery status of your parcel. Such a gap between the customer experience on your website and the interaction with your customer team afterward wreaks havoc on brand loyalty.

So how can you make sure your customer service communications live up to your brand this holiday season?

• Highlight your brand in all your customer service emails, from the very first confirmation email customers receive when they make a query. Jeoffrey Jouannet is the CEO & Founder of Kared, an agency specializing in the customer experience with expertise in Zendesk, Freshdesk and Intercom. He explains that including a branded signature from your agent, team photos or even company news will work wonders by strengthening the relationship between you and your customer, inspiring consumer confidence. 
• Segment your acknowledgment of receipt emails by type of contact. After all, these automatic emails are the first communication clients will receive from you, and first impressions matter.
• Include branded FAQs in your emails sent after purchase, and on your order tracking page. Highlight your company’s personality with your colours, font & designs so that customers make a positive association with your brand. 
• Segment your acknowledgment of receipt emails by type of contact. After all, these automatic emails are the first communication clients will receive from you, and first impressions matter
• Include branded FAQs in your emails sent after purchase, and on your order tracking page. Highlight your company’s personality with your colours, font & designs so that customers make a positive association with your brand..
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• Highlight your brand identity when asking for feedback. Post-purchase tools like Shipup make giving feedback upon receiving orders as easy as child’s play: a great opportunity, to showcase your company image. There’s bound to be a surge in customer commentary as Holiday Season orders increase: make sure that your brand is reflected when you lift customers’ spirits by offering the opportunity to give commentary and potentially resolve any issues.
  

2. Be proactive.

‍‍‍Jeoffrey recommends that with the technology now available, it’s no longer acceptable to expect customers to reach out about problems that online retailers themselves have created.
Beyond passively reacting to customer queries, customer support teams offer an excellent customer experience through proactive incident resolution.

Incidents after purchase will always occur. But if your online business fails to proactively communicate on them, you will face the consequences:

• Decreased repurchase rate from existing customers 
• Negative customer reviews on websites such as Trustpilot along with social media, dissuading new clients from purchasing from your brand.
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So, how can online retailers be more proactive when issues arise (as they inevitably will)?

• Notify customers about delivery incidents before they even get the chance inquire, be it in the event of a delayed package, lack of updates from the carrier or if the package is simply waiting at the pick-up point.
  
  Tools like Shipup allow online retailers to automatically send customers emails about incidents, with tailored customer service alets. The benefit is twofold: on one hand, the customer is reassured, and on the other, customer service efficiency is improved thanks to a decrease in WISMO tickets.
  
  By proactively communicating about delivery issues when they arise, online retailers save customers from leaving negative reviews on public websites like Trustpilot, which can in turn have a real impact on their bottom line with decreased brand trust from prospective customers.

• Allow your customers to return products directly from your website. It’s safe to assume that customers aren’t exactly thrilled when initiating a return: don’t add fuel to the fire by making it a hassle for them to do so.

In fact, by offering a smooth process with options for exchanges & gift-cards, returns can actually be an opportunity to retain revenue.
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To offer a reassuring returns process, harness the same proactive notifications that you’d send throughout delivery. You should go the extra mile by allowing customers to follow their return, for example on a dedicated tracking page. 

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• Provide how-to guides, tutorials, or setup videos for purchased products.

Holiday Season  isn’t about making a quick buck off a one-time customer with minimum customer service. As Jeoffrey reminds us, acquiring a new customer can cost five to seven times more than retaining an old one (source: Forbes).

Financially, it simply makes sense to invest in building long-term relationships with customers.
Are you a furniture company? Show customers what tools they might need to assemble their item, or directly advertise your assembly services on their order tracking page. A high-end fashion e-tailer? Highlight how customers can get the most of their item of clothing, from highlighting how to wash it to promoting additional items that would pair well.

3. Use automation to your advantage... with a human touch

‍‍‍I already know what you’re thinking. Automation? You mean those annoying chatbots that delivery the same answer over and over again until you feel like throwing your laptop across the room. How’s that supposed to improve the customer experience during an already stressful peak holiday season?

Not so fast. As Jeoffrey explains, automating customer support can help scale your business all while improving the customer experience. But, there’s a caveat.
Automated customer care needs to be:

- controlled
- perceived as adding value but the customer.

Let’s take an example: Jeoffrey explains that Kared set up a system on Zendesk that contacts customers on support agents’ behalf to follow up on sensitive topics, such as product defects and technical issues.

By combining the human touch of opening up the initial discussion, with the practicality being able to follow up systematically, automating customer support in this instance benefits both consumer and customer service.
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Other ways you can successfully incorporate automation into customer service include:

• Send feedback surveys systematically after delivery, via tools such as Shipup. Again, Jeoffrey suggests that you filter the level of automation to your customer’s needs, such as the topic of the question and corresponding level of severity. 
  
  With post-purchase feedback forms, you may choose to alert customer service take over the query only in the event of a damaged or lost product, for example.
  

For less extreme issues, such as a customer wanting a different size, you may resolve the issue by allowing the customer to complete the form independently and be directed to a returns portal without human intervention. 

• Harness intelligent Chatbots for Escalation. Yes, we’re talking about chatbots again — but hear us out.  AI chatbots can be used to handle common inquiries, but moreover, they are in their prime when they are utilized to intelligently escalate complex issues to human agents, providing seamless handoffs when more in-depth support is needed.

4. Leverage AI to improve customer personalization

‍‍As an online retailer, you have a lot of customer data at your fingertips.

With the mass influx of new customers, it’s never been more important to make customers feel special during holiday season .

And contrary to what you might think, the majority of customers will happily exchange that data– GDPR compliant of course – for personalized customer experience. The research speaks for itself: 79% of customers are willing to share relevant information about themselves in exchange for contextualized interactions in which they’re immediately known and understood (Source: Salesforce)

In this day and age, there is no greater power than AI to personalize your customer experience. But beware: to truly reap the rewards of personalization, your use of AI must be a real collaborative effort; you need to put in the legwork as well. Regardless of the tool you use, ensure that you properly train, monitor and track the performance of you AI, setting clear objectives and KPIs that you want to achieve.

That said, here are just a few ways your customer service team can use AI to improve customer personalization after purchase:

• ‍Include personalized product recommendations in post-purchase emails and on tracking pages 
  

Through AI-driven product recommendations, customers can explore relevant products themselves without needing to contact customer service, thus improving the overall experience by empowering them to make informed decisions independently. 

Beyond offering products that customers will like, product recommendations can also be personalized to equip customers with items that will be useful

Take the household goods industry. Offering suggestions for replacement filters, cleaning solutions, or parts for appliances like vacuums, air purifiers, or coffee machines can help customers maintain their products for longer periods, in turn reducing  support calls for maintenance advice.

• Tailor problem resolution based on customer history and channel

Analyze past customer service interactions via AI to personalize future communications. For example, AI-powered systems can remember a customer’s issue with a previous order, or the channel the customer contacted them on, and offer customized responses or solutions in subsequent interactions.

• Offer personalized responses via AI to assess customer sentiment from emails, reviews, or chat interactions and adjust the tone and priority of customer service responses accordingly.

For example, a frustrated customer might receive a more empathetic response, while a customer interaction with a customer that has already been reassured might be more lighthearted. Regardless of the tone used, ensure your brand voice shines through your communications.
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5. Implement consistent support across all channels

‍‍‍Over ⅔ of customer expect anyone they interact with a company to have full context of their situation (source: Zendesk). What’s more, 40% of consumers cited “multiple options for communicating” as the most important feature of a company’s customer service department (source: Business Wire)

With a 75% increase in tickets expected this Holiday Season, it’s Paramount with a capital P that you provide seamless post-purchase customer support across multiple channels, from chat, social media, email, and phone, so customers can get help where and when they need it.

Let’s put our advice into practice with explains on how to ensure consistent support in three scenarios:


      Incident Resolution Interactions 

• Channels: Email, Live Chat, Phone, Social Media
• If a customer starts a support inquiry through live chat but later follows up through email or phone, their communication history and case details should remain consistent. The support agent should have access to the full interaction history, ensuring the customer doesn’t need to repeat themselves, leading to a smoother experience.
  
  Order Confirmation and Tracking

• Channels: Email, SMS, Mobile App, Website
• After a purchase, customers may receive an order confirmation and tracking information via email, SMS, or through an app notification. Regardless of the channel, the details of the order (e.g., item description, shipping address, estimated delivery date) must remain consistent across all platforms to avoid confusion.
  
  Subscription Renewal or Replenishment Reminders

• Channels: Email, SMS, App Notifications, Website
• For subscription-based products or services (e.g., meal kits, software, beauty products), customers may receive reminders about upcoming renewals or product replenishment. Whether they are notified through email, SMS, or an app notification, the information (e.g., renewal date, product details, amount charged) must be consistent to ensure clarity and avoid unexpected charges.

With such high expectations on the clients’ end, and with the wealth of technology available to customer support teams, it’s now up to online retailers to level up their support teams to not just assist customers, but provide a memorable brand experience. Brace yourselves: peak holiday shopping season is well underway. And as online orders begin to increase, so does the pressure faced by customer service teams: eCommerce brands experience a 75% spike in support tickets during the holiday season. ‍