Five Ways to Better Support Your Customers This Holiday Season
Better support your customers this holiday season, no matter how excellent your marketing campaign, how tech-savvy your product is, or how fast your shipping times are, a weak customer support strategy will leave your customers frustrated rather than fulfilled.
COVID-19 has changed the customer support landscape, creating challenges for workforces and holding companies of all industries and sizes responsible for investing in their client success team.
As the holidays approach, you can lessen those challenges by preparing your organization with these simple tips below.
Train your team in advance.
Is your team aware that there is a big surge of customer calls coming? Do they have the proper resources to keep up with customer demands? Is there backup support and alternative plans to ensure operational smoothness and efficiency? These are questions that must have answers to serve your customers best.
Presenting different scenarios to your team will allow them to handle challenging situations that must require minimal supervision.
Provide your team with the tools to succeed.
As many organizations continue to work remotely throughout the holiday season, it is vital to have the fundamental tools that promote organizational efficiency. Platforms such as Microsoft Teams allow users to keep all communication points in one place seamlessly.
With Smart Direct Routing, organizations that use Teams can reduce operating expenses without worrying about feature reduction. This solution eliminates the purchase of Microsoft’s paths on a 1:1 ratio, saving business costs by roughly 75%.
Individuals that are supplied with the necessary equipment have proven to show better work from home productivity. For example, an employee at SmartChoice has expressed that she works better with an SmartChoice handset.
When team members are equipped and motivated to move needles and solve real-time problems, goals will be met faster, keeping both employees and customers cohesively happy.
Stay customer obsessed.
What are your customers’ current hobbies and interests? Are they looking for a specific service, product, or feature? What were the most recent responses to the automatic survey that was sent out last week? Simple questions like these tend to give the most context.
Businesses must remember the importance of understanding who their audiences are. There are many instances when customers prefer to self-serve themselves by clicking a few buttons on a company website. Others like to pick up a phone to talk to a human being.
When we use human insights to determine the best customer strategy, the implementation process becomes effortless.
Under-promise and over-deliver.
There are many times when we desire to provide the best and quickest customer service.
Although this may be the best-case scenario, it is recommended to have all information points together before supplying an answer to the customer.
Customers enjoy receiving responses that are solutions to their queries instead of receiving multiple emails from different departments stating you’re ‘working’ on the request.
Care for your team.
We can’t forget that the world is still experiencing a pandemic and that solving customer hour-by-hour problems can become taxing. As Richard Branson stated, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
It’s imperative to know that the proper use of emotional intelligence goes a long way alongside organizational tools. When employees feel that their well-being is considered, and they’re not just a machine that is expected to produce results, the return of investment on commitment and company loyalty becomes priceless.
SmartChoice is a technology company based out of New York City with a unique portfolio of solutions including UCAAS, collaboration, software and analytics, dedicated contact centers, security, infrastructure, and managed connectivity. Through its unsurpassed white-glove service and 24x7x365 U.S. based support, it has grown to become one of the largest award-winning PBX/SIP providers in North America.
