5 Essential Tips for Customer-Pleasing, Post-Holiday Customer Service

Source: https://www.ringcentral.co.uk/blog/5-tips-post-holiday-customer-service/
Despite the best-laid plans, holiday gift season doesn’t
always go as expected. No one knows this better than a retail contact centre
agent or store employee, because they hear about every misstep first hand: the
missed delivery, the wrong colour, the product disappointment, the confusion
about how to use a new purchase. This is the moment for those associates to
shine — saving the sale, the brand reputation and the chance to draw that customer
back for future purchases.
As many as 69% of consumers say they will spend more with a
company that has good customer service, while 33% would consider switching to a
competitor after just one incident of poor service, according to the American
Express Global Customer Service Barometer.
A surge in disappointed customers is no time for gaps in
customer service infrastructure to add to the problem. Follow these tips to
turn a negative post-holiday customer contact into a positive outcome:
Tap your best agents
to share their experiences
Chances are the customer already has tried to get answers or
resolve the problem on their own through self-service, so by the time they
reach out emotions are running high. Some agents are great at diffusing the
tension and guiding the customer to calm resolution, while others fall short;
American Express also found the top ways consumers would like to see customer
service to improve is addressing needs more quickly (40%) and making a personal
connection (18%).
Capturing and sharing the tips and insights of outstanding
agents helps drive success across the board. Collaborative contact centre
solutions provide an easy platform to share knowledge across the workforce as
they develop. As new issues emerge, agents can post and share solutions with
other agents.
Connect customers
with experts
When questions are complex, it pays to escalate an inquiry
to the internal expert with all the answers. After all, in a Deloitte survey of
customer centre executives rated the accuracy and quality of information as the
most important attribute of the interaction for consumers.
Agents must be able to instantly, seamlessly hand off the
customer to a knowledgeable associate — not just product experts, but those in
billing, stores, distribution, or others not typically part of the customer
support hierarchy. Easy hand-offs also are key to support new hires by shifting
challenging calls to more experienced agents. This requires a robust
collaboration contact centre solution that incorporates routing capability.
Deloitte found 49% of contact centres plan to make a strategic investment in
routing solutions by 2019.
Be available any way
the customer wants to reach out
Consumers are quickly embracing new communication channels
such as social and mobile chat. According to Gartner, 25% of customer service
and support operations will integrate virtual customer assistant (VCA) or
chatbot technology across engagement channels by 2020, up from less than 2% in
2017. Other research finds video chat is also on the rise.
Retailers must not only offer a wide variety but be able to
seamlessly transition from one to another and pick up the conversation.
Unfortunately, just 36% of contact centres can currently do this, according to
IBM. Solutions also should allow the customer to reconnect with an agent they
have worked with previously.
Expand Your Workforce
as Needed
Post-holiday can be the busiest time for a retail contact
centre. Leveraging cloud-based contact centre solutions enables retails to
easily add agents without requiring more seats, supporting contract or
home-based agents. Top talent-related initiatives retailers need to address in
their contact centres in 2019 include: using analytics to better align staff
(73%), expanding training programs (63%) and flexible work arrangements (53%),
according to Deloitte.
Leverage analytics
Retailers must improve the way they track and analyse trends
in a customer contact activity, as well as improve how issues are resolved, in
order to better address evolving customer needs. Then next year’s
post-Christmas will be even more successful than the current one. Another key
capability is accessing contact centre performance in real time, so managers
can make changes in response to real-time trends. Advanced analytics is the
number one strategic initiative retailers plan to invest in by 2019, cited by
two-thirds of respondents to the Deloitte
Post-holiday customer support is where retailers are challenged to turn a negative into a positive. Supported by the right tools, agents can quickly connect customers to the solution, save the sale, boost the brand’s image, and drive loyalty to keep shoppers coming back all year long.
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