“Customer Service is everything and anything that touches a customer – directly or indirectly. Customer service means servicing customers and it’s so much more than just solving problems or addressing complaints. Customer service is part of a holistic customer experience that is capable of providing a critical competitive advantage in today’s increasingly cluttered and commoditized marketplace”. – Joseph Jaffe
Most businesses must be in a state of frenzy in gearing up for the upcoming holiday season. It is an extremely busy time with spurts in business, alluring deals and discounts, engaging promotions, and crazy sales targets. Despite the flurry and madness, businesses love this time as it spells huge returns, and contributes heavily to their overall yearly income and profits. However, in the excitement, many businesses make the fatal mistake of ignoring the fact that a spurt in the number of customers also brings with it a rise in the number of lost service opportunities, enhanced number of customer interactions, more opportunities for mistakes and complaints. This time of year attracts new customers, and if a company manages well, it could well be able to make these holiday shoppers, customers forever. If however, a company neglects them or does not manage the rush well, it could lead to turning, these shoppers, and some regular ones, away forever.
The holiday season is a time of high stress, low tolerance, and heightened demands. These factors in turn make customers even more easily irritated and irate, and their impatience could be heightened if the business does not seem equipped to handle the frenzied and rushed customers. Research has revealed that unfortunately at least 69% shoppers believe their worst shopping experiences have been during the holiday season, which means that some businesses would have lost the chance of making them customers forever. Great customer service from a small business is good enough to trump the products of even the biggest names. Personalized, friendly, and timely customer service is what makes holiday shoppers customers forever, and encourages them to spread the word to others.
With the rise in the number of competitors, and the boom of e-commerce, companies now face even stiffer competition than ever, making the holiday season an even more aggressive ‘battleground’. Awesome deals, free shipping, added bonuses and incentives, and a host of other fierce offers work great for holiday shoppers, but heaps agony on businesses not just in trying to keep pace, but also to first be noticed in the crowd. The best way to get the attention of the ‘deal seekers’ and make holiday shoppers customers forever is to give them awesome experiences, and top class service through every interaction and all touch-points. A business can be certain that new holiday shoppers would come back, and existing customers would continue providing business.
The truth is that customers have become heady with so many choices, and companies falling over each to gain their attention. Their expectations and demands have become stronger and possibly more unreasonable, which become higher during the holiday season. This is the time, in which customers, judge, and ‘size up’ companies not just for their current needs, but future requirements as well. In order to make holiday shoppers customers forever, it is imperative for businesses to ramp up their service and customer experiences. Making every effort to stand out during the holiday season, will ensure that customers remember the company even after all the furore dies down. It is in the best interest of companies to ensure that their customer service shines and is easily perceptible despite the crowd.
The scary part is that even if a company may provide stellar service at all times, but fails to match up during the holiday rush, it could suffer losses and face huge customer churn rates. A company may make every effort all year round to ensure the happiness of their customers, but the dynamics completely change during the holidays, and it is during this time, that they must provide service, which is better than the best. A tall order that does put severe pressure on companies – but compliance is the only route for them, or they risk losing everything they may have built. The sudden increase in business, bulk orders, and the high expectations of customers can be quite unnerving and without adequate preparation, staff training, and planning, even the best companies can falter.
Employees working at companies are human too, the holiday season is a time for their families and them as well, and hence long working hours, demanding customers, and little rest can easily take a toll on them, making them irritable and unwilling to provide the kind of service customers expect. It is therefore the responsibility of companies to ensure that they provide adequate care, training to their existing employees, and maybe even hire temporary staff to deal with the surge. This will equip all to not only perform to their maximum, but also have time off to rejuvenate. Making holiday shoppers customers forever, is a process that needs to begin from inside out of a company – it is not one-time effort or an on the spur kind of action. It takes time, effort, planning, resources, and dedication to ensure that new holiday customers refuse to shop elsewhere even at other times of the year.
The good news is there are several tools and methods that would enable companies to provide stellar service even during the holiday madness. Technology and automation rule – through a fully automated help desk, system based tracking mechanisms, and workload distribution tools, a company can not only work faster, and more efficiently, but also ensure that their employees are not over worked and stressed. It makes sense to allow customers to self-serve, and receive answers to routine queries in order to save time for them, and cut down on the number of queries and calls that the company’s representatives receive. The most problem related areas are usually billing and shipping, and hence it would make sense for a company to use automated processes to ensure that customers can check the guidelines before making purchases, and look up the status of their orders online. Most often none of these routine processes would require human intervention, which means that the company’s valuable human resources can be pressed into ensuring that customers receive friendly and personalized service wherever human interaction is required.
While a company may have guidelines and policies governing their service levels and promises to customers under normal circumstances, it would be imperative to relook at them during the holiday season. As mentioned, heightened expectations of customers leads them to frustration a lot more easily, and hence a company must clarify what they would be able to do and provide during the rushed season, thereby setting expectations, and preparing themselves to manage the rush better. Customers would know what they should expect, and that would keep them from making unreasonable demands and having expectations that would be impossible for the company to comply.
In order to make holiday shoppers customers forever, ensure that your company’s service is as personable, friendly, and memorable as possible. Find ways to connect emotionally with the customers, lower their stress, and ensure that the holiday season remains happy and a time of celebration for them, and your own employees. If your company is able to connect and engage customers at this time, they are sure to relate happy times with your company, which in turn will ensure that they keep coming back every time they need the products and or services your company offers.
