The holiday season is here! While this is certainly a fun time for love, laughter, and joy, on the business side of things, it’s a time for buckling down and tightening up the screws. With the holiday season comes a surge in business– and that means increased customer calls. The spike in call volume from Thanksgiving to New Year’s can overwhelm any business, and that’s why we’re writing this blog. Here, you’ll find strategies for effectively managing this influx of customer inquiries, ensuring that your customers are satisfied and that your business stays ahead of the rush.

Understanding the Seasonal Surge

Preparing for the Holidays: A Proactive Approach

Optimizing Customer Support Channels

Training Your Team for Efficiency

Using Technology to Your Advantage

Managing Customer Expectations

Understanding the Seasonal Surge

From order status inquiries and promotions to holiday operating hours and appointment availability, there’s a myriad of reasons that calls increase during the holidays. Ultimately, customers expect a degree of consumer chaos with the holidays, and businesses do, too. While the increase in business is certainly a good thing, this can put strain on your customer service teams. With the holidays, there’s an increased potential for employee burnout, longer hold times, and dissatisfied customers. That being said, your business will undoubtedly stand out from its competitors if you elect to prepare for how you’ll manage the spike in customer calls.

Preparing for the Holidays: A Proactive Approach

First and foremost, think about how you’ve handled your call volume for the holidays in the past. Use data, or even just your memories, from previous years to predict when you’ll experience a spike in calls. From there, you can plan staffing and resources more accordingly. Maybe your business would benefit from having more than one customer support channel in place. Maybe consider hiring temporary customer service staff to manage the higher call volume, or you could even think about teaming up with an answering service for the holiday season. In sum, take an honest account of the areas you fell short in previous years and begin brainstorming what exactly you’ll need to overcome those problems this year. Below are some questions you can ask yourself to better prepare for the holiday season (and to bear in mind for the remainder of this blog).

• What was our call volume like during the holidays last year?
• Are there any upcoming promotions, product launches, or special events that we offer that tend to drive more calls?
• What trends are we seeing in our customer interactions across different channels (e-mail, chat, social media)?
• How has our customer base grown or changed since the last holiday season?
• Are there any new products, policies, or services that might confuse customers and lead to more inquiries?
• How effective are our self-service options (FAQs, chatbots, etc), and are they ready for increased traffic?
• What customer feedback have we received regarding our service during previous holiday seasons?
  
  

Optimizing Customer Support Channels

Alright, now that you’ve got some business holiday mishaps on your mind, it’s time to start taking action! First up on our list for better managing increased customer calls is optimizing support channels. There was once a time where providing options to consumers was a pleasant cherry on top of business– now, it’s expected by customers everywhere. When you provide alternative support options (such as e-mail, text, and self-service portals) in addition to taking calls, you offer your customers the opportunity to choose a communication method that is most efficient for them all while freeing up your phone lines. This will not only lead to customer satisfaction, but it will also decrease hold times for customers that elect to make a phone call. Additionally, on your website, be sure to include a conspicuous and detailed FAQ section/knowledge base. That way, customers can more easily find the answers to their questions, and your customer service team can have a link for callers to refer to on-hand (if the answer to their query happens to be on the site).

If you already have a lot of these channels in place, you can always streamline and update them to ensure that customers (and your customer service team) are getting the best possible results. Regularly review response times, accuracy, and ease of access across each platform. Ensure your FAQ is kept up-to-date with the latest information, and implement AI-driven chatbots to address simple queries swiftly. By continuously refining these channels, you’ll handle holiday rushes more smoothly.

Training Your Team for Efficiency

If you fail to prepare your customer service team for the upcoming surge in calls, you’re preparing to fail. Holiday-specific training can immensely improve your business’s customer service output and, as a result, boost customer satisfaction. Brainstorm some common holiday-specific issues (returns, promotions, delivery issues, etc) that your business experiences, and prepare your staff with accurate answers and resources to provide to callers. Brush them up on their customer service skills, and remind them to handle escalations and irate customers with empathy. (You can check out this link for information on how to effectively revamp your business’s customer service practices!) To maintain productivity, it might be a smart move to consider ways in which you could have more staff on-hand for the surge in calls (rearranging the schedule, hiring an answering service, hiring temporary staff, etc). Either way, be sure to encourage mental wellness and breaks to prevent employee burnout. If your employees are stressed and frustrated, it will reflect in the way they speak to your callers!

If you use an answering service, be sure to inform them of any changes you want made to your script to ensure efficiency! On top of that, be transparent with them about when they can expect to receive a surplus of calls for your business. That way, they can best represent your business and provide help to your callers.

Using Technology to Your Advantage

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the surplus of technology available to us today. However, when you make time to take a closer look at all of it, you could find some serious solutions. First on our list of technology to consider is call routing and queuing systems. When you implement call routing, callers can be more easily in touch with the right department (billing, customer service, etc). This can aid in decreasing hold times and busy phone lines. On the other hand, if you elect to use a virtual queuing system, wait times can be better managed– and you could reduce customer frustration. You could always use both!

Another technological route to consider is AI-powered assistance. Chatbots or virtual assistance can provide 24/7 customer support– immensely relieving your team of having to return missed calls. AI can help you to automate FAQs, track orders, and common queries, all which will help to reduce call volume. Implementing AI-powered assistance sounds like a lot scarier of a process than it actually is. You can click here to learn how to get started, or you can click here if you have some hangups about using AI altogether! 

Finally, using real-time data analytics can help you and your team to stay organized. When you elect to monitor call volume and performance, you can better adjust staffing and resources based on your real-time needs.

Managing Customer Expectations

When you effectively communicate what customers can expect from your business during the holidays, you not only build trust and reduce confusion but also create a more seamless experience that encourages customer loyalty. For example, using the aforementioned virtual queuing system is a great way to inform callers of expected hold times up front, allowing them to better manage their wait time. Beyond that, ensuring your holiday hours, service delays, and any important changes are clearly communicated via your website, social media, and/or e-mail helps set clear expectations. If your business is listed on Google, remember to update your holiday hours– this is essential for keeping customers in the loop!

At the end of the day, open and transparent communication is key to managing customer expectations. Proactive messaging through SMS or email updates can keep customers informed about order statuses, shipping delays, or product availability, minimizing the need for them to reach out. By staying ahead of potential issues and keeping the lines of communication open, you’ll create a positive experience that reduces frustration during this hectic time. This kind of thoughtful preparation ensures that customers feel valued and informed, laying the groundwork for stronger relationships that last beyond the holiday rush.

Conclusion

The holidays can be a bit of a stress tornado for businesses for several reasons, and the influx of customer calls can seem to really amp up that stress. Whether the issue is staff shortages, a lack of effective technology, or the increased pressure to meet customer expectations, with a bit of preparation, you can turn increased customer calls from a holiday conundrum into a solution for a more profitable holiday season. Your team will feel empowered, your business will build a positive reputation, and customers will appreciate the seamless, hassle-free experience, strengthening their loyalty for the year ahead.