The celebrations that define the holiday season may be a time of joy, but the day-to-day leadup to those gatherings can be stressful, and contact centers need to be ready to help frazzled customers.
Consumers spend the season exploring gift ideas, planning parties, searching for deals and engaging in other holiday preparations. By the time they call customer service, they may be anxious and overwhelmed as they try to ensure no element of their holiday plans falls flat.
“The dynamics of that customer have changed,” Mario Matulich, president and managing director of Customer Management Practice, told CX Dive. “Not only does the volume increase, but customers have higher expectations, less time, less patience — and so the pressure on the contact center during the holiday season for many industries is more intense.”
The stakes are high, but companies that deftly handle customer service calls during this period, whether through automation or agent support, have an opportunity to build loyalty with returning and new customers alike.
Contact center leaders who use historical data to prepare for peak periods, direct customers down the most effective path for resolution, and support veteran agents can not only survive but thrive in the chaos.
Data drives customer service excellence
Customer service volumes have peaks and troughs throughout the holiday season, just like any other business. The difficult part is predicting the ebb and flow of queries to ensure enough agents are at the ready and self-service systems aren’t overwhelmed.
Historical data is essential to navigating the season, according to Deborah Alvord, VP analyst with Gartner's global customer service and support research group. Information from prior holiday seasons offer insights to when, why and how customers will reach out.
“You do see increased inquiries, but it shouldn't be an onslaught of, ‘Oh my gosh, we can't handle this volume,’” Alvord told CX Dive. “You should be able to look at historical data and be able to prepare and help to reduce the burden a bit.”
Leaders can look at what types of calls are common. For instance, are customers calling in with general questions, looking for help to place orders or confused about returns?
Contact centers can use this knowledge to guide customers to the right resolution for their inquiry. If returns are a common question, companies can ensure the relevant FAQ is accessible and clear.
Alvord highlighted Lands’ End as a company doing a good job heading off return inquiries while improving CX for its customers. The retailer inserts physical cards into shipments with information about its partnership with Happy Returns and the different ways customers can initiate the returns process.
Customer data can also help drive personalization, which serves as a major differentiator during the holiday season, according to Matulich.
For example, contact centers can use voice of the customer data to ensure shoppers receive order status updates at the pace that fits their preferences, whether that’s when it ships, a couple days before it arrives, or every 24 hours during the transit period.
Even this bit of recognition can make a busy customer’s experience a little easier and more pleasant, which is a great way to build long-term loyalty.
“Someone within your finance group might be looking at that as just extra spend or nice-to-have spend, but you’d be shocked at the amount of market share that comes back your way because so many organizations are failing on personalization,” Matulich said.
Win with low-effort experiences
Stressed-out customers want their queries resolved as quickly and simply as possible. Contact centers can help direct customers o the channel that best fits their needs while requiring the least effort.
FAQs, interactive voice response systems, contact pages and other first stops on the customer service journey present a great opportunity to guide customers to the best next step. Conversely, if these touch points simply list every service channel, the customer may end up more confused and frustrated than when they arrived.
“If they're presented with, talk to us on social, chat with us, call us, email us this form — they're just going to do ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe,’ and sometimes do two or three at the same time in order to get a quick answer,” Alvord said.
Contact centers don’t want to just route customers to certain channels, but resolve their issues there. This is particularly important for self-service options, which are cheaper for the company but can be less flexible than a live agent.
Alvord laid out three C’s for self-service: credibility, clarity and confirmation.
Self-service options can prove credible by avoiding conflicting information or other problems that would make a customer second guess their choice. They can offer clarity by including a detailed, step-by-step process for whatever the customer is trying to achieve.
Finally, digital channels should offer clear confirmation once an issue has been resolved so customers are confident they achieved their goal. If a customer changes the address for a shipment through self-service, they need to receive separate confirmation that the edit went through.
The goal is delivering a low-effort experience. Gartner research has found that low-effort customer experiences positively impact loyalty, lead to positive word of mouth and reduce customer churn.
This can be particularly important during the post-holiday season, when gift recipients may be returning an item from a brand they never interacted with before.
“If you can make that return a low-effort experience for them, then they are going to think more highly of that brand, speak positively of that brand, possibly spend more at that brand and want to return as a customer,” Alvord said.
Support seasonal agents with technology
Higher call volumes put more pressure on staff, so a combination of seasonal help and self-service options are essential for reducing the burden on full-time agents.
Seasonal workers and agents contracted from business process outsourcing companies offer support for full-time staff, but they are less familiar with a company’s policies than full-time staff. As a result, companies can aim to route more complex calls to tenured agents.
Leaders can equip agents, whether new or experienced, with technology that proactively provides knowledge base information to help them handle calls efficiently, according to Alvord. This is an area where generative AI agents can prove helpful.
The holiday season is a test of every aspect of the contact center, from customer routing through relationships with business process outsourcing companies, according to Matulich. The right investments into agent support, personalization and speed of service can help leaders earn top grades.
The goal is to leave customers walking away saying, “‘Wow, you made my life so much easier during one of the most high anxiety points of my year,’” Matulich said.
