No business can afford to ignore planning for peak hours and expect to achieve client satisfaction, especially the brick-and-mortar stores. It increases the chances of better ROIs and sales. eCommerce businesses and other retailers can offer discounts, deals, and schemes, thus bringing big money and attracting new customers. All of this sounds wonderful until you are scared with increased requirements for customer support, non-stop emails, and so on. Of course, the greatest challenge to satisfy the customers is delivering customer service during peak hours.

Stats say that 69% of consumers identify the customer service quality on whether they receive the quick resolution to their queries. This means, if you overlook providing quick and engaging customer support, you lose. 

Thus, it becomes vital for businesses to seek effective hacks that can assist in providing satisfying customer service during peak season. So, below are some ways that allow e-businesses to boost their consumer support services. Let’s begin!!

Strategies to Deliver a Great Customer Service During Peak Hours

Keep Queuing Simple and Fair

 

All companies are aware that perceived waiting times have a major impact on customer satisfaction. Therefore, it is crucial to distract visitors’ attention from waiting times. This increases the level of comfort and customer experience.

Consumers’ behavior in queues is different. Some people prefer queue jumping, which means switching between lines to reduce the waiting time. But others join the queues and after a while analyze that the waiting time is long and quits. These behaviors depict the queue’s unfairness. 

Implementing a virtual queue management system can be beneficial in all aspects plus fair queuing can be achieved. A variety of queuing options like SMS queue management system, QR Queue System, etc are available nowadays as per the size and requirements.

Prepare Solid Plan Beforehand

 

It is always advised and better to plan before 2-3 months of festive or holiday times. You might be wondering why? This is because operating a business safely is always better than being sorry later. For creating a solid plan, begin with collecting facts like present workflow, expected customer flow in peak hours, and more. 

Analyze the metrics to understand the busy hours experienced in the past. Track the customer shopping habits. You can prepare yourself better for those times when you figure out your busiest days, hours, or months.

Overall, it is essential to manage busy times effectively and provide quality support to customers before peak hours arrive. Remember, the level of support your offer defines whether your business will receive repeat customers or not.

Empower Staff With Training

 

Customers feel annoyed if they are made to wait for their queries to be resolved. Moreover, consumers become more agitated if the staff needs to seek help from their seniors.

Make sure employees understand your offers clearly. Conduct the transfer of knowledge regularly, reducing turnaround times. Also, you can invest in creating detailed guides, FAQs, manuals, troubleshooting steps, and so on. All this may seem daunting, but putting in the effort will pay off in the long run. 

 

Self-Check in Options

 

In this technological world, people prefer their needs to be addressed instantly. Therefore, as a business, it is important to inform customers how fast they can get answers to their queries. 

It can be done either through a specific website section, an online chat, or the FAQs for eCommerce stores. In addition, you can offer an automated self-service kiosk that allows visitors to register without waiting in queues. Such automated procedures and guidance will help the support team serve the customers quickly.

Allocate Adequate Staff for Peak Times

 

Whether you decide to employ temporary personnel or hire a customer service firm for holiday staffing, it is necessary to prepare well in advance. These companies provide seasonal staff the essential tools and years of experience to give quality customer service during peak hours.

Another thing you must do is to hire, train, manage or retain your staff during busy times. The best thing is to choose temporary employee solutions from specialist call center providers, whether onshore or offshore.

Automate Repetitive Tasks

 

Another major hack to minimize the support team stress during peak times is to automate the tasks that have no negative impact on the customer experience. 

For instance:

• Analyze and refresh the support desk’s replies. With the answers saved, the team can answer customer requests faster and provide exact customer support. 
• Interact with the customers: Configuring an email auto-response is the best solution if you know it would take longer than usual to respond. These exact expectations help customers to understand the support team and encourage patience 

Customers ‘ informed on estimated response times contributes to a better experience. This ensures that you don’t ignore their requests. Also, it helps the support team not make an effort to resolve repetitive queries. 

Gather Customer Feedbacks 

 

Remember that your efforts may not be appreciated by satisfied customers, but the unhappy ones will complain. So, do not overlook understanding the demands, trends, and expectations of customers. Recognize the last year’s peak times feedback and try to cover up the customer disappointments. Of course, you can only improve customer service and satisfaction if you know what your customers are looking for.

Also, read –  For what reason should your business be on Instagram? 

Customize Your Responses

 

Companies rely on delivering personalized services to their clients on common days but neglect the same during peak seasons. The customer expects the service providers to provide them special treatment whether they be new or existing customers. Hence, one thing you can do is send personalized emails or messages like “it’s been a while that you haven’t shopped.”

Also, throughout the entire online call or live chat, you can just show gratitude, say sorry or thanks. This helps build a memorable experience that gives the client a sense of appreciation and brand loyalty.

The Bottom Line

 

In short, holidays or festivals are the best times in the year for enterprises to offer unique and memorable shopping experiences. So, prepare yourself to present customer service that distinguishes you from others, rather than following the same approach. These hacks can add greatly to your effort in improving customer service during peak hours You may experience this daunting during busy times, but these hacks will help you boost support in every aspect.

Share your thoughts or strategies you follow in your business to deal with customer queries during holiday seasons. Thanks for Reading!!