How Do You Ensure Exceptional Customer Experience During Holiday Shopping?

I ordered some car cushions during the Black Friday sale, and I got a good deal. The cushions were delivered, and the delivery package was in shambles.

It was torn, and they were in bad shape when they arrived. So, I took some photographs of the damaged packaging and sent them to the customer support team.

Upon receiving these photographs, I got a message from them stating this:

Thank you for sharing these photographs. We will let the concerned team know about it.

I was stumped for two reasons:

• They sounded so enthusiastic about receiving the photographs
• This message did not allow me to progress the conversation.

So, I checked with them on how I could return the product.

I was told to file a complaint and that someone would respond to it. To date, nobody has responded, and my experience with them went for a toss.

In fact, when I ordered, I suggested it to a bunch of my friends and relatives. Now, I am not sure if I would do the same.

I am sure they were under tremendous pressure to service the orders, and customer experience took a hit because of that.

What Should You Do to Avoid Such Experiences During the Holiday Season?

Scale Up Your Support to Accommodate the Surge

You should temporarily increase support staff for your holiday and festive seasons. Besides, you should use chatbots for order tracking and returns while saving agents time in resolving complex issues.

You should implement self-service capabilities where you can provide step-by-step guides and even video tutorials for common issues. Besides, they can converse with chatbots. If they can find the answers, it makes everyone’s life easier. When they don’t find the answer in the self-service channels, you should provide an option for them to seamlessly transition to talking to an agent.

This would avoid most routine and mundane requests of customers, which would be more than 80% of the queries, while ensuring agents are available to provide the care the other 20% of customers expect.

Easy Self-Service Returns

I went to their mobile app to order. Should the app not have the functionality for me to return what I ordered? I can request the return myself and upload the photographs.

Assume the company accepts the return, and they can provide me with two options – return the money to the account from which the transaction was made or deliver another set of cushions while picking up the returns or just after that.

Look at the example of IKEA.

IKEA simplifies returns by letting the customers initiate the process online or in-store. Absolutely no questions asked, and it results in a smooth process.

After all, every customer understands that there will be service issues, but they want to be heard and valued.

Communicate Proactively

Check if you have systems that inform customers proactively about updates and delays in real-time. Use automated email, SMS, or messaging apps like WhatsApp to keep customers informed about complaint status.

As a customer, you typically rest easy when you are provided with appropriate resolution times.

Empower Your Agents

Do your agents know how to respond to customer queries like damaged goods or returns? Provide them with templates on how to respond to them and resolve queries in the first contact without escalating them.

Provide your agents with contextual knowledge – with the right tools, agents can quickly access accurate information, which provides a personalized experience for customers while ensuring faster resolutions.

Allow your agents a certain level of discretionary spending that would allow them to make immediate decisions on offering replacements and returns while initiating investigations.

Here is the classic example from Zappos.

Zappos is famous for empowering its customer service agents, including offering overnight shipping for replacements without waiting for damaged goods to be returned.

Close the Feedback Loop

When was the last time you received an email or a call from a customer service team after they resolved your issue?

How did you feel when you received it? I am sure your loyalty towards that brand or the organization would have grown multi-fold.

This is what closing the feedback loop does. Besides, when you seek feedback about the resolution process after this step, the customer is most likely to provide you, which would result in a lot of learning.

Leverage CRM

When you have a CRM in place with an integrated omnichannel contact center platform, you don’t leave anything to chance.

Every customer interaction is tracked proactively, and the agents get a single view of all customer interactions across all channels and interfaces. This would allow them to provide personalized customer service.

You need to have the right tools, technology, and management in place to offer exceptional customer experience.

Ideally, you should choose a platform that offers you omnichannel capabilities and the ability to integrate with your internal IT systems.

Besides, you should have features and functionality like analytics, intelligent routing, workforce management, data management, self-service capabilities, and conversational bots to ensure that the customers receive the best possible experience.

Above all, you should empower your agents to do good for the customers at all times.

With these strategies in place, you should be able to sail through your holiday surge and provide happy experiences.