How to ace your customer service at Christmas
Have you started preparing for Christmas, and we don’t mean buying presents or decorations? Businesses often find themselves caught in the headlights in December, attempting to manage incoming calls when staffing may be low due to increased annual leave or office shutdowns over the festive period.
Follow our top tips to customer service at Christmas to make sure everything runs smoothly and you enter the new year more equipped than ever!
Consider what services are available
To help you execute good customer service at Christmas, it is important to consider which of your services will be available to your customers. If key members of staff are away, you may need to offer a reduced service. A good way to communicate this to your customers is to include important information in your on-hold messaging.
Rather than annoying customers with overplayed Christmas music, set up holding periods to inform callers of what you can help them with during this period. This will make it easy for operators and also manage customers’ expectations to avoid frustrations.
If you do this however, it is important to be realistic – you really don’t want to promise callers something you cannot provide, especially over the festive period when there may not be staffing measures in place to deal with any complaints.
Change your voicemail message
Over Christmas, remember to customise your voicemail message. Inform customers of your opening hours if they are changing over the holidays to avoid the frustration of them calling whilst you are closed. This is such an easy tactic to implement but all too often overlooked!
Changing your voicemail message also gives you an opportunity to add a festive message and showcase your brand’s personality. This is a great way to remain memorable to your customers and could also ease their frustrations if they have not been able to speak to an operator.
Consider Hosted Telephony
As a result of the pandemic, many companies have now moved to a more flexible way of working, with more and more employees working remotely up and down the country. If your business has not yet done so already, switching to a Hosted Telephony service can not only reduce operational costs but also make flexible working arrangements easier to manage, especially for those operators who may be planning to work remotely over Christmas.
Having the right tools is an integral aspect of delivering good customer service, so it’s important to consider every communications solution available to you in order to prepare your business for its busiest periods.
At Inuity Communications, we help businesses upgrade their telephone systems by providing bespoke recommendations which centre your business’ growth and workforce productivity.
Call Centre Solutions
As well as hosted telephony, Call Centre solutions are a great way to ensure you have good customer service at Christmas to give your employees the right equipment to manage calls effectively.
Intuity’s call centre solutions can be tailored to suit your business’ needs by unifying SMS, email, instant messaging, voice, fixed and mobile telephony solutions. This helps your business manage queries in a way that suits your customers and staff. At Intuity, we are experts at maintaining and upgrading these solutions over time to consistently give you a competitive edge.
Remember to relax
Lastly, remember to relax! It is Christmas after all and it is vital that you and your staff get some well deserved rest and downtime over the Christmas break to return to work feeling refreshed and ready to take on new challenges in the new year. Staff who are left juggling calls from disgruntled customers will only become stressed and there’s nothing more unappealing to customers than calling an unfriendly helpline for support.
To improve your customer service at Christmas, create a relaxed office environment so that your staff remain personable to callers. Trust us, your customers will feel more valued and their experience more memorable.
Find out how our range of communications solutions can revolutionise your business’ customer service today, including everything from call centre solutions, hosted telephony and unified communications, contact us on 0345 241 1521, or email info@intuitycomms.com today.
