Tips for handling customer service during the holiday rush

We all adore the holiday seasons. And even though this period brings presents for people there are problems the holiday rush comes. Since it is that time of the year when people shop and use many services and customer service volume sees a sharp rise. So, among all the hustle and rush of the holiday rush, how do you keep your customers happy? That is why Master Moving Guide will give you useful tips for handling customer service during the holiday rush.

Make sure to handle customer service during the holiday rush

In order to handle your business during the busy holiday rush, reliable movers suggest you:

• Anticipate your customers
• Include your entire company
• Hire temporary workers
• Focus on urgent customer requests

Anticipate your customers

You have probably already heard about the fact that if you want your business to succeed, you should think like your customers. And this can be very helpful. Especially when you need to handle customer service during the holidays. For instance, you can create a visual story of your customer’s interactions with your business. By doing so, you can try to see the problems through their eyes. Of course, it is easier for you to guess what your customers may want. Yet, this is surely a department where your customers know better than you do. Also, it is very important to prepare for the holiday rush early. Moreover, you can search for your business online and think thoroughly about what your customers may ask:

• Is the contact page easily accessible?
• Does the FAQ section have all the relevant information?
• How much time does it take to reach a live agent?

As soon as you have identified the challenges or roadblocks, you will know how to deal with those problems. Especially if you are in the relocation industry, people will want to know every about their move right away. Since only those in great need will relocate during the holiday seasons, and they need to be able to contact local, intrastate, or interstate movers at any time!

Include your entire company

You need to know that your customer service team is only as great as your business. They are crucial in this period. So, in order to make this holiday season successful, you should include every department. Of course, you don’t need to ask your finance employee to handle customers. You can just ask your different departments to update the customer service team on any necessary changes and give them useful information. By making different teams work together, you will certainly handle the holiday rush much easier.

So, for example, the delivery team can update customer service about what deadlines customers can expect during this extremely busy season. Moreover, your marketing team can update the statistics of customers who are actively sharing their concerns on social media. Also, it is a good idea to use the parent-child ticketing feature of help desk tools. Because this will help you to break broader support tickets into smaller child tickets so that those can be assigned to different teams.

Hire temporary workers in order to handle customer service during the holiday rush

During the holiday seasons, it may be necessary to grow your team. In order to handle countless customer requests during the holidays, your customer service team must be flexible from the beginning. Bear in mind that during the holiday season, your customer support department will be bombarded with requests and complaints. And your current workforce may not be enough to pay attention to all such requests in a timely manner. Hence, hiring temporary or seasonal staff to work alongside your main team is an excellent strategy! Moreover, if some employees are on leave, you will have other agents ready in line who can replace them on short notice. Remember that all planning for the big season is incomplete without the proper training for your staff.

Focus on urgent customer requests

You already know that every customer that reaches your business for support, wants you to prioritize his request first. In an ideal situation, you will be able to respond to every request immediately. Still, that is simply not possible during the holidays. Hence you should make a prioritization system. Your agents should devote their undivided attention to pressing requests. Rather than wandering around low-impact requests. It is very important to separate customer requests as urgent (those that deserve immediate attention) and as not-so-urgent (those that can be done with time). For instance,  you should help your customer to hire movers without getting scammed since it is an urgent request. So your team should know which tasks to focus on first. That way they can plan their task more efficiently and keep your customers satisfied. 

Know how to manage unreasonable customers

During the busy holiday season, it is usual for your business to run into a customer whose demands are unreasonable. And learning how to deal with them is a crucial step. So that you can achieve excellent customer service during the holidays. We all know that it is true that “the customer is always right”. But they are not always so easy to deal with them. And it is obvious that arguing with a customer who demands unrealistic discounts or wants a specific service, can take an hour and a bottle of aspirin. This is exactly why your customer service reps must know how to deal with customers. Hence you need to teach them where to draw the line and refuse your customers if required. That way you will certainly handle customer service during the holiday rush easily and efficiently.