November is just around the corner, and with it, the season of big discounts before Christmas. That is why it is time to implement measures that improve the employee experience and strategies that convert visits into guaranteed sales to make Black Friday and Cyber Monday your goose that lays the golden eggs.
The importance of Customer Service on Black Friday
From the consumer’s point of view, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are key days to buy basic necessities at the best price, cravings with irresistible discounts or early Christmas gifts. However, even though consumer interest increases exponentially around these dates, it can be difficult for businesses to close sales and convert numerous visits into final purchases.
To achieve the best results, it is necessary to prepare your contact center staff so that they can cover all incoming requests, while guaranteeing a quality, efficient and personalized service. Don’t know where to start? Here are the essential practices to facilitate the job of the agents and increase the satisfaction of potential customers.
Prepare your agents for Black Friday
1. Keep a fully trained team
Customer service is an element of key value for the consumer. In many cases, they are the only human participant in the process of buying the product or service offered by the company. Therefore, it is essential to maintain a high level of education and continuous training to guarantee success in seasons of high demand.
Be sure to foster a collaborative workspace where staff can count on the professional support of their peers. It is also essential to invest in specific training to learn how to manage stress under a high number of calls, how to deal with dissatisfied users or how to manage recurring incidents throughout a busy working day.
2. Expand the workforce
It is unavoidable. In order to offer effective customer service capable of covering Black Friday and Cyber Monday, an expanded workforce is necessary. If the contact center cannot afford the costs of onboarding new staff members, it can also automate processes with omnichannel software tools.
In this case, using chatbots can be a great solution. In an extremely competitive environment like Black Friday, any consumer discomfort will lead to competition, so it is essential to invest in software capable of responding to customer needs efficiently and consistently.
3. Boost autonomy
Although it is essential to have a cohesive team so that they can help each other in case of need or doubt, as a manager, the autonomous work of agents should also be encouraged, especially when the time invested in each query is decisive.
In addition to adequate training, agents must also be given some freedom and creativity to learn to handle the most complex cases on their own, with full confidence in their abilities as customer service professionals.
In this way, you will have a team motivated by its responsibility, in addition to reducing waiting times and transfers, thus improving the experience of the potential customer.
4. Rotate teams and combine forces
To avoid agent burnout, it is important to encourage flexibility in your job. For this reason, a good strategy is to rotate the team through the different positions to avoid wear and tear. Being able to vary the channel or the functions, either on a daily or weekly basis, helps to generate better performance, offers more rest and encourages the dissemination of new skills in the team.
How to improve the performance of your contact center for Black Friday?
Not all the responsibility rely on the task of the agents. As the person in charge of a contact center, it is essential to plan long and short-term strategies in advance that respond to consumer queries and that drive the conversion of visits into final purchases.
1. Plan the day in advance
The first step is to analyze historical data to assess trends of the industry and consider the challenges so that spikes in demand do not destabilize the team. Remember that Black Friday is no longer a matter of a single day, and therefore you have to go a few weeks before Friday, November 25, to expand the opportunities.
It is also essential to segment the databases well and send the offers that best suit their needs. It’s the perfect time to compensate VIP customers with special promotions for them.
2. Meet customer expectations
In a fully digital and connected world, customers expect businesses to be available 24/7. In the case of traditional telephone inquiries, customers expect an immediate, efficient and agile response from agents.
It is also essential to keep the client informed about the extended and reduced working hours of the company. This way they will know when to get in touch and manage expectations rationally. Transparency and proximity are the best virtue.
Also, if response times are significantly long, notify customers in advance, either with an autoresponder, instant message, or social media.
3. Opt for an omnichannel strategy
Technology has evolved in recent years, allowing the integration of new tools to get in touch with companies apart from the traditional telephone route. Therefore, consumers expect to be able to access these new features for support.
There are those who prefer self-service, or who rely on a convenient question and answer page to find the solution to their query. Integrating omnichannel tools for classic customer interactions like order updates and status tracking is a great way to reduce unnecessary burden on agents and keep customers satisfied.
On the other hand, there are also those who prefer to have a much more direct contact and transfer their query to a human agent. Each client has a different preference. Still, everyone hopes that the result will be a quick and efficient resolution of their problem. Taking into account this diversity of consumers, opting for channel diversity will keep your contact center afloat, generating a better experience for both agents and consumers.
4. Integrate social media
As we have mentioned in the previous section, maintaining a fluid strategy from different channels is essential to guarantee the success of any contact center. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, special offers are launched to attract new leads. For this reason, solutions must be enabled that generate a much closer and binding connection with the potential customer, that is, integrate social media organically into the communication plan.
5. Automate and simplify processes
To help the conversion of leads into customers, it is necessary to automate and simplify all processes. In this sense, bots can be of great help to attend an unlimited number of queries at any time of the day, without being tied to the team’s working hours. It is also essential to integrate a system of intelligent IVRs to distribute orders and coordinate deliveries by phone, or use cognitive chatbots to assist customers who buy online, or even take orders by courier.
The easier it is to pay, the higher possibilities of sale and fewer abandoned carts. Implement agile online payment solutions so that the customer’s journey is completed in a few clicks.
6. After sale service
Do not forget that after making a sale the service continues. To complete the Black Friday campaign you must continue to strive to keep the customer happy and even exceed their expectations. Plan a post-sale strategy and make sure that the orders have reached your buyers on time. Do not forget to measure the satisfaction of your customers regarding your service. Manage bad experiences. Resolve incidents by improving First Call Resolution. This is essential to measure the quality of the service of your Contact Center.
Get ready for Black Friday with ICR Evolution
Spikes in customer demand, test the organization and methodology of any contact center. For this reason, it is essential to be prepared for everything that may come, and differentiate the company not only for its discounts, but also for the experience provided to customers.
Evaluate these tips that we detail to anticipate November campaigns and provide the best customer service with our omnichannel software for Contact Center EVOLUTION.
Offer an excellent experience for both the agent and the customer, and prepare yourself to guarantee success in your Contact Center. Are you ready for Black Friday? Request a demo and find out how we can help you!
