Holiday Seasons and Customer Experience
The holiday season presents promising customer experience opportunities for most businesses and companies. It’s during this time when everyone’s focus is on shopping and spending on gifts to brighten up the holiday.
For businesses, holidays present an opportunity to make and retain more repeat customers. But some of the businesses fail to make the most of an opportunity.
Providing great customer experience calls for an understanding of the fundamentals of dealing with customers, especially the newbies.
The first impression you create determines a lot. Customers are always keen on service delivery and quality assurance, especially during the holidays when they are willing to spend.
Though it’s challenging to maintain the best customer experience during the holiday season, you should focus on gaining and retaining more customers.
For repeat customers, they are your stronghold. Give them the attention and the assistance they require, for they fully support your business.
In this write-up, we’ll look at a few challenges to expect during the holiday season and the appropriate strategies to help you retain customers.
The Challenges business face during Holiday Season
Holiday season is a buzz of activities. A business must adjust its normal processes to rise above challenges such as;
- High customer expectations
- Cut-throat competition from other business offering discounts and free shipping;
- An increase in the number of customer orders
- Shipping companies are busy because of the increase in the number of shipments.
These and other challenges make holiday season challenging and failure to make the necessary adjustments can lead to customer churn and abandonment.
Best Customer Service Practices in Business That Will Help You Attract and Retain More Customers
The following practices will help you drive in more customers during holiday seasons and other times in your business.
Work with Competent Staff
Because of the high customer traffic during holiday season, you need to have skilled staff who will can keep up with the speed without compromising on quality.
Incompetent staff may end up sending away repeat or even new customers from your business.
Do Not Limit Payment Options.
Technology has revolutionized our world including money exchange. People want to pay through the various payment options.
Therefore, provide all the payment alternatives in your business to suit all your customers’ needs.
Be readily available
Ensure you display your company’s contact information elaborately and clearly on the website and all your advertising platforms.
Also, provide live chats or direct calls for customers whose queries require lengthy discussions to solve. Expect more calls during the holiday season.
Extend Operational Hours during Holidays
During holidays and festive seasons, customers will make orders or contact a business at any time. Remember they are quite excited about the holidays and want to spend.
Extending your operational time may win you more customers.
Make Returns and Refunds Satisfy the Customers.
Most product returns from customers happen during the holiday season. It’s an obvious expectation since most of the customers are making impromptu orders.
With this in mind, ensure you prepare your staff to handle such cases without annoying the customer. You can even assign some of the staff to handle returns from customers.
Respond to customers swiftly.
Great customer experience requires active communication between you and the customer. Customers are bound to communicate whether the business experience was successful or not.
For your part, make a habit of responding to customers timely, whether there is an issue or not. Responding to customers makes them feel cared for and eventually wins the customers confidence in your business.
Final Word.
These simple tips will help you ensure the best customer experiences during holiday seasons as well as other times.
Cultivating a promising experience with customers is the ultimate goal to drive in and retain more customers in a business.
With all these in mind, there’s no reason why you should not reap the best from your business during this holiday and others to come.