5 Winning Holiday Time Customer Service Strategies

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. 

You’ve probably heard of this catchy Christmas song by Michael Bublé, right?

Well, Christmas is technically still around 8 weeks away, but it’s hard to ignore the festive spirit starting to creep in: Decorations are popping up in stores, and the scent of cinnamon and pine is in the air. Before you know it, we’ll be wrapping gifts and sipping hot cocoa by the fire!

As a business owner, you’ve likely stocked up on inventory, launched eye-catching marketing campaigns, and established your sales funnel. 

But here’s a question: Have you considered how to manage the inevitable flood of customer service requests? 

Starting from Black Friday and stretching through the new year, the pressure on your support team will be at its highest. As the shopping frenzy takes over, customers’ expectations rise, and this is where excellent customer service can make all the difference.

If you want to be the brand customers remember—and return to long after the holiday lights have dimmed—it’s essential to ensure your customer service team is fully prepared. 

In this article, you’ll find the most practical holiday-time customer service strategies to help you prepare.  So, let’s get the ball (or bell?😊) rolling!

Table of Contents

• Key Differences Between Regular and Holiday Time Customer Service
• Preparing Your Team for the Holiday Rush
• 5 Proactive Strategies to Manage Customer Expectations
• Improve Your Customer Service for the 2024 Holiday Season!

Key Differences Between Regular and Holiday Time Customer Service

The holiday season brings about significant shifts for both retailers and shoppers. For retailers, there’s a noticeable increase in foot traffic both online and in physical stores. Support requests pile up, and consumer spending reaches new heights. 

Forbes reported that U.S. retail sales grew by 3.1% during the 2023 holiday season, driven mainly by promotions and increased holiday spending.

However, it’s not just sales volumes that change. 

Shopper behaviors and expectations transform during the holidays. Consumers start planning their purchases earlier, driven by holiday deals and special offers. Impulse buying becomes more common — 59% of Americans admit to impulsive holiday purchases.

Online shopping also takes off during the holiday season, with its convenience, wider product availability, and easy price comparisons attracting more customers. Many shoppers prefer to avoid long in-store lines and take advantage of online deals and home delivery.

While excellent customer service is critical year-round, during the holidays, shoppers expect more — they want personalized offers, exclusive promotions, and a smooth, hassle-free experience. Price and quality become pivotal factors in their decision-making, making it crucial for retailers to focus on providing exceptional service that meets these heightened expectations.

As the holiday rush approaches, it is important to ensure your support team is ready to meet the challenges ahead.

Preparing Your Team for the Holiday Rush

With the right preparation, you can help them handle the pressure, offer exceptional support, and keep your operations running smoothly. 

Here are some key strategies to help your team prepare for the holiday rush.

Strategic Staffing and Scheduling

First things first: Acknowledge that the holidays will inevitably lead to a busy season for your customer service team. Next, take proactive steps to get ready for the rush.

Support tickets can surge by an average of 79% in the first week. This spike usually follows the excitement of Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions.

After that initial rush, the number of support requests remains above average throughout December. The only break in this trend is the week after Christmas. Interestingly, this heightened demand often continues into early January as well, before things eventually settle down to normal.

With this in mind, it’s clear that there’s truly no such thing as starting too early when it comes to gearing up for the holiday season!

To avoid overwhelming your team, it’s important to plan ahead by analyzing your historical data from previous holiday seasons. Look at patterns to predict peak times and volume surges, then adjust your staffing accordingly. This could mean hiring seasonal workers or offering flexible shifts for current employees to ensure you’re never understaffed.

You might also want to implement “Support Load Balancing” across different time zones. This strategy enables you to provide 24/7 holiday support while preventing local teams from becoming overworked. By distributing the workload internationally, you can maintain a high level of service while keeping your staff fresh and engaged.

Also, it’s a good idea to stagger breaks and create overlapping shifts, so you maintain full coverage without burning out your team. Advanced scheduling software can help you stay on top of this and avoid any gaps in coverage.

Specialized Training for Holiday Scenarios

Your team needs more than just additional manpower; they must be prepared for the unique challenges of the holiday season. 

Training should focus on equipping them with the skills and knowledge to handle high-stress situations and customer frustration that can arise from delays, stock issues, or shipping complications.

Scenario-based training works especially well for this. For example, running role-play exercises where your team practices de-escalating angry customers or addressing last-minute order changes can help build their confidence. 

Additionally, make sure they’re comfortable using all the tools and systems available, from managing multiple chats at once to tracking shipping inquiries efficiently.

Building a Resilient Team Culture

We’ve said this so many times before, and we’ll say it again: The holiday season can be taxing for customers and your team. 

Hence, fostering a supportive and resilient team culture is essential to keep morale high. In this case, you can:

• Encourage open communication, where team members can share their challenges and successes. 
• Team-building activities, even as simple as sharing lunch or having regular check-ins, can foster camaraderie and reduce stress.
• Recognizing your team’s efforts is equally important. A simple ‘thank you’ can go a long way in showing appreciation for their hard work during this hectic season. 
• Small incentives, such as gift cards or extra time off after the holidays, can also motivate your team and keep them engaged throughout the rush.

Focusing on staffing, training, and team culture will set your support team up for success and ensure they can confidently handle the busy holiday season.

5 Proactive Strategies to Manage Customer Expectations

Having a strategy can make the difference between satisfied, repeat customers and those who walk away frustrated. 

Here’s how you can stay ahead with proactive customer service strategies.

1. Implementing AI-Powered Chatbots

One of the quickest ways to manage high volumes of inquiries is by integrating AI-powered chatbots into your customer support. Chatbots are crucial, especially during the holidays, as they’re available 24/7 when the volume of customer requests are at their highest.

Chatbots can answer simple, common questions like “Where is my order?” or “What’s your return policy?” in real time, saving your team valuable time. 

According to research, 47% of consumers prefer using chatbots for quick interactions with brands or making purchases. AI tools help customers get instant answers without waiting in long queues, improving overall service efficiency. 

To take this a step further, consider chatbots designed specifically for the holiday rush, much like those created by customer experience platforms like Hiver. These AI chatbots enhance user experiences by providing continuous availability and quick responses, making them an excellent choice for busy seasons.

Hiver’s chatbots feature three key components that contribute to their effectiveness:

• Admin Module: This allows for easy setup and management of the chatbot, ensuring it’s tailored to your business needs.
• Agent Module: Provides real-time oversight of interactions, so your team can step in when needed.
• End User Module: Guarantees a seamless customer interaction experience, making it simple for customers to get the help they need.

By utilizing a comprehensive approach like this, your customer service team can deliver fast and effective support, enhancing the overall experience for customers during the hectic holiday season. 

With the right tools in place, you can ensure that your team is prepared to handle the influx of inquiries, keeping customer satisfaction high and stress levels low.

2. Transparent Communication About Potential Delays

During the holiday season, customer service delays are normal due to increased traffic and labor shortages. These delays can impact key performance indicators like response time, CSAT, and NPS. 

The key is not to panic but to manage customer expectations effectively by being upfront about service delays. Customers appreciate honesty, so if your team is experiencing a spike, notify them early about the expected wait time. 

Research suggests that 94% of consumers consider transparency is a critical factor in their brand loyalty. So, when customers know what to expect, they are more likely to remain patient and understanding, which can significantly reduce frustration and dissatisfaction.

Email support remains one of the top methods customers prefer for reaching out, with 54% favoring this option. 

However, managing email support can be challenging, such as missing critical inquiries or responding too slowly. That’s where tools like Hiver come into the picture! 

Hiver ensures every incoming support email is captured and assigned to team members, preventing emails from slipping through the cracks. 

With Hiver, you can effortlessly manage every incoming email and assign them to specific support team members with just one click!

The best part?

Hiver lets you track all your emails by assigning a resolution status. With statuses like Open, Pending, and Closed, your team can quickly pinpoint which emails need immediate attention, helping them resolve open tickets more efficiently.

This empowers support teams to easily provide fast and effective email customer support.

3. Creating Holiday-Specific FAQs and Knowledge Bases (Optimizing Self-Service Options)

Providing customers with self-service options is a great way to reduce the load on your support team during peak holiday time. By creating a holiday-specific FAQ section, you can answer seasonal questions upfront. 

For example, an updated knowledge base can easily address common inquiries about return policies for holiday gifts, extended shipping times, or promotions. (Think of how often you’ve visited an FAQ page only to reach out to an agent immediately because you still couldn’t find the information you needed.)

Research shows that 67% of customers prefer self-service over speaking to a representative. Optimizing your help center for the holiday season can lead to quicker resolutions and fewer support tickets.

Hiver’s Knowledge Base enables you to effortlessly maintain a centralized library of helpful articles, FAQs, guides, and more for your customers.

Setting it up is straightforward and can be customized to meet your business needs. A handy search bar allows customers to find answers to their questions quickly. If they can’t locate the information they need, they can easily submit a ticket right from the Knowledge Base.

4. Utilizing Unified Communication Platforms

Holiday shopping often brings an influx of messages across multiple channels—email, social media, live chat, and more. You can use a unified communication platform or a Live Chat feature to streamline all communications. 

Tools like Hiver allow customer service teams to manage all customer interactions from a single interface, making providing quick and consistent responses easier. 

For example, Hiver’s Live Chat can be accessed directly from Gmail, a tool your team is already comfortable using. With live chat, your agents can provide real-time support, offering customers a hassle-free way to get the assistance they need.

Additionally, Live Chat is an excellent way to gather all the necessary information regarding a customer’s query. This information can be routed to the appropriate agent, allowing for quick resolution of issues.

Insights from Reddit discussions highlight the importance of exceptional customer service during the holidays. For example, one Redditor mentioned, 

“I had a great experience ordering slippers from a seller on Etsy once. I ordered Gary (the snail from SpongeBob) slippers in size 48 US (I’m a big dude). I’ve been wearing the same ones for years, because they’re super comfy and they look utterly bonkers on me. I order two more pairs for and absolute bargain price, but when my package came in, it was just one pair and way too small. I got in touch with the seller, they tracked my package and did a reissue right away, as it was a supplier error. They let me keep the small pair. About a week later my package arrived, two pairs this time, but again the wrong size. The seller got on it right away and found out his supplier actually didn’t have bigger sizes. Not only did the seller plan to give me a full refund, he also let me keep all three pairs of slippers. I told them to split the costs, as I would still be able to make some friends happy with the slippers, I actually had to convince him to accept. Great customer support, even though I never got what I wanted.”

This story illustrates how great customer support can lead to positive outcomes, even when things don’t go as planned. It reminds us that timely and attentive service can turn a frustrating situation into a memorable experience.

5. Boosting Team Morale During High-Stress Periods

During the holiday season, increased inquiries can create added stress for customer service agents, leading to burnout. 

This is why many retail contact centers significantly increase their staff—some businesses increase their workforce by 30% to 500%. 

While having extra seasonal agents helps manage the surge in support requests, it shouldn’t be seen as a solution for turnover issues. Seasonal agents often require training and may lack the experience of long-term employees, so brands must focus on maintaining high morale and retaining their seasoned staff.

To uplift your team during this hectic period, find ways to express gratitude and motivate them. Your approach may vary based on the size of your staff, but consider strategies like extending breaks, providing meals, and offering holiday bonuses. 

Additionally, managers should actively recognize and appreciate the hard work of customer service agents during this busy time.

These strategies will help you manage the holiday rush and leave a lasting positive impression on your customers.

Improve Your Customer Service for the 2024 Holiday Season!

Global holiday sales are projected to reach $1.19 trillion this year, an increase from last year’s $1.17 trillion. In the U.S. alone, sales are expected to hit $277 billion. 

With numbers like these, it’s clear that this holiday season is going to be one of the busiest times for retailers and their support teams. These weeks will test your customer service team’s capabilities.

Your team must have the tools and strategies to handle the rush effectively to meet the heightened demand. Make sure they’re well-prepared so they can go the extra mile and make this holiday season not just manageable but a success!

If you’re ready to embrace this transformation, Hiver provides an easy way to start. Sign up for a free trial today and experience the benefits firsthand.