The latest Dixa enhancements are here to help you maintain service quality and connect with increasingly mobile customers during the holiday rush.
This year’s holiday season is almost upon us, and it’s expected to be a doozy, with B2C brands facing some big challenges––shipping delays and product shortages caused by global supply chain disruptions topping the naughty list. Brace yourselves for a spike in inquiries about deliveries––starting… now. Customers are beginning their holiday shopping as early as November, with 44% more than last year preferring to do so online out of convenience.
Labor shortages are also causing disruptions this holiday season. Managers looking to hire seasonal workers need to re-think onboarding and training, and try to streamline this as much as possible. We’ve found that most customer service agents take 2-4 weeks to train. And once they are fully ramped up, they still spend at least an hour every day (on average) looking for answers and information, instead of fully focusing on customer inquiries. With longer conversational queues and less time to focus on the customer, overwhelmed agents often bear the brunt of seasonal service spikes.
This year will mark the transition to digital customer service, where live chat and messaging apps overtake other, more traditional, channels in customer adoption and satisfaction. And somewhat unsurprisingly, mobile customers are once again dominating ecommerce, with 73% of all transactions this year expected to be generated on mobile. As a result, the preferred way of engaging with brands is changing, with consumers expecting real-time, conversational, and effortless experiences.
Amidst seasonal and global challenges, an empowered customer service organization will help you weather the storm this season. It’s important to remember, even during busy periods, service is not only about handling refunds and redelivery inquiries. It’s about establishing real and meaningful connections with your customers. Done right, it’s why 90% of customers will choose to do business with you this year, and next. Customers care far more about how they’re supported during the holiday season than about impersonal promotions and discounts.
If these challenges sound familiar, we’re here to help. We’re sharing the top takeaways from our autumn product release to help you handle the holiday rush. Check out this short video from our VP of Product, Rob Krassowski, for a quick overview of what’s new at Dixa, and keep reading for his 3 strategies for giving your customers the gift of amazing service this holiday season.
3 strategies to help you sleigh your holiday service this season
1. Use no-code customer service automations to maintain service quality
When you need to rely on IT to make changes to your setup, the easiest use cases generally end up getting prioritized. But as you know, what’s best for IT is not always best for your customers. And with speed being especially important during the holidays, if you need an automation to reflect a last minute change, you can’t afford to wait for IT to deliver your change months down the road. With no-code customer service solutions, you’re no longer held captive by lack of technical skills or a vendor that’s slow to help, you can easily implement new automated workflows yourself––no technical know-how necessary.
During the holiday season, every customer needs an urgent update. With Dixa, you’re no longer locked in or dependent on your vendor to make the changes for you. In just a few minutes, you can set up and test multi-step automations that manage customer inquiries as well as provide them with the reassurance they need:
- Re-prioritize conversations from the day prior and place these at the top of the queue
- Re-queue conversations from new customers and route them to a dedicated onboarding team
- Send auto-responses to customers while their conversation is re-queued
While most retailers will brace for a 68% increase in customers contacting you, finding time to coach and enable your team to handle this added pressure may seem like an impossible task. However, it’s easier than you think with an integrated knowledge base that does the training and answer-discovery for you.
Lack of easy access to knowledge uses up an inordinate amount of your agents’ time. When agents don’t have access to a centralized knowledge base, they need to search for answers in your company’s FAQ or messy, outdated internal folders. Others may rely on their peers to pick up conversations they cannot handle. This knowledge gap can easily be fixed with the right tools.
Platforms like Dixa, which has an integrated knowledge base, solve this problem by encouraging knowledge centered-service. Your most skilled agents can create articles for your knowledge base that save other agents precious time and help new employees provide a high level of service from the very beginning. Even better, powered by machine learning, this knowledge base will prompt agents to update and expand articles based on real-time conversations with customers.
And, since text-mining is easy with today’s AI technologies, these knowledge base articles are instantly matched to conversations based on tags and titles. Using AI to reduce employee effort is one of the best ways for you to improve both training time and productivity this holiday season.
3. Double down on digital customer service and mobile to expand your share of wallet
Whether your business is mobile-first or digital-first with a strong mobile presence, providing in-app customer service is a priority. However, the conversations you’re having in-app need to be seamlessly connected to emails, social messages, and web-based support. Why? Because customers will use as many channels as possible to get a response to urgent inquiries.
During the holiday season, this translates into tens of messages from the same customer––sometimes on different channels, picked up by different agents. Soon, your backlog will take weeks to clear.
By implementing the right tech, you can avoid this potential pitfall. With Dixa’s smart routing, live chat conversations are routed to the same agent and connected to threads on social or messaging apps, regardless of the device or channel used to get in touch. This ensures consistency and makes for a better customer and agent experience.
If you only provide live support during business hours, supplement live chat with a self-service module with seasonal updates. Give customers the option to leave messages if agents are offline.
With this approach, you’re in a better position to manage an influx of conversations from mobile apps and websites, as well as give customers the option to self-serve before reaching out––reducing your contact rate.
‘Tis the season… to boost your earnings
It’s clear that this holiday season will not be without its challenges, but with the right technology, paired with a healthy dash of planning, you’re in a position to earn more than ever before as well. Global holiday ecommerce sales are predicted to surpass last year’s by 11%, meaning consumers are predicted to spend a whopping $910 billion in the next two months. Follow our tips to deliver tip-top service this holiday season and cash in on this exciting trend.