5 tips to keep up awesome CX during the busy holiday season

It’s that time again. Holiday bells are ringing, and the mad rush of customers before the end of the year sends service businesses around the globe into a constant state of busy. With so many customers to see to and a seemingly never-ending to-do list for frontline teams, unhappy customers can easily fall through the cracks. But with one in three customers leaving a brand they love after just ONE bad experience, there's no room for letting unhappy customers go unnoticed. Luckily, with the right strategies in place, you can ensure that each customer walks away feeling happy and ready to tell others about their positive experience. How? Here are the five must-dos to keep up awesome CX during the busy season. 

1. Keep priorities clear and simple 

There’s enough going on for your customer-facing teams, don't complicate their jobs by changing up messaging during this busy season. Make sure your team has clear guidance on the key customer service priorities to limit guesswork. 

Each frontline employee should have:

1. Clarity on what your service standards are and how to deliver on them.
   
   
2. Clear KPIs at both a team and individual level.
   
   
3. Access to customer feedback so they can understand what is going well or what needs improvement.
   
   
4. Clear communication lines with their managers if questions or uncertainties come up. 

While it’s a simple step, these things often get overlooked when things get busy. Be sure to check in with your teams regularly to align on priorities and make sure everyone is on the same page.

2. Automate 

Putting automations in place ahead of the busy holiday season can make things significantly easier when the holiday rush it in full swing. The role of customer-facing employees is to deliver exceptional customer experiences — but often, they’re unable to focus on experience if they're busy with simple tasks that could be automated instead.

Ditch manual processes, and consider the following automations:

1. Automatic customer feedback surveys — NPS, CSAT, CES — to collect the information you need to improve the customer experience.
   
   
2. Automated emails and messages to customers, and utilize tools like review request to ask customers to turn their feedback into public reviews.
   
   
3. Utilize chatbots and AI to handle basic, commonly asked questions from customers, like hours, business services, and more.

For every minute frontline teams spend on manual admin, it’s a minute lost on customer experience. Automate where possible to help employees put their time and energy into awesome, personalized experiences for every customer.

3. Immediately follow up on negative feedback 

During the busy season, negative customer feedback can easily peak. Some businesses see an increase in customer inquiries resulting in longer wait times and a higher potential for their teams to experience burnout. While there are preventative measures you can take to reduce negative feedback in the first place, sometimes during busy seasons, negative feedback is inevitable. While negative feedback in and of itself won’t make or break you — how you respond to it can have a big impact on your business success. If you receive negative customer feedback and don’t follow up, customers are not only likely to find an alternative provider, but they’ll tell others about their bad experience. Even if you follow up weeks later, the damage may already be done.

However, if you receive negative feedback and immediately follow up with the customer, you might be given a second chance to make things right. You can understand what went wrong and most importantly how you can fix it. This has the potential to turn an unhappy customer who was about to leave a 1-star review into a brand advocate who might stay a customer and recommend your business to others.

So where do you find the time to follow up with every unhappy customer? The answer is smart, simple technology. 

To be able to immediately follow up on negative feedback, you need two things: 

1. A mechanism for collecting real-time feedback.
   
2. A simple, streamlined way for frontline teams to follow up on feedback

4. Prioritize employees so they can prioritize customers 

As Entrepreneur Daisy Jing of Banish says: Balancing the needs of my employees and customers shouldn't be an issue because we have the same goals and mission. My employees are my top priority. As soon as I know they're empowered, happy and satisfied, I'm guaranteed that it will also be easy for them to take care of our customers. My team should be filled with love first so they can easily love back. 

The holiday season can be stressful, and customer-facing teams often shoulder much of that stress. All year around, but especially during busy seasons, you should be going the extra mile to prioritize your team. 

You can do this by:

1. Checking in: Make sure your frontline teams are provided with the space to express how they’re feeling, get help when they need it and make suggestions to their managers. This can be done efficiently and effectively with the right frontline feedback tools in place.
   
2. Recognition: Make sure you’re giving credit where credit is due. If you want your frontline teams to keep delivering awesome experiences (even when they’re under extra pressure), you need to show them recognition for awesome work when it happens. You can do this through personal messages, company wide shoutouts and face to face conversations of appreciation. 

Remember: When you prioritize your frontline teams, you’re simultaneously prioritizing your customers.

5. Unite teams and invite friendly competition and camaraderie

Although at times stressful, the holiday season can be a whole lot of fun for frontline teams. It’s all about uniting, working as a team and lifting each other's spirits. One way to ignite some friendly competition and camaraderie is to hold a holiday NPS challenge among your various locations and branches. Set a timeline, some NPS goals and an exciting reward and get teams working together on delivering awesome customer experiences. 

One service brand who’s done this well is Stay Upright, an Australian-based motorcycle school that knows the benefits of high-octane activity and friendly competition. The introduction of NPS leaderboards led to more engaged instructors throughout teams. Even the lowest performing instructors had drastically improved their scores and started climbing up the leaderboard. 

With the right strategies in place, you can ease the workload, create awesome experiences for both employees and customers and even have a bit of fun. 

Looking for smart, simple technology to help you out? Learn more about AskNicely here. 

Good luck, and happy holidays!