Providing excellent customer service is a key component to any business regardless of the time of year, but during the holidays, customers seem to expect an even higher level of customer service. It’s a good idea to be prepared for the holiday season even if your contact center is used to providing optimal customer service throughout the rest of the year. The best way to prepare for the holiday rush is with best practices throughout the year.

Practice proactive customer service during the holidays and throughout the year.

Whether it’s the holidays or not, a proactive customer service contact center is a far better idea than a reactive customer service contact center. Proactive customer service gives you the opportunity to identify problems before your customers do. The benefits to this type of customer service approach include fewer support tickets and happier customers who are impressed that someone reached out to them to fix a problem before they noticed it even existed.

Proactive customer service should be your approach throughout the year, not just during the holidays. If your employees are used to a proactive approach to customer service, then when things get insanely busy during the holidays, it will be easy for your staff to maintain business as usual.

Make exceptional customer service a regular habit.

Having a customer service plan in place throughout the year will make it easier to stick to the plan when it comes time for the holidays. Optimizing your customers’ experiences year round provides great training for your staff in preparation for the busy holiday season. Then when the holidays roll around, a few simple reminders for your staff will help them stay on task and be able to continue to provide great customer service.

Be sure to document customer service goals, such as being able to close the majority of calls in a certain time frame. Make sure your goals are as specific as possible. For example, you want three out of four calls closed in under three minutes. Documentation should also include the steps necessary to achieve your goals.

Create a system for handling customer inquiries.

It’s easy to get bogged down with customer service requests, especially during the holidays. A system for handling customer requests can help employees deal with them in a timely manner. Requests should be prioritized based on how quickly a customer needs a response or how upset they are. Inquiries can also be categorized into the type of request such as complaints, product questions, or returns.

Once you know the type of inquiry and its priority, you can assign it to the most appropriate customer service agent. Assigning only certain types of calls to each agent helps with call center efficiency too. It makes sense for more experienced agents to handle the more complicated calls. Newer agents may not be prepared to deal with angry customers so it would be more appropriate for them to handle calls regarding product questions instead of dealing with complaints.

Make customer service a priority all year long with workforce optimization software such as Audiolog for Contact Centers by Verint Systems Inc. Audiolog can help you evaluate agent performance using recorded calls and view various quality management reports to see how well your contact center employees are meeting your customer service expectations. KOVA Corp’s enterprise workforce optimization solutions can help you boost employee performance and customer service in your call center. Contact us today to learn more.