How prepared are you for the holiday season?

Christmas is two weeks away, and that means that the last minute Christmas rush has arrived. Customers are contacting businesses at dam-breaking volumes and most customer service team members are becoming inundated with overflowing inboxes. Meanwhile, sales are falling through the cracks as impatient prospective customers with pre-sales questions select more convenient competitors with live chat and AI chatbot communication options that answer their questions more promptly. How prepared are you for the holiday rush? Chances are if you don’t already have live chat software, you’re missing out on something.

How much business are you missing out on?

We live in a 24 hour world, where shops remain open all night for some late night online retail therapy or you do all your Christmas shopping in an hour without leaving your sofa, where you could jump into university classes or book a doctor’s appointment after midnight, and get technical help on your broken laptop at 2am. Do you remember the days when you would have to resign yourself until the next day to get things done, spend an entire day running around doing Christmas shopping, and wait for ages on the phone to book appointments? The internet has completely redefined the way we live our lives.

What does this mean for your business? It means that customers are now expecting businesses to live up to these standards. Customers are busy, and convenience has become one of the top contenders for choosing where to spend their money. Is your business structured for this? Do you have customer touchpoints that are accessible 24 hours a day or is your business closing its doors to business after hours? Being accessible 24/7 does not always mean you have to physically be in the office or have someone available for those hours. An AI chatbot can be your 24/7 helper, tending to the simple requests during out-of-office hours. See? It’s really that simple. A little AI chatbot helper could bring some added Christmas cheer to your business’ top-line.

’Tis the season for phones ringing non-stop

Nothing breaks a productivity streak like a phone ringing without end. We all love the holidays, but secretly dread the chaos that ensues, at work and at home. On the other end of the phone, customers are impatiently waiting to speak with someone and forced to wait on hold indefinitely, join a timeless queue, or return the call later in the day when someone may answer them if their luck’s in. Then you have the overflowing inbox of emailed customer queries and website contact requests from customers looking for answers for pre-sale questions; and everyone wants everything right now. It’s a daunting time of the year for many businesses, but do not despair: live chat is here, to save the day!

The reality is that during peak periods, like the Christmas holidays, customer service systems are always jammed, and customers are perpetually frustrated with being placed on hold, or waiting 2 or 3 days for an email response. It’s more frustrating when it’s a simple question or request that would just take two minutes to answer. This is the beauty of live chat in any business, small, medium or large. Your customer can always easily contact your business, even from a mobile device. If you’re physically not open, they can still reach you out of hours with an enquiry form so that when you get back to them, you have the information they need, or even an AI chatbot might help them with a simple request right there and then. It’s a win-win all round. Reduce the telephone wait queues and answer customer enquiries much faster with this simple addition to your customer service system, and your customers will be much happier for it.

All Santa wants for Christmas is a data driven system

Imagine, if Santa were more tech focused, the North Pole would be a massive factory line, with robotics managing all the wrapping, bow-tying and tagging and the elves would be overseeing the whole project. He would have an elaborate delivery method, and every child would be listed in a massive database, sorted by naughty or nice, with their personal details and Christmas wishes. He may even have an AI system that would suggest gifts based on the child’s demographic, likes and the likes of his or her peers so it’s all socially relevant. It wouldn’t be so farfetched for him to have a direct message or live chat system for kids to be more environmentally friendly and send in their Christmas wish lists digitally, rather than write a letter; this would also be more efficient, as the requests would populate the database automatically because the system integrates seamlessly with any CRM.

Now, with all this automation and data, even Santa needs reports to know if his system is actually working for him. Having advanced reports helps him track the elf customer service team’s efficiency and nip any discrepancies in the bud. We would hope that Santa’s system is fully GDPR compliant to ensure the data is collected correctly and securely stored.

If you’re interested in deploying Click4Assistance, the UK’s premier GDPR compliant live chat software solution, to make your business more efficient and productive for the holiday rush, give us a call on 08451235871 or send an email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and one of our team experts will be with you right away.