Hints and Tips | | Published December 21, 2015

5 Customer Support Tips for the Holidays

The holiday season is a time of joy and appreciation, but sometimes for businesses it's easy to forget that as customers seem more demanding while they deal with the stress of both the holidays and the approaching year end. 

While it's easy to say that customers are just unreasonable this time of year, the best approach is to anticipate and understand your customers' raised stress levels and work to provide the same exceptional service you do all year long.

In a recent blog post from Citrix GoToAssist, Carolyn Healey gives us 5 best practices for dealing with difficult customers during the holidays.

As the holiday season approaches and people rush to get everything done, companies often see their normally level-headed customers become easily upset, irritated and sometimes flat out unreasonable.

We'd like to draw attention to our favorite tips for the holidays from the article: 

  1. Make sure your customer support team is properly trained in advance, both in how to deal with difficult customers and of course on proper use of their customer support system.
  2. Let your customers vent, and acknowledge their frustration. Most people when they are upset or frustrated just want to be heard. Give them that holiday gift with an empathetic ear and never minimize their concerns.
  3. Stay customer-obsessed. This includes empowering customer service agents to make decisions, reducing on hold times and transfers, and and always focusing on what your customers want.
  4. Offer omni-channel and self-service customer support options so everyone can get the help they need when and where they need it.
  5. Always underpromise and overdeliver. This helps manage customer expectations and set the stage for a positive customer experience.
  6. Know when and where to draw the line with abusive or unreasonable customers - your support team is just as valuable and they need to know they are respected and supported by management

Male1-XMas.pngWe hope you will find these tips helpful as you work to provide exceptional customer support throughout the holiday season and all year long. 

We would also like to take this opportunity to wish you a wonderful and safe holiday season, and a prosperous New Year!

 

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