We are smack dab in the busiest time of the year for retailers. The holiday season is quickly approaching, and the all-time craziest day of the holiday shopping season – Black Friday – is only weeks away. For retailers, this means one important thing: supporting their contact centers. Every year around this time, contact centers are simply flooded with customer inquiries, requests and calls. Here are four ways that you can do a 2013 holiday overhaul to ensure that your contact center is armed and ready.
1. Make Sure Your Online Support is Stronger Than Ever: The importance of strong online support cannot be underestimated by retailers. In fact, 79 percent of mobile Web consumers use their phones for shopping, and 40 percent of mobile shoppers say they will abandon an e-commerce site that doesn’t load in three seconds, according to aggregated data from an OnlineGraduate Programs.com infographic.
2. Consider Going Hosted: A hosted call center is the perfect option for retailers because your service tech – hosted within the cloud via a third-party service provider – ensures that an expert is always on deck to rectify any sudden issues, and if you’re located in a natural disaster prone area, you’ll never have to worry about downtime because the equipment won’t be located in-house.
3. Look at In-store Kiosks: In-store kiosks are the perfect way to keep your in-store customers constantly connected with your contact center. This technology is especially advantageous during the holidays when the majority of associates are unavailable on the sales floor.
4. Keep Call Bursting in Mind: Can your contact center’s system scale at the drop of a hat? When an avalanche of calls come trailing into your system once the deals and sales start happening, you’re going to wish it did.
What else would you add to this list for this year’s quickly approaching holiday season? Let us know!
