Category Archives: Crisis Management

Why Your Customer Service Strategy Should Include Online Chat

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Why your Customer Service Strategy Should Include Online Chat and MessagingYou’ve probably already noticed: There is a major shift towards messaging in the customer service game. While call centers remain important, many brands are moving towards online conversations with customers over SMS, social media, and live chat. Need proof? Look no further than Shopify’s roll-out of Apple Business Chat to over 80,000 merchants. Or, look at WhatsApp Business, recently announcing that the app is now being used by 5 million small business owners.

From SMS to live chats, it’s clear that messaging is becoming an important part of any brand’s sales and customer service strategy. So, what’s all the hype about? Let’s take a look at a few reasons why messaging is becoming increasingly popular and how implementing a chat feature can benefit your business. Continue reading →

Who are you #OnHoldWith? The Top On-Hold Offenders in the Retail Industry

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Who are you #OnHoldWith The Top On-Hold Offenders in the Retail IndustryBuild a deck. Outfit a room. Fill a prescription. Get a birthday card. Purchase a television. Scoop up school supplies. Order a couch. Snap up a subscription. Spend. Spend. Spend. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

In every facet of a customer’s life, there is at least some encounter with the retail space, an investment of their funds in DIY projects, in personal healthcare, in family activities, in leisure, or in bare necessities. The retail industry is buoyed by this reality and is much obliged to exchange a customer’s hard-earned dollars for goods and services, but oftentimes is ill-equipped to serve the masses of consumers when they things go wrong with a product, service, or delivery. And make no mistake: Things always go wrong.

 

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3 Ways to Prepare Your Retail Contact Center for the Holiday Rush

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3 Ways to Prepare Your Retail Contact Center for the Holiday RushHere’s a sad (but true) story: The dog days of summer are almost at an end. As customers and clientele begin to re-emerge from their sun-soaked vacations, and step firmly back into reality and back-to-school or back-to-work shopping, contact centers in the retail industry and beyond will no doubt see a sharp influx in customer inquiries, emails, messages, and phone calls. Their volume will rise on every channel, and callers will be expecting exquisite and timely customer service regardless of the demands of the busy season. And, too, the numbers don’t lie: Last year, Black Friday yielded over $6 billion online, with Cyber Monday surpassing that number at $7.8 billion. (To say that customers are active during these shopping days is a gross understatement.) As we mentioned in a recent article, “calls to businesses rose more than 375% over the past two holiday seasons.” Continue reading →

How to Prepare Your Call Center for Seasonal Call Spikes: Utilities

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How to Prepare Your Call Center for Seasonal Spikes: UtilitiesIt’s no secret that once upon a time, utility companies could get away with less than stellar customer service. Nowadays, increased competition means that customers have more alternatives than ever before, and are willing to switch providers if they are unhappy. Even utility companies that operate in a de facto monopoly have regulators mandating certain customer service levels with corresponding CSAT scores.

While utility companies can certainly do their best to control customer service metrics like CSAT, they do not control the weather. Hot or cold, call centers in the utilities industry experience drastic spikes in call volume due to seasonal weather changes and unforeseen weather events. A widespread outage caused by a winter storm or a heatwave can completely overwhelm your organization’s customer service department and its phone lines.

While it would be easier to neglect the customer experience in favor of the “just get it done” mentality that stems from such a drastic increase in call volume, it’s important that your call center aims to please, especially during the busiest seasons of the year. After all, this is how customer relationships are made or broken.

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How to Prepare Your Call Center for Open Enrollment [Guide]

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Healthcare Tip Sheet ImageOpen enrollment is one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year for healthcare insurance providers and consumers alike. In fact, many healthcare insurers start planning for open enrollment the minute the last season has come to a close. This is good thinking, as no company wants to find themselves getting ready only a few weeks before November 1st. Regardless, one of the main challenges during this time period is communication, with the cumulative call center volume in the federal marketplace totaling more than 14,569,000 in 2016 alone, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medical Services.

It makes sense: Customers are likely to be overwhelmed by the information they need to sift through in order to make serious decisions about their healthcare coverage. They are bound to have questions for call center agents. This, compounded by their desire to obtain the same level of customer service as they would from their favorite retail and tech brands, leads to massive spikes in call volume for most healthcare call centers. And while it might be tempting to forgo quality customer interactions and neglect the customer experience during this extremely stressful time of year, it’s of the utmost importance that call centers aim to please. After all, this is how customer relationships are made or broken.

How can your call center improve customer interactions during the most important time of year for consumers’ healthcare choices? That’s easy. In our latest tip sheet, you will learn the most important steps to take to get your call center into gear.

(Get the full tip sheet here!)

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Battle of the Airlines, Round I: Air Canada and the Customer Service Question

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Battle of the Airlines, Round I Air Canada and the Customer Service QuestionThere are some amazing benefits to living in Canada (socialized health care, an abundance of maple syrup, and plenty of expressions for foreigners to mock, eh?). However, one clear downside is a lack of competition in the airline industry (that, and the proximity to polar bears).

This is where our story begins.

By all counts, Air Canada is an award-winning airline, a brand built on the notion of customer service. However, they are no stranger to customer complaints: According to Onholdwith.com (a site that catalogs hold time complaints on Twitter), they rank fifth worst.

Obviously, airlines are often at the mercy of forces beyond their control. But even the most unpredictable events can result in predictable responses.

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How Call Centers Can Manage a Brand Crisis

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How Call Centers can Manage Brand CrisisThink a crisis will never happen to your brand? Think again.

2018 proved that reputation-damaging blunders are more prevalent than ever, their devastating effects amplified by the related complaints and commentary buzzing on social media. From Hawaii’s fake missile crisis to the death of a French bulldog aboard a United Airlines flight, many organizations have recently found themselves on the defensive, doing their best to mute negative conversations surrounding their brands. As Ashley McCown, president of PR firm Solomon McCown & Company, notes, “The longer the public has to wait for a response from a company or individual after a crisis, the harder it is to convince it that you’re taking the issue seriously.”

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