7 Tips to increase customer satisfaction during peak hours

Customer satisfaction doesn’t run on magic or miracles.

Managing customer service during peak hours is just like planning a wedding. No matter how much you feel you are ready, there will always be something that turns up uninvited. Uninvited guests will always show up but attending to them equal to the pre-decided list can be a daunting task. Improving upon customer satisfaction metrics during peak hours needs proper planning and should involve a lot of advanced unexpected preparations.

In whatever circumstances, the secret to delivering customer satisfaction is usually based on the people who provide it. When the times are rush, customers get agitated because of the long wait. In such a scenario, you need to calm & compose representatives and use their training and experience to do the talking.

However, you cannot win the battle just by having a good army. You need a flexible arsenal that can provide the right weapons to counter.

Here, in this article, we have rounded up 7 tips to marshal your customer service army using the right weapons and win the battle, which is to achieve customer satisfaction.

Tip 1: Learn to stay ahead of time

Become the Sherlock Holmes of customer satisfaction, who gains valuable insights every now and then.

Dig deeper into your customer service insights, analyze the time-frame & channels that customers are using and raise most of the queries. Understand why they are not satisfied; and identify and build your own pace to answer it.

For example, customers or even we, for that matter, do not want to wait in the long queues. Nearly 60% of customers feel that the longer it holds and wait times, are the most frustrating parts of a service experience. (Source) This is the major hurdle to achieve good customer satisfaction rates.

Once you have the full overview of the situation like what, when, where and how your customers prefer the service, it will become easy for you to reduce customer waiting time and marshal your troops according to it. Besides, briefing your agents prior to the situation will empower and ready you to tackle the busiest time. This will create a smart workflow during peak hours.

Tip 2: Implement the omnichannel model

Consumers have demanded more and more from businesses, time and again, and keeping up with it, is difficult. Customers crave convenience and they want their needs to be met now and right now. Offering a channel based on their preferences during rush hours can be a challenge. If you fail to do so, they will leave. Omnichannel customer support, to your rescue!

The omnichannel support platform allows brands to interact with customers in real-time via call, chat, email, social media, etc. Customer interaction is the most important consideration to achieve customer satisfaction goals. By providing the solution in real-time on their preferred channel, they feel overjoyed. Additionally, they are actively involved with your product or service and become attached to your brand leading to higher customer retention. The more you provide prompt and convenient customer service experiences, the more will be the CSAT score.

Tip 3: Offer personalized interactions

Companies do subscribe to the idea of providing personalized services to consumers on regular days. In peak hours, they often look for shortcuts. Customers always appreciate the customized treatment from businesses. They don’t seem to know about the pressure their agents are facing during peak hours. Customers want to feel special and it is the fundamental job of the representatives to make them feel appreciated and rewarded.

Even if customers are waiting in the queue, paying attention to each and every customer gets you a high CSAT score. Be it on the call, chat, email, or even on social media, address them with their names, know about their previous records with the brand are practices to trigger instant ‘feel good’ touchpoints. This helps you to calm down agitated customers and elevates overall customer satisfaction.

Tip 4: Automate as much as you can

With the advancement of technology, businesses have discovered ways to lighten up the workload from customer service agents. IVRs and chatbots have eliminated the long wait in the queue for customers, to a certain extent. Leveraging AI chatbots can answer the basic question of customers in the form of canned responses. Simple auto-response emails can also help even if you cannot address the customer query instantly. At least, they will know when they can expect a reply and they will appreciate the brand has acknowledged their issue. This will allow you to wrap up customer interactions fast and improve customer satisfaction.

Tip 5: Staff up in peak hours

This can be a little difficult to optimize the workforce for businesses. Outsourcing can help you to overcome this issue. The service providers are flexible in managing the workforce, according to the needs. For example, ‘split shift’ for agents is a smart call center practice that service providers perform. It simply means to divide the working hours of agents and make them logged in, during peak hours. Therefore, the service providers can easily counter high volumes of customer queries. As customers get a quick response, increased customer satisfaction is the by-product. Applying this strategy in-house comes with a lot of hassle.

Tip 6: Allow self-service

Just like IVRs and chatbots, self-service portals also play a crucial part in enhancing customer satisfaction and decreasing the number of customers in the queue. It takes off a good amount of load from customer service agents.

Today’s customers are educated about the product and process of customer service. Even if they are not, they want to know more about your offerings. Businesses can do away with kinds of queries during peak hours and guide customers to the self-service portal. Consider, setting up an FAQ section, video tutorials, or picture guides that can help the customers and customer service agents both big time. Customers can come to the portal at their preferred time and have their questions answered. Brands are leveraging AI tools and self-service strategies to enhance customer experience and supporting agents during peak hours.

Tip 7: Focus on providing resolution, not doge them

As the customers have started to resolve simple issues on their own, the agents are in the middle of the continuous crossfire of complex issues that machines are unable to solve. It could be tempting for customer support agents to provide a temporary solution or pass the query in an effort to wrap up the interaction fast.  If you are looking to enhance the overall brand experience in a lesser expensive way, the peak-end rule is very much effective in this scenario. It creates exceptional peak experiences along with the customer’s journey and ends it, all with a bang!

However, be mindful and brief agents to focus on providing solutions and not escaping from them. Train them to handle the most complex issues with ease. Even in the rush to finish the interaction quickly, allow them to take control of the situation and guide the customer through the best possible experience which will allow customers to come again later and sky-rocket the CSAT ratings.

Wrapping up

Once you have implemented the tips from theory to practice and streamlined the process, it’s time to shine. As peak hours demand organizations to the fullest, provide the best possible customer experience, and build a model to achieve CSAT goals, consistently. The only way to deliver is to be transparent and reduce the effort of your customers in order to get their problems solved.

If this blog post has been able to clear your doubts and you are looking for customer service outsourcing solutions for your business, check out our portfolio and drop us a line here.