According to NAB’s latest customer analysis, the day before Good Friday has grown to rival Christmas Eve as one of the biggest days on the retail calendar.

While this is a very positive sign for the retail industry in terms of sales, the latest quarterly Zendesk Benchmark report has found that the retail industry experienced the biggest fourth quarter drop in customer satisfaction of any industry during holiday season.

This holiday slump in customer satisfaction is not new. Zendesk’s Benchmark report has consistently seen an annual drop in customer satisfaction for retailers during holiday periods.

This may not come as a surprise to many Australian retailers. The weeks leading up to the holidays are always frenzied. Customers expect exceptional and immediate service, particularly in the seasonal dash when nobody has time to wait around. The extra pressure on retail staff leading up to and following Christmas for example is enormous, at a time when customers’ demands are at their highest. These holiday customer service woes can serve as a wake-up call for Australian retailers to better anticipate and prepare for seasonal demands.

With spikes in sales also happening at other various times throughout the year – February for florists, June for winter clothing and sporting goods stores, end of financial year for stocktake sales – the lead up to Christmas and Easter aren’t the only spikes we need to prepare for. But anticipating those customer demands at key times of the year and preparing in advance can help retailers provide excellent customer service during the busiest times, keeping customer satisfaction consistently high and customers returning.

Keeping customer satisfaction high during seasonal spikes is important. With the big swing in volume of customer interactions, below are a few ideas that retailers can put in place now to maintain the same high quality of customer service during the most important season, and keep customers happy and the tills ringing throughout the year.

1. Plan working hours

Now is a good time to analyse the sales and customer requests from previous years. Look at the numbers and see where (in store or online) and when you make the most sales and when and where you get the most customer requests.

A seasonal rush does not always have to mean hiring additional staff or working lots of overtime. It could mean sticking to certain tasks or rotating jobs around the team more effectively.

Take a good look at your customer request flow by time of day as your customers could need support at night or during non-business hours. This could mean establishing a team (or even one freelance agent) in another time zone, or staggering the work day across locations (home and office) without having to hire a remote representative. It could also mean splitting working hours for some staff to start and finish early and others later so customer enquiries can be answered outside normal business hours.

2. Improve your self-service offerings
   Most of your customers prefer to find answers on their own. Our own Benchmarking research showed that in December 2013, retailers with a customer satisfaction rating of below 75 had less than half the number of customers viewing self service content than those with 75 or higher. The key for seasonal success is to focus on improving your self service offerings.

Whether that be developing a knowledge base or forum, encouraging online communities or making sure that your knowledge base is optimised and content rich in FAQs around common seasonal time requests or new product queries, a successful self service portal will not only keep your customers happy but take some of the additional pressure off you and your team.

3. Reduce response time for customer requests
   Speed is often the deciding factor between a good and a bad customer service experience. Focusing on improving your response time will ensure you’re prepared for any seasonal rush. There are a few ways of approaching this.

Firstly, using macros allows you to answer support requests with a single, standard response. This saves you the time and effort of crafting a separate response to each customer that has the same issue. You can automatically respond with links to relevant information in your knowledge base while you work on the request, giving your customers the opportunity to solve their own issue.

Secondly, integrating all your channels – social media, phone, email, website and even mobile apps – can greatly improve your ability to respond quickly. Using one system to handle every customer query, no matter the channel through which it came, ensures that responses are consistent, easier to track and sharable.

4. Don’t always compare yourselves to your competitors

When it comes to delivering customer service, your retail competitors aren’t always your benchmark. Operational traits can prove to be a more accurate and relevant point of comparison than simply being in the same industry. There are many types of customer service operations within the same industry—ranging from small, loosely structured teams that manage a low volume of requests to large, sophisticated support operations that serve millions of customers. This means that major e-commerce players may have more in common with a large bank, for example, than a chain of bottleshops.

It’s often hard not to compare yourself to your major competitors, but looking at other organisations outside retail that operate in a similar way to yours can often give you insights into how you can deliver better customer service.

5. Keep staff morale high

It’s no secret that your customer service team is dealing with your customers for every interaction, so it’s important that they don’t burn out. Seasonal spikes are particularly stressful for staff, and while all retail staff know to expect a December, for example, but that rarely makes it any more pleasant for them.

Involve staff throughout the year in your plans for pre-seasonal rush – as the people on the front line, they often have valuable insight. They will also be pleased to be part of the process and help to prepare for busy periods for both themselves and customers.

Highlight and celebrate customer service achievements in a particularly demanding period, such as fast response times, problem solving and customer feedback. Develop simple rewards programs now that can be implemented throughout the year and concentrated on busy periods. Recognition for hard work and occasionally stressful periods cannot be undervalued.

Daniel Scheltinga is director of services and support at Zendesk.