Most small to mid-size retailers earn more than a quarter of their sales during the last two months of the year, which means it’s crucial to provide a top-notch customer experience for anyone shopping in-store or calling with questions about seasonal events and hard-to-find gifts. And, even if you are staffing up for increased holiday foot traffic and calls, there will be a time when you can’t pick up the phone, because you’re too busy providing in-person service. The good news is that CallJoy is here to help make sure you never miss a call.
Here are five ways you can use your CallJoy service to give your customers the very best this holiday season:
Set up custom greetings to promote holiday sales and specials
With CallJoy, even when you can’t pick up the phone, your customers will be greeted by an automated agent with the option to add your own personalized greeting. You can set up specific Call Actions that give customers valuable information about holiday sales or events, and popular items that may have previously been out of stock. You can also use the textback feature to offer customers the option to receive an SMS message with a link to your website for online purchasing.Train employees to politely and accurately answer questions
Chances are, you’re hiring seasonal employees to help keep up with the pace of the busy holidays. Temporary employees don’t always get the training that a full-time hire might get, but teaching all of your employees how to engage a customer and answer commonly asked questions could mean the difference between making a sale or not. Leading up to the holidays, have your new staff shadow more experienced employees, and for phone training you can use your call recording feature to find good examples of positive customer interactions. Once the the holidays hit, create regular briefing sheets (ex: new products, upcoming sales, etc.) for team members to review when they arrive for a shift, and be sure to keep one near the phone so they can easily access the information when speaking to customers. Review your CallJoy transcripts and call recordings often in order to get ahead of any customer service issues and give specific feedback to individual employees.Staff appropriately based on most frequent call times
You probably have an idea of when your store is likely to see the most foot traffic from holiday shoppers, based on retail traffic patterns in your area, and you can review your sales reports to find out exactly when you’ve been doing the bulk of your business. But, because so many people want to call local businesses, it’s important to know that it will be a busy time of year for the phone -- not just in-store. Did you know you can also use your CallJoy insight reports to find out when you receive the most phone calls? Knowing when customers are likely to call means you can have enough staff on-hand to answer the phone while also providing excellent service to your in-store patrons.Update Google My Business with holiday hours
Be sure to update your Google My Business profile with holiday hours and any recurring seasonal workshops or events. Once you’ve connected your Google My Business profile to your CallJoy account, the listed operating hours on your Business Profile page will automatically sync with your CallJoy greeting to alert callers of whether your business is open or closed during the time that they call.Monitor call transcripts and recording for specific product inquiries
During peak business hours, it’s enough of a challenge for independent retailers to help in-store customers and answer the phone, much less manage to take note of what kinds of questions callers are asking. That’s where CallJoy’s transcription and recording features come in -- with the ability to review transcripts or listen to audio of both answered and missed calls, you can find out which products are being called about most often so you can keep the most popular gifts in stock. You can also use that information to help with your personalized greeting and Call Actions by making sure the most frequently asked questions are answered by your automated agent.Interested in learning more about how to create the perfect custom greeting for the holiday shopping season? Check out these 4 tips.