4 Ways Chatbots Help for CX Smooth Sailing This Holiday Season

The holiday season guarantees a seasonal spike in customer support tickets, resulting in a 42 percent increase. This is because 20 percent to 40 percent of annual sales take place during the holiday season, followed by an inevitable spike in product returns. To ensure that the customer experience (CX) isn’t negatively impacted by this surge, you'll need to ramp up your business’s customer service capabilities.

Here are four reasons why investing in a next-gen chatbot is the perfect way to combat the holiday season ticket rush:

1. Keep your brand voice consistent.

You want brand consistency throughout the year, which can be especially difficult to maintain during the holiday rush. Content on all platforms showcasing your brand should be written in a similar voice. This helps customers become familiar with the “tone” of your brand.

For example, your tone might be bold to showcase bold fashion items. Or perhaps you have a wellness subscription business, which goes hand-in-hand with a calmer brand voice. Whatever your brand’s voice, its characteristic tone should be present at every customer touchpoint, including customer service interactions.

The best way to boost your customer service during the busy holiday season, while maintaining brand consistency, is with the help of a next-gen, conversational artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. The right chatbot seamlessly integrates with all your business platforms and learns and uses the unique voice of your brand to provide a scalable, “digital teammate” for your business.

2. Customer returns should be an easy, seamless process.

Returning an item is often a pain, for both the customers and the company. Whenever possible businesses should avoid in-person returns that hold up queues and result in upset shoppers, especially during the busy holiday and post-holiday seasons.

Businesses should prepare well in advance to ensure their support capabilities can handle the surge in demand without sacrificing their quality of service. If returns are effortless, impressed customers become loyal supporters. In fact, 76 percent of first-time customers who had a positive experience returning a product say they would shop with that retailer again.

The best solution? Automate your return service with the help of a next-gen chatbot. Customers can submit their return online, then simply send items by mail or drop them off at the nearest store. It’s hassle-free — especially considering that customers are warming to the return-by-mail system. In 2020, 30 percent of customers stated they preferred the return-by-mail system.

3. Scale up your support team without hiring more people.

In response to the holiday season sales surge, many businesses hire extra help. However, seasonal hires come with a catch. The recruiting and hiring process of seasonal hires can be costly and time consuming. Once hired, they then require extensive training and onboarding, and it’s a lot of time to invest in temporary employees.

Luckily, companies can expand their customer service capabilities during the holiday season with a next-gen chatbot. More specifically, you can augment your team and platforms with AI, equipped with machine learning capabilities and natural language processing (NLP) technology. NLP technology allows chatbots to learn from each customer interaction, which means its abilities are always improving.

Next-gen chatbots can understand customer input, pinpoint the issue, and immediately provide a resolution. This kind of efficiency will greatly boost your customer service capabilities. Not to mention, it frees up human agents to assist with more complex problems or customers that prefer human interactions.

Chatbots can absorb and be integrated with all the information in your help center, as well as find selective text in FAQs documents. This ensures that all that information is instantly accessible to customers without any training required.

4. Boost your responsiveness and resolution time.

Customers shouldn’t be kept waiting during the holiday season when time is even more precious. Fortunately, chatbots are the solution to keep customers from waiting to speak to a human agent. After all, 55 percent of retail customers give up after waiting for a live agent within 10 minutes, and 17 percent won’t even wait for five minutes.

For certain problems, instant resolutions are possible, and chatbots can stay one step ahead of the customer’s needs. For example, if a customer says “I would like to return this ...,” a next-gen chatbot can instantly send them their return label and direct them to return processing. Improved responsiveness and instantaneous resolutions are bound to impress shoppers and earn your brand a reputation for efficiency.

The holiday season is a stressful time for shoppers and companies alike. High customer service volumes shouldn’t negatively impact the customer experience, as this can damage your brand’s reputation. The best way to combat the holiday rush is with the help of a next-gen chatbot.

Bob Grohs is the director of marketing at Solvvy, he next-gen chatbot and automation platform.