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Retailers face a nightmare before Christmas

UK retailers are risking their share of the predicted £5.5 billion Christmas sales boom by not being able to effectively handle the seasonal spike in customer service demand, which can increase by as much as 400%, according to multichannel customer interaction software firm Eptica.

The firm has warned that companies failing to ensure their customer service can cope at the most important trading time of the year could miss out on the opportunity to increase their sales by perhaps 5% or more.

Leading up to the festive season, contact centres tend to be inundated with customer enquiries, often involving large numbers of questions about the same topics. This increasing volume of routine, frequently asked questions (FAQs) can quickly lead to poor or slow service, resulting in heightened customer frustration and lost sales at a time that represents up to 50% of a retailers' annual revenue.

Research conducte using Eptica's customer base has shown that by reducing seasonal inbound FAQs and more efficiently responding to customers' enquiries at peak times, retailers can increase sales by an average of 5%.

According to Dee Roche, European marketing director for Eptica, "We looked at before and after scenarios at 280 organisations across a wide range of sectors and found a similar uplift in sales. This can be achieved by businesses using increases in efficiency as an opportunity to redeploy customer service resources to sales conversion activity and on delivering high quality service and advice to help potential purchasers. These benefits can only be realised by diverting low value questions away from customer service agents."

The company found that retailers can experience four times their normal level of customer enquiries in the build-up to Christmas, including more than twice the normal volume of inbound emails. For contact centres that handle thousands of calls and emails a day, this represents a significant volume of customer enquiries. For example, a contact centre receiving only 500 calls and 750 emails a month could easily see that number increase to 2,000 calls and 1,500 emails.

But, without the right systems in place it is difficult - if not impossible - to quickly identify which enquiries are potential sales and which are basic FAQs so that they can be filtered, prioritised and handled accordingly (or even handled automatically where possible).

The challenge for retailers, Roche suggested, is simply to ensure that enquiries that could result in a sale, if handled promptly, aren't lost because agents are tied up dealing with more basic questions.

With consumers starting their Christmas shopping months in advance the increase in customer enquiries for retailers can gain momentum as early as September. The spike that this creates in customer service continues to build throughout the January sales season, well into the end of February. Retailers continue to face a high volume of post-Christmas enquiries as customers contact them about issues such as gift returns and product support.

One company in Eptica's study was able to cut the number of inbound contacts it received from 6,000 to 3,000 during a peak customer service month while at the same time increasing its sales (compared to the same period the previous year). The same company also achieved a reduction in the cost of handling each contact from 6.50 to 1.70, resulting in a customer service saving of nearly 34,000 in a single month. This was achieved by migrating routine questions online using Eptica'snatural language self-service and email response software.


Sources: Eptica /
The Marketing Factbook.
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    Categorised as:

  • Customer Experience
  • Customer Loyalty
  • Knowing The Customer
  • Marketing Know-How
  • Marketing Technology

Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format.

With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

You'll learn to sell yourself, sell your products, and sell your brand on the internet, writing high-conversion landing pages, social media posts, and more. You'll start attracting customers you didn’t even know existed, and learn the top trade secrets for customer retention.

You'll become a lean, mean selling machine. See how the experts do it and learn to adapt what they've done for your own profit. You'll learn to write strong, powerful, effective sales copy, whether it's for a sales script, sales letter, flyer, insert, advert or just about anything else.

You'll learn how to sell whether you're selling by telephone, by mail, or even meeting prospects face-to-face. You'll find out how to size them up, present yourself, nail down their true needs, close the sale, and learn to tackle the tricky ones.

You'll discover the biggest secrets of successful direct mail sellers, sales letter writers, and how to segment and choose the right prospects for each campaign.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)
 
Copyright © 2001-2025 Peter J. Clark