The vacation season is shortly approaching, and whereas shoppers are simply starting to consider it, many firms, like Groupon, have been planning for months. Some of the essential methods to plan forward for the vacation season is thru optimized customer support.
That is the place Groupon excels.
On this episode, we spoke with Adam Lindsey, Senior Director, International Service Operations at Groupon the place he shared particulars on how his workforce has at all times managed to remain one step forward with regards to maintaining clients comfortable throughout busy durations of the yr.
Let’s dive into the best methods of decreasing a backlog of tickets and the way greatest to arrange and assist your workforce each mentally and virtually and extra.
Making ready for Vacation Spikes
In line with Forbes, buyer assist requests improve 5-10 occasions in the course of the vacation season. On high of that, The Nationwide Retail Basis reported that 46% of consumers began their vacation procuring sooner than common in 2021. As the vacation season continues to creep earlier into the yr, it’s important for companies to arrange for vacation spikes. However, how can a worldwide enterprise do that?
“Over the previous decade or so, what we’ve been doing is centralizing and standardizing [our customer service approach],” mentioned Adam Lindsey, Senior Director, International Service Operations at Groupon. “Now we have now one customer support workforce and one workforce administration operate. We take the very best practices from in all places after which consolidate them. It additionally means from a capability and staffing perspective, we have now rather more sources and we will view issues extra holistically.”
Translation is a big part of this centralized strategy.
“By Unbabel, this yr, we’ve additionally been capable of transfer to a language agnostic setup,” Lindsey continues. “So an agent could possibly be talking with a Polish buyer, then a French buyer, then a Spanish buyer – offering the identical stage of service by means of Unbabel. What that has enabled us to do is have this 24/7 setup.”
Lindsey shares that even past a centralized strategy to customer support – the numbers are key to concentrate to.
“We by no means cease trying on the numbers,” Lindsey shares. “So my management workforce and I meet each single day. We examine the incoming quantity. We be sure that the productiveness and the staffing is in place. It’s about being actually on high of the numbers always.”
Addressing Ticket Backlog
Regardless of being properly ready for the vacation season, ticket backlogs are inevitable. So, how does Groupon deal with this improve in quantity?
“The important thing factor, particularly in peak season, is you need to count on the sudden,” Lindsey says. “When backlogs occur, which they do, and it’s not simply in peak season, the important thing factor is ensuring you have got everyone concerned that must be concerned. In the end a backlog is when you have got an excessive amount of workload for the folks you need to full the work. It’s about understanding sort of the place you might be with the employees you’ve received after which understanding what levers you need to pull when that occurs.”
Setting Buyer Expectations
The vacation season generally is a time when a enterprise makes or breaks a loyal buyer base. Customer support is a big part of buyer loyalty. Setting buyer expectations forward of time can stop an sad buyer and finally, contribute to making a loyal one.
“It is best to at all times underpromise and over-deliver,” Lindsey shares. “So should you specified that you’ll reply to a question inside 24 hours, you must have a 12-hour inner SLA. In the event you use instruments like Zendesk and Salesforce to have the flexibility to offer automated updates, construct these in once more as default as properly. That means, at set intervals, a reminder might be despatched to the client simply to reassure them.”
Even with the very best customer support expertise, nonetheless, there’ll at all times be pissed off clients and brokers are most frequently on the receiving finish of that have.
“[When dealing with an upset customer], it’s about empowering the agent with all the data that they’ve accessible,” Lindsey says. “We’re additionally beginning to generate higher responses by means of AI. So, quite than having template responses that turn out to be very robotic and might be fairly infuriating on the receiving finish, every buyer now receives a curated response that’s generated by means of AI.”
Protecting Consistency All through the Buyer Service Expertise
Messaging and personalization goes a great distance within the buyer journey, and making a constant and optimistic expertise is prime to making sure a cheerful buyer. When translation comes into play, these nuances and personalised components can get misplaced.
“It’s an entire new world with instruments like Unbabel,” Lindsey says. “Traditionally, we’d write a template in English after which we’d have it translated and then you definitely would have lots of and hundreds of template responses. With Unbabel, you may write rather more custom-made, personalised responses by setting the tone of formal, casual, and all the remainder to result in extra favorable outcomes.”
And whereas Groupon has a optimistic expertise with translation now, it wasn’t at all times the case.
“Going again a very long time in the past, we had a backlog in one among our markets that didn’t communicate English,” Lindsey recollects. “So we used Google Translate, the place we had of us within the London workplace utilizing it, and that was a primary instance of how to not do customer support. There’s at all times shortcuts to success and there’s at all times alternate options, however until the standard is there, it’s pointless as a result of then you definitely drive your individual issues by way of repeat contacts and escalation.”
Whereas messaging and translation are inarguably essential, Lindsey shares that hiring and coaching also needs to catch the attention of manufacturers main as much as the vacation season.
“You have to rent to handle the capability and handle the volumes,” Lindsey shares. “So, it’s not simply coping with your skilled employees who’ve been right here earlier than. It’s ensuring that you just contemplate the brokers all through, and you retain them knowledgeable wherever doable.”
The Way forward for Buyer Service
As instruments comparable to AI evolve, customer support will inevitably change as properly. What rising applied sciences and instruments does Groupon see as having a major impression on customer support?
“[With AI and ChatGPT], I have a look at it as the identical as the identical transition of chatbots a decade or so in the past,” Lindsey says. “What I hope we will do for AI and ChatGPT is be taught from these [chatbot] classes and perceive that the intention shouldn’t be about automating 100% of everyone’s job, however it’s about taking over the repetitive duties that may be automated. It’s about upskilling your workforce. It’s concerning the function of customer support changing into a way more intricate and complicated job than it’s even at the moment.”
Considering studying extra about breaking down language obstacles in customer support? Watch the complete webinar right here.
