Re-Run: Customer Service Tips for Holiday Stores
Recap
Every year when the holiday season rolls around distributors everywhere celebrate and cringe all at once. Why? Simple, the holidays bring in significant sales but with that comes lots of last-minute orders and an extra heavy workload. One of the ways you can buy yourself some extra time during the busy holiday season is by using your Company Store as an extension of your customer service team.
When you set up your Company Store, you have the option to add additional pages like an FAQ or Contact Us page. To help save you time all year round, be sure to take advantage of these pages. Try to put yourself in your shoppers’ shoes. If you were shopping in the Company Store and were having issues placing an order, who would you call and how would you find out how to reach them? Including your contact information as well as answers to the questions you frequently hear like how to place an order, check an account balance, and what to do with returns will help free up your phone lines. Plus, customers will be happy they have the information they were looking for right in front of them.
Giving shoppers the ability to create their own account is another big time saver and customer service tool. When a shopper creates an account, it gives them access to view the status of current orders, check their account balance, load addresses, and check what items they’ve ordered in the past as well as other order details like size and color.
Interested in learning even more about how you can use your Company Store as an extension of your customer service? Be sure to read our blog, Customer Service Tips for Holiday Company Stores.
Episode 37: December Webinar Key Takeaways
Recap
With January fast approaching it’s important to set aside time to evaluate your client’s store and to start planning for 2019. You’ll want to begin by conducting an audit of the stores you managed in 2018. This will help you gain insights into each store, what’s working, and what can be improved. While there are a variety of reports and information that you can gather, there are several reports in particular that we suggest you take a good look. However, if you are looking for a specific piece of data, with the Custom Reporting feature you can gather the exact information you need with over 60 drag and drop fields.
After you’ve taken inventory of your client’s store, identifying key strengths and weaknesses, come up with solutions or ways to streamline specific processes. For example, say your client has permitted managers to reward five employees each month with a coupon for 50% off an order. However, after digging through reports and speaking with your client, you’ve discovered that managers don’t have admin access to the store. Each month they have to go ask the HR team to set up those coupons, and with branches nationwide, this extra step is a bit of a pain. In this scenario, an excellent solution would be to speak to your client about giving each manager admin access so they can create the coupons themselves.
To find out all our tips to help you end the year strong and to get an exclusive sneak peek at the changes we plan on making to our platforms in 2019 to help you stay ahead of the curve, watch the webinar recording. Happy planning!