Demand forecasting helps you prepare and schedule your service team for the flash sales and product drops that quickly change shopper behaviors. But that’s just the start: From inquiries about Cyber Monday promotions to questions about extended hours, the peak shopping season is packed with special offers and exceptions that can strain even the most experienced employee’s patience. As the holidays approach, give your agents, associates, and seasonal workers the right tools and training so they can answer questions about new products, exclusive offers, return policies for holiday purchases, and more.

The holiday season is notorious for spikes in service interaction volume. With customers using an average of nine channels to communicate with companies, retailers must meet shoppers where they choose to engage, from dedicated mobile apps to messaging platforms like WeChat and Facebook Messenger.

Conversational commerce lets shoppers engage and transact with retailers within these messaging channels. Agents can see recent orders, quickly answer questions about loyalty status, or schedule delivery timing. And by accessing customer preferences, agents can double as stylists to help them find the perfect gifts.

Record case volume is increasing wait times for customers, and it’s one reason why they are taking their shopping lists to competitors: 48% of customers say they’ve switched brands for better customer service. But, with generative AI, you scale your chatbot’s capabilities and increase the productivity of live agents with interactions that are personalized, empathetic, and efficient. That satisfies customers because it resolves service cases faster.

Here's what you can do easier wtih generative AI:

• Create more nuanced chatbots that can deeply understand, anticipate, and respond to customer issues — helping to increase first-time resolution rates.
• Draft personalized responses to customer inquiries over email and text.
• Condense long call transcripts into wrap-up summaries that get agents up to speed quickly so they don’t have to ask customers to repeat themselves.
• Use past case-swarming interactions to create knowledge articles for agents, training them to deliver better responses in the future.
• Aggregate social posts, customer feedback, and survey responses to analyze trends regarding your products, service, and brand — delivering the opportunity to create a feedback loop to influence change.

Self-service, live chat, and even text are growing in popularity, but they’re not the channel of choice when a customer has a complicated question or complaint: 81% of service professionals say customers prefer the phone for complex issues, up from 76% in 2020. And although most service agents agree that speed and quality are equally important when it comes to resolving service cases, it’s gotten harder: Today, 78% of agents say it’s difficult to balance these two factors, up from 63% in 2020.

It’s critical to empower agents – whether at the call center, in a store, or even at home – with access to marketing, commerce, and service data so they can efficiently resolve complex cases:

• Simplify the employee’s user interface: With a complete record of customer communications, interactions, and transactions on one screen, agents won’t have to toggle between systems. That’s essential during the holidays, when higher call volume puts a premium on efficiency.
• Empower agents with greater visibility: 83% of customers expect to solve complex problems by speaking to one person, but only 13% say it takes little effort to get cases resolved. With access to data across departments, agents can answer complicated questions faster — like how to redeem loyalty points on an email offer while arranging in-store pickup at the same time.
• Anticipate customer needs: No one likes repeating themselves, yet 66% of customers say they have to repeat information to different representatives. With a complete view of interactions, agents can anticipate questions and answer them quickly.

Here are key self-service best practices:

• Embrace radical transparency: Make over-communication a habit. Be clear about shipping timelines, backorders, and delays, before and after the purchase. Keep customers updated by providing full visibility into their order status via SMS.
• Deliver faster answers: Build a landing page with answers to frequently asked questions. Update these pages with holiday-specific guidance, such as return policies.
• Offer guided service on digital channels: Connect self-service to guided workflows so customers can do things like create return labels quickly. Provide an easy way for shoppers to access your help center for more information. The goal: Keep interactions simple, intuitive, and fast.
• Easily transition to live help if needed: Ensure chatbots offer the option to transfer to live support with agents available on all website pages. Make it easy for customers to find other service options, like voice, too.