Peak Holiday Sales and Support Times Differed by Primary Channel
- This was 52 percent higher than the rest of the holiday season.
- This was 129 percent higher than the remainder of 2017.
While brands that are both brick and mortar and online saw peak customer service requests on November 27, which was Cyber Monday (Black Friday was on November 24).
- This was 65 percent higher than the rest of the holiday season.
- This was 393 percent higher than the remainder of 2017.
Ticket Volume Up; Resolution Time Down
The large increases in ticket volume did increase the time to response for some brands during the holiday shopping season, but time to resolution actually decreased by 15 percent.
This can be attributed to the support automations these retailers utilized and to the seasonal additions they made to their support staff, which had a larger overall impact:
- Online-only brands were able to manage 129 percent more requests with just 25 percent more agents during the holiday season.
- Hybrid brick-and-mortar and online brands were able to manage 393 percent more requests with just 85 percent more agents during the holiday season.
Prepping for the Holidays with the Best Support Platform
Helpshift’s AI-based conversational platform allows brands to deliver fast, efficient messaging-based support in-app or on a website 24/7 — during both the holiday season and year round. Using Helpshift, brands have access to:
- Seamless messaging-based customer service delivered on their website, within their mobile app, or through email
- A conversational experience including scrollable history so that customers don’t have to waste time starting over, and re-engagement notifications to increase conversions
- AI and bot-powered platform-wide capabilities including NLP-based knowledge articles, a highly-customizable bot-builder and AI-based classification and routing
“These faster resolution times amid higher ticket volume reflect effective strategy and planning on the retailers’ part — they staffed appropriately ahead of the holiday season. Yet thanks to digital support, they didn’t have to go overboard with headcount. With messaging, agents can respond to multiple issues at once and benefit from tools like self-service and routing optimizations, especially for repeat questions,” said Linda Crawford, CEO of Helpshift. “Tensions run high during holiday shopping and brands can’t afford to deliver anything less than excellent customer support during the crunch.”
About Helpshift
Helpshift bridges the disconnect between conventional customer service channels — such as email and phone support — and a growing consumer base that does more on mobile phones and has a strong preference for messaging as the primary mode of communication. Through Helpshift’s AI-powered support platform, companies can resolve issues more efficiently, boosting customer satisfaction in the process. Companies such as Xfinity Home, Tencent, Supercell and hundreds of other leading brands use the Helpshift platform to provide messaging-first customer support. Helpshift is installed on two billion devices worldwide and serves more than 820 million active consumers monthly. To learn more about Helpshift, visit helpshift.com and follow @helpshift on Twitter.
Contact for Helpshift
Stacey Grimsrud, 415-271-1028
Stacey@bospar.com
