How retailers can prepare for the golden quarter

This is a pivotal time for retailers. With just months to go until the “golden quarter” running up to Christmas, staff have their hands full showcasing products to buyers and influencers, while IT managers do their best to build resilience into back-end systems ahead of the seasonal surge in web traffic. Last year, UK shoppers spent over £24bn online over the Christmas period, up nearly 4% year-on-year, and representing over a fifth (22%) of total retail sales for the year, according to one estimate.

However, there are other things to consider at this time of year. As the hub for customer services operations, the Contact Centre should be front and centre of any forward planning.

Challenges and opportunities 

Retailers in general and Contact Centres in particular have been ‘struggling to recruit’ (https://www.ccma.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/UK-Contact-Centre-Outsourcing-Report-2023-CCMA-and-tkg-webversion.pdf) enough skilled professionals for some time, even as the sector has seen agent positions fall by an estimated 2,000 since 2010. Many will rush to bulk up their staff numbers in time for the golden quarter, which doesn’t just mean managing recruitment challenges. An expected influx of temporary Contact Centre staff will need training, which will require careful planning so that teams can hit the ground running when call volumes start to surge. This approach, while the norm in the sector, does however ignore other more effective ways to manage peaks in demand.

Retail Contact Centre managers will also need to pay close attention to the customer experience. The post-pandemic consumer is demanding. They’re used to a more sophisticated shopping experience, but also have limited resources due to a cost-of-living crisis. This means they’re demanding more, and are more discerning about where they spend their money. It’s not just about what retailers are selling, but how they sell it. Research shows that ‘80% of customers’ (https://www.salesforce.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/documents/research/salesforce-state-of-the-connected-customer-4th-ed.pdf) believe that the experience a company provides is just as important as its products and services.

Excelling at customer service is challenging at the best of times – but even more so during busy periods. Omnichannel is key. Research reveals that 75% of shoppers use digital and physical touchpoints on the same customer journey. This has major implications for the Contact Centre. According to ‘ContactBabel’ (https://www.contactbabel.com/uk-contact-centre-verticals-retail-and-distribution/), retailers are “consistently handling a greater proportion of interactions through email than an average UK business”, with web chats and social media interactions also “considerably above average” compared to other verticals.

The golden quarter also presents an unmissable opportunity to take advantage of the extra footfall. Although digital sales are clicking up, Adobe Digital Insights research found that retail sales last year were down on 2022 figures. From a Contact Centre perspective, this means finding ways to build strong customer profiles for future marketing efforts – turning first-time buyers into loyal customers. There are also opportunities to upsell and cross-sell if agents are well briefed and have the right tools to hand to help them.

What should happen next?

These are exciting times for the Contact Centre. Technology platforms offer a range of digital capabilities to boost agent productivity, better manage peaks in demand and enable retailers to maximise the opportunity of the fast-approaching Christmas shopping period.

Next-gen, AI-powered tools can help in customer-facing and internal use cases, surfacing the information in real time that agents need to resolve customer issues faster and more efficiently. This will not only help to shorten onboarding and training time, meaning agents can hit the phones quicker, but ultimately enhance the customer experience. In fact, AI-driven Agent Assist technologies and Knowledge Management systems can help retailers to nurture a new breed of “Super Agents” trained to deliver exceptional and personalised CX with speed and efficiency. Voice recordings of customer interactions and AI software to analyse content will also boost training efforts.

AI-powered tools can help in other ways too – such as prompting live agents about complementary products or offers when a customer is transacting with them. The same intelligence can be added to bots for self-service journeys, to help with cross-selling and upselling. Facilitating an omnichannel experience is more challenging, but the rewards are too great to ignore. Contact Centre bosses should start their journey by consolidating siloed systems onto a single platform providing a holistic view of customers’ journeys, from initial browsing to final purchase, and gain crucial insight into the effectiveness of different marketing activities.

No time to waste

In the rush to attract and retain customers, retailers shouldn’t lose sight of what matters most – the customer journey. With just a few months to go, many of the proposals above won’t be actionable in time for this golden quarter. But they will certainly help retailers to optimise customer service and maximise sales in the years to come.

By Sam Grant, Sector Specialist, Retail, IP Integration