Creating a Happy Customer Throughout the Holidays [Infographic]

The holiday season is unarguably the busiest time of the year for most businesses and the most profitable, as up to 40% of yearly sales for an SMB take place during November and December.

While holiday shopping can be hectic for your business, it can also be chaotic for your customers as well – so it’s important that you make them feel comfortable and at ease throughout the whole process. After all, a happy customer can increase revenue by up to 2.6 times, versus a passive one.

Thankfully, the advancement of technology has allowed businesses to sell products online, which helps customers avoid the chaotic lines and crowds. Social media has created an additional outlet for customer support, and is a great way to promote your business throughout the holiday season with incentives and rewards. Focusing on the online portion of your business throughout the holidays is the easiest way to make your customers happy, since you can do it from anywhere in the world and at any moment.

The first step is to focus on your core customer support, which means getting back to your customers in a timely and efficient manner since nearly half of your customers will expect some sort of response within 6 hours. Customers who get their issue quickly resolved will tell up to 6 of their friends about it, so have extra online customer support staff ready. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software like Salesforce can help you and your team manage support tickets and customer interactions in an easy all-in-one dashboard.

The second step to creating a happy customer is making sure that your business is being completely transparent in all communications, and taking responsibility for any negativity towards the business. Let your customers know what you’re up to via social media or a blog, and don’t hide anything from them. 9 out of 10 customers will stop buying from you if they discover irresponsible or deceptive business practices.

Taking to social media to provide incentives and rewards, engage with customers and personalize their experiences should be your next steps to creating a happy customer. Using a big data analytics platform to measure sentiment and satisfaction can help you determine what is and isn’t working. Take a look at the infographic below, created by predictive analytics company Ninja Metrics, for an overview on creating a happy online customer this holiday season with some interesting statistics. What has and hasn’t worked for you? Share your suggestions in the comments below.

Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community

(343)