Let's be honest: guys can be tough to buy gifts for. San Francisco-based Man Crates is making it easier. As a popular destination for awesome gifts for men, Man Crates says 'no' to ugly neckties, cologne samplers and executive trinkets, and instead hand picks gifts like hard to find hot sauce, outdoor survival gear, or delicious craft meat products.
Because they specialize in gifts for guys, they have a good idea of when they'll be busiest: Cyber Monday, Father's Day and Valentine's Day. As Man Crates lead customer service champion James Stillian tells me, a large percentage of the company's business happens on these three days. "We're always preparing weeks in advance for those days because we know we're going to be busy."
It's the days when big media hits drop that the Man Crates team has to do some scrambling and dial up its version of All Hands Support. While the team gets some advanced notice when they'll be mentioned in a news article or TV segment, they typically don't find out until the day before.
"Usually we'll get a call from our PR team the day before we're scheduled to be featured in a news segment. It's challenging because those segments tend to air early in the day east coast time, and we're based in San Francisco, so it means we're all waking up early to get in and man the phones, email and chat support."
On a normal day, Man Crates has three full-time customer service reps who respond on live chat, phone, and email. But All Hands Support days are anything but normal...
Stemming the tide
"Pretty much everything that we would normally be doing changes on All Hands Support days," says Stillian. "It's tough to predict how the traffic will spike as it typically depends on the type of 'hit' we receive, or the flow of the tracking."
"For holidays we'll see a steady increase in our traffic as the holiday approaches, with peak traffic on the last shipping day before the holiday," he says. "With media hits though, our number of contacts can spike momentarily or can continue to snowball throughout the day, depending on the type of hit we receive. Live TV spots tend to spike and fall off dramatically after the time our product is shown. Pre-recorded spots have a more "peak and valley" pattern, where we'll spike when our item is shown in the different time zones the show airs in, and sometimes we get random residual spikes from repeats, or re-showings of our segment."
The good news is that being ready to handle a spike in contacts does have an ROI. Stillian says an increase in orders directly correlates with a jump in contacts simultaneously, with the "high water mark" for CS contacts usually aligning with the "high water mark" for orders throughout the day.
Stillian noticed though that this past Valentine's Day, live chat actually lessened the volume of requests on phone and email. "Interestingly enough after looking into reports on our numbers from this most recent Valentine's Day, we found that the number of chats accepted actually softened the blow from our other avenues of contact. At times where chat was at it's peak we found fewer calls went into our overflow voicemail box."
Getting the team aligned
Depending on the type of media hit, Stillian says he may sound the call to action once, or repeated times through the day to handle waves of "incomings." "Luckily our office is not super huge, so I could pretty much give a yell down the hall if necessary."
"Everyone pitches in any way they can. Anyone that feels confident enough to jump on the phones/email/chat, even without formal CS training, is welcome to jump on chat and become a Customer Champion for the day!"
Is it really everyone pitching in? Stillian tells me Jon, the Man Crates CEO, Scott, the Marketing Guru, and even Chase, the Copy Writer, have all braved the CS chat trenches on high traffic days. "I have to say it's pretty awesome to see how great they are with our customers in the transcripts as well," says Stillian. "I've even picked up a few tricks from reading their chats, it's awesome to see chat from their perspective and I hope that they enjoy the change of pace as well!"
The team uses a combination of Olark live chat and HipChat in the background to stay connected and avoid asking a customer to wait for an answer, i.e. putting them on hold, sending a follow-up email or taking longer than usual to reply on live chat. During a rush, Man Crates operators click on each other in the Olark dashboard to ask questions quickly, and they have a HipChat room open for conversations with their team in the warehouse for any questions on shipping or otherwise.
Stillian says it's handy to have the ability to answer anyone's questions without turning away from the customer while in the process of helping, and chats keep the team updated on any sudden changes without having to interrupt their flow.
Man Crate's Tips for All Hands Support
These are James' three tips for handling busy days:
DON'T PANIC - Seriously though, deep breaths help and remembering to smile while you're interacting with a customer helps that smile to come across in your contacts. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's totally true. Never get discouraged by the number of contacts waiting for your reply, and treat every customer like they are your first contact of the day, even if you've been manning the front lines after some serious sleep deprivation and/or overtime. (If you're into caffeine, arm yourself with the largest coffee possible...I've found it helps.)
DIVIDE AND CONQUER - Play to your strengths when clearing out backlogged contacts. One person on your team may be amazing in their turnaround on responding to emails/chats, while another team member is awesome at real time talk with your customers on the phone. Point yourself and your team toward their strengths and they won't let you down, or let you drown in a sea of backlog.
SOLVE ONE CONTACT AT A TIME AND FOLLOW THROUGH - Take those tickets one at a time to ensure that particular contact is getting the service they deserve! When you're on the phone don't let that email you're eyeballing distract you from important info the customer is relaying. Alternatively, when chatting I've found if you can handle the multitasking, take as much as you can! Since the transcript of your conversation is available readily, you can juggle as many contacts as you feel comfortable with at the same time! I am always up front in letting the customer know we're experiencing higher than normal volume. Just be sure to double check that the answer you're providing matches the chat you've just clicked into so that the customer understands you're being attentive and empathetic to their individual needs. This goes without saying, but if you make a promise, keep it! Be sure to follow through on anything promised to a customer right after the promise is made. When we've got phones, email and chat all competing for our attention it can be easy to let those solutions fall through the cracks.
(I've found that post-it's are great memory substitutes, as one of my co-workers says, "My Post-It is my bond.")
