The week of Thanksgiving is a great time because it means you can take some time to think about what you are grateful for and enjoy some good food. Unless you run a business. While you still might get a little time with your family, that week is going to be the perfect time to monopolize on the Christmas season and crazy shoppers who are trying desperately to get the perfect gift for someone they love. With the crazed number of shoppers you will get a lot of calls, texts, emails, and social media messages to go with it. Is your customer service ready? Here are five tips for preparing your customer service team.

1. Get text in place

Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with your customers because it is fast and easy, and there’s no chance the wrong information will be conveyed. But one of the best parts is that you can use AI Chatbots to answer repetitive questions and free up your customer service reps for other things. Since it is a busy time of year for customer service agents, they will appreciate any extra time you can give them, and your customers will appreciate the faster response times.

2. Training on specials

Make sure your customers service representatives are fully aware of any specials you may have running for the holiday. One time, I called and waited on hold for a half hour because the person answering my questions didn’t even realize they were running a promotion let alone the rules of it. You will be able to quickly answer customer questions and move on to the next one while sounding intelligent if customer service reps are fully aware of promotions and specials.

3. Inform them on typical allowances

When customers call in upset that they didn’t get what they were expecting, make sure your customer service representatives know what allowances they are able to provide. For example, if you have a restaurant and have customers upset that they got the wrong thing and the food was cold, your staff needs to know whether you would consider giving them the meal for free or just say sorry and offer a free dessert. Of course, the manager should always be involved before automatically offering free product, but it helps a customer service agent to address the situation properly if they know ahead of time the kind of allowances your company has for unsatisfied customers.

4. Assign every customer service agent a responsibility

There is going to be information coming in from a lot of different places, whether that be in person, text, email, on social media, chat etc. Whatever it is, make sure each of your staff knows their responsibility. For a small business, you may have a couple of people in charge of fielding everything. A large business, however, may want to put one or two people in charge of each of those different areas to make sure questions and concerns are addressed as quickly as possible.

5. Keep your staff from feeling stressed

While it is going to be a big week, remember that you are only getting extra phone calls and emails because you are getting extra business. Make sure your customer service agents know they are appreciated by giving them a gift of some sort for working a holiday, even if it is just a piece of chocolate. If they feel as though they are valued instead of being annoyed that they are there on a holiday, they are going to be much more successful.