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~ Salesupply ~

It’s tough to keep your service levels up during peak periods, but it is crucial, especially in
e-commerce. Good customer service experiences are vital in retaining customers, while bad
customer experience will not only scare away the customer but also their network.company.

he following statistics, taken from Salesup- their peak periods last. At Salesupply, we call this Overflow
ply Ecommerce Customer Care Guide 2021, Service. Our trained e-commerce customer care agents
Tunderwrite this: become part of the existing customer care team of the
• 91% say they are willing to use a webshop more often client and work together in the same system. This way,
after a positive experience webstores can keep their customer service at their regular
• 60% will not return to your company after one bad level, and they can even extend the opening hours of their
experience customer care to evenings and weekends. A good example
• 50% will tell others about a bad experience of a webstore that uses our Overflow Service is Shoebaloo.”

And with customers that get more demanding every Salesupply Overflow
day, providing good customer service is not easy: Service keeps Shoebaloo
• 83% of consumers expect to speak to someone on the customer service
first attempt accessible during peak
• According to a study by Eptica, 48% of British periods
consumers will end a chat session if their problem is Shoebaloo is a household
not resolved within 5 minutes, and 37% will end a name for the shoe-
service phone call if their question isn’t resolved within loving Netherlands. The
this timeframe brand has been offering
designer shoes since the
So how do you ensure the customer service experience mid-1970s. In addition
DIEK VAN TOL, E-COMMERCE MANAGER SHOEBALOO
during the holiday season? We asked Hans Siebum, to the three stores in
Managing Director of Salesupply. Amsterdam and the
“Peak seasons are a recurring topic in our conversations branches in Rotterdam and Maastricht, Shoebaloo also
with customer care – and operations managers”, says Hans. runs the webstore Shoebaloo.nl. Through this webshop,
”Most segments have them and can often even mark them Shoebaloo serves a large part of Europe. Particularly during
in their calendars. There is a garden webstore that knows sales periods, the pressure on customer service increases
that when it’s a sunny day and temperatures reach 18 C tremendously. E-commerce manager Diek van Tol explains
for the first day that year, their service channels explode. how Shoebaloo guarantees its level of service during peak
And online lamp stores know that the day after the winter periods with the overflow service from Salesupply.
daylight savings, their peak season starts.”
Support for Customer Care whenever it’s needed
“Still, it remains difficult to temporarily extend customer “The webstore was launched ten years ago with growth
care teams as well as opening hours. In addition to as a goal, and that is still our goal,” says Diek van Tol,
recruitment, this also requires extensive training and who has been e-commerce manager at Shoebaloo for nine
investment in equipment. So the regular customer care years. “We started with a small team and – definitely in
teams experience growing backlogs, an increase in cart the beginning – we did everything ourselves, including
abandonment and customer care. Just
unhappy (read: lost) “SCALING UP THE TEAM like the webstore
customers.” itself, the team has
INTERNALLY FOR PEAK TIMES IS grown substantially
What can since the launch,
webstores do to and there’s now a
anticipate and DIFFICULT, ESPECIALLY IF YOU clear departmental
resolve the steep structure in place.
WANT TO BE ABLE TO OFFER
increase in events? Four years ago,
“They can choose to we noticed that
partially outsource our customer care
their customer care HIGH-QUALITY SERVICE. ” department was no
to the Salesupply longer achieving
Customer Care the intended
team for the time response times

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