Mistake #1: Ignore Customer Communication Channels

A major mistake during BFCM is failing to monitor all communication channels. According to HubSpot, 90% of customers expect an “immediate” response to their inquiries. During BFCM, response times may lag as businesses manage high inquiry volumes. Ignoring communication channels can lead to missed sales and dissatisfaction. Neglecting communication channels like sms, live chat, email, or phone support creates gaps that competitors could exploit.

Some people may not be totally sure that your products, or your company is a great fit for them, or maybe they are just browsing options to satisfy their needs. When you encounter an indecisive customer, receiving great support through any of your channels, especially the faster ones like live chat, can be the final push they need to finally decide to buy from you. 

A great experience like that one can be the light that sparks a long-lasting relationship with said customer. While they have bought from you, receiving proactive support through email or by simply receiving a text updating them about the products, can help them decide to become brand advocates.

How to Avoid This Mistake:

1. Implement Automated Responses: Let customers know their inquiry has been received and a response is on its way. Respond as fast as possible, they are expecting to receive immediate support, especially in these highly competitive and stressful seasons.

2. Prioritize High-Traffic Channels: Allocate resources to the most popular channels to ensure efficient responses. With your customers’ help you can identify those channels that are working best for your company and the ones they prefer. Investing in their maintenance will bring you great benefits.

3. Centralize Messages: Use customer service software to manage inquiries from multiple channels in one place. Centralizing is not enough if the customer feels a disconnected assistance on different channels. Being able to leverage coherence and consistency through several support channels is key for people to feel satisfied.

Mistake #2: Overpromise and Underdeliver

It’s tempting to overpromise during BFCM to attract customers with offers like “lightning-fast delivery” or “unbeatable discounts.” However, failing to deliver on those promises can severely damage trust. This article found that 76% of customers would switch brands if they felt misled. For example, advertising next-day delivery while knowing inventory or shipping constraints make it impossible can lead to canceled orders and negative reviews.

Think of this like the start of a relationship of any kind, they are based on trust, when you fail to make people trust in you, they will simply move on from your company, no matter if your product is the best out there. You may offer the moon and the stars to new customers, but once they feel like you are not delivering on such promises, they will look out for someone else that does it.

Making sure your customers perceive your company as a trustworthy one requires teamwork. Collaboration between different departments is needed to ensure that everyone can work together on the same goal, offering the customer what you promised. Remember that you are the only option in the marketplace, people can decide on several options, so become their top-of-mind by giving them exactly what they need.

How to Avoid This Mistake:

1. Set Realistic Delivery Windows: Provide accurate delivery estimates and communicate potential delays. Talk with your delivery team and ask them how long would they take to deliver every product on time and work on a strategy that ensures smart delivery. This way you can accurately estimate the times and communicate them to your customers.

2. Manage Stock Updates: Keep listings updated in real-time to prevent overselling. Make sure you have a stock software that works together with your inventory team to continuously update the product availability online. Your customers will be frustrated if they add something on the cart and are not able to buy it later.

To avoid this, meeting with your provider is key to knowing your exact availability. Another way to avoid this is by using notifications that alert the customer that they have items waiting in their cart, a sense of urgency will make sure they buy on time.

3. Send Proactive Messages: Notify customers of any shipping or stock updates and offer a contact point for questions. Also, letting your customers know about your promotions and tailored offers will definitely help to enhance their experience.

Mistake #3: Neglect to Train Seasonal Staff

Seasonal hires are often brought in to handle the holiday rush, but untrained staff can cause more harm than good. From providing incorrect information to mishandling customer concerns, lack of preparation can frustrate both customers and permanent employees. A seasonal hire mishandling a high-stakes inquiry due to lack of training could result in lost revenue or a tarnished brand reputation.

Training is key to improve and deliver great customer service, your agents need to know exactly what to do in every potential situation they may face. If you fail to do this, your customers will leave unsatisfied and will not come back. Customer service training is key to have prepared agents with the needed resources to offer superb customer support.

How to Avoid This Mistake:

1. Provide Comprehensive Training: Focus on frequently asked questions and escalation protocols. There are several strategies that can help you train your team, so evaluate which one is the best according to your needs and budget. This will ensure you can provide complete training.

2. Assign Mentors: Pair seasonal hires with experienced staff for guidance. Today you can opt for in-person or online mentoring, platforms like Mentors CX can help you with it. Even though you have a limited budget to perform training, these platforms ensure your team stays up-to-date with trends. 

3. Use Scenario-Based Training: Prepare staff for high-stress situations with realistic practice sessions. A great way to train your team is by assigning roles, role-playing games are efficient to put your agents in different scenarios. This also helps them reinforce and improve their empathy, as they can act as the customer too.

Mistake #4: Planning too late

We can’t get enough of telling you the importance of starting early on BFCM, planning months in advance is the real key to winning. If you don’t do it, you will feel like if you are improvising, something your customers will realize and will not appreciate. This is a great strategy to drive growth, so if you want to see results, start early.

Planning for the assets, videos, ads, copy, logistics, takes a lot of time, preparing your team does too. You will need all the help you can get, so start talking with your different business partners and departments to ensure a coherent strategy where everyone’s efforts will be successful. 

If you don’t know where to start, identifying your goals and needs, as well as preparing your support team for BFCM, and evaluating past strategies are great places to do it. Your customers and potential buyers won’t wait for you, so avoid losing opportunities and plan ahead. 

How can you avoid this mistake:

1. Evaluate your previous results. Analyzing what went wrong or right the previous years will help you identify the steps you can take or avoid. If this is your first time planning a BFCM strategy, then go ahead and search for real-life examples of hits and misses, this way you can learn from others and create a great strategy for your business.
2. Define clear goals from the get-go. Analyze customer and employee feedback to see what you can start optimizing immediately. Their insights will help you set your specific goals for the strategy. Whether that is to decrease waiting times, improve your customer satisfaction levels to 95%, or attract a certain number of new customers, knowing what you are working for, prevents distractions from the main vision.
3. Prepare your support team. If your team can’t handle your support volumes, or if you can’t hire more in-house agents, don’t worry, outsourcing is a great option for you. Customer service outsourcing companies offer scalable teams with enough experience and training opportunities so you can focus on other tasks. 

Mistake #5: Ignoring customer retention

Retaining your customers is way cheaper than acquiring new ones, but you need to work on formulating winning strategies for them. Not every business wants to invest in their actual customers, as they believe winning them one time is enough. Ignoring the power of customer retention will lead you to miss valuable opportunities. 

There are several ways to make sure your customers stay loyal to you: gifting them coupons, offering tailored discounts, creating loyalty programs, having point-based prizes, and more will keep your customers buying from you. Keeping them engaged with your company is a great way of making sure your customers not only stay, but buy from you every once in a while. 

How can you avoid this mistake: 

1. Keep your customers engaged. Whether that is with social media content or with new and personalized offerings, making sure your customers think about you at every moment is key to keeping them.
2. Involve your executives. You need them to back you up with this as they will be the ones handing the money to invest on retention strategies. Convincing them that keeping loyal customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones will definitely improve your odds on this. 
3. Use AI to improve experience. How can AI help you improve customer retention? By improving your customers’ experience, they will most likely want to stay loyal to your company. This is a great investment for start-ups specially as they can train AI to help them retain their customers.

Enjoy a Successful High Season with Horatio

Preparing your customer service strategy for BFCM is essential to building lasting relationships with customers. By implementing these tips, companies can navigate this high-demand period with confidence, preventing many common issues that surface during peak shopping times. Avoiding key pitfalls—such as neglecting communication channels, overpromising, and failing to train seasonal staff—will not only improve the immediate shopping experience but also reinforce your brand’s reputation as reliable and customer-centric.

At Horatio, we can help you manage customer expectations, reduce the risk of negative reviews, and ensure that each customer feels valued.

Remember, delivering a positive experience during BFCM can turn one-time shoppers into loyal customers who return throughout the year. When customers see that your business values transparency, responsiveness, and professionalism, they’re more likely to recommend your brand to others, boosting both your sales and customer loyalty in the long run.

Contact us to make your brand stand out from competitors and ensure a successful holiday season.