A little customer service planning before your holidays is important. So if you’re planning on having a break this year, here’s 5 things to do before you go to make sure your customers are taken care of and you get to have a relaxing time away.
Give your clients advance notice that you’ll be away
Check out my earlier post: 4 Things To Do Now To Prepare For The Holiday Season for a full list of ways you should let your clients know. Basically, give notice in as many ways as possible as early as possible to increase the chances that all your clients will see it
Come up with a solution for clients who have an emergency while you’re away
Remember, just because you don’t think it’s an emergency, doesn’t mean they won’t. So make sure you’ve got a plan in case someone has an emergency while you’re away. Whether that’s making sure they have instructions and access details on how to deal with any likely problem, or giving them contact details for someone who can cover you if there are any issues.
Get an idea of what work is coming up
If you can get your clients to give you an idea of what they have planned for the next month or two, you’ll be able to get an idea of what might be coming up. That will allow you to plan for the next couple of months and hopefully make sure you won’t get drowned in work on your last day.
Try to clear the slate before you leave
I always like to try to get everything done before I go away so that when I come back to hundreds (or thousands)of emails, phone calls, text messages and client work, I’m starting with a clean slate rather than trying to catch up on work left over from before my holiday as well. There’s nothing like coming back from holiday to make you need a holiday.
Prepare for your locum
If you need to (or may need to) arrange someone to cover for you in your absence, create a FAQ or Cheat Sheet of some of the common problems that might occur, as well as anything they need to know about your clients. Particularly for your key clients. Make sure they have all the URL’s, usernames and passwords they might need to solve any problems. And make sure your clients know how to contact them in an emergency – so add their contact details to your Out Of Office email response and your Voicemail message.
Just a little customer service planning before your holiday can make a huge difference to how your customers feel about your absence, and to what environment you come back to.
If you’d like some more ideas, check out my previous Customer Service posts
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