Insights
Here are the Top Challenges Businesses Face During the Holidays — and How to Overcome Them
Exclusive data shows customer engagement, stellar eCommerce experiences, and personalization are top of mind.
- Article
- 5 MIN READ
- Nov 21, 2024
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Apply DigitalStaff
Summary
It's no secret that the holiday season can deliver both the best of times and the worst of times for businesses, especially retailers.
For many retail brands, the weeks leading up to Christmas represent a significant portion of their total sales for the year. But while crowds of shoppers may be a welcome sight, a tidal wave of online purchases can present serious challenges. For example, without a robust eCommerce platform to handle spikes in traffic and transactions, retailers may find themselves putting out IT fires rather than celebrating sales numbers.
Similarly, if a retailer's customer service operations aren't up to speed, shoppers will quickly discover this reality during the busy holiday season and may decide to shop elsewhere.
One thing is clear: for better or worse, the holiday shopping season represents opportunities for retailers. It's a chance to test the resilience of infrastructure, to measure the effectiveness of customer engagement efforts and operational capacity, and to gain insight into how their organization performs under pressure.
Here at Apply Digital, we wanted to find out what is at top of mind for senior executives as we approach the holiday season, so we set out to do the research. This is what we discovered.
Exclusive data on customer engagement trends
In our report The Future of Customer Engagement: Achieving ROI with Loyalty, Personalization and AI, we surveyed senior executives across various disciplines and industries to find out their pain points and priorities during the holidays and into the new year.
The answers are illuminating, with insights that are particularly useful for retailers.
We learned that leaders are navigating a complex and evolving competitive landscape. As a result, they are determined to keep their existing customers satisfied: our survey data shows that decision-makers are primarily focused on engaging customers and ensuring their customer service operations are as strong as possible.
But that's not all. Beyond ensuring customer expectations are met (and ideally, exceeded) across channels, decision-makers are concerned about platform reliability — in other words, making sure the eCommerce experience of their brand is second to none. These leaders understand that operational resilience is critical to thrive during the holiday season and beyond and are balancing the immediate challenge of service quality with the pursuit of innovation.
If you're in the retail space, ask yourself: does your organization share similar concerns? More importantly, are you ready to rise to the challenge of the holiday sales season?
Below, we'll explore our exclusive data in detail to see precisely what's at the top of senior leaders' minds.
Customer engagement: what are leaders' top concerns?
Customer service quality. Over 36% of respondents said high-quality customer support is their top priority going into the holidays, underlining the importance of ensuring infrastructure and operations are aligned to support customer satisfaction.
Platform reliability. 32% of managers reported platform reliability as a priority, citing the need for online platforms to handle increased traffic and scale smoothly. Again, we see the importance of maintaining the technical backbone to support customer interaction.
Staying ahead of the pack
Leaders also cited the need to stay one step ahead of their competitors: 34% of respondents said standing out from the competition was an important concern, while nearly 19% said creating content that stands out in a saturated market is a priority. Rounding out the list, decision-makers cited data protection (25%), data analytics (17%), and engagement across customer touchpoints (16%) as important areas of focus in the months ahead.
What does this mean for retailers?
Taken together, this exclusive data offers a glimpse into the challenges faced by organizations — and provides a roadmap for moving forward that retailers can learn from.
To prepare for the holiday season:
Ensure your infrastructure is robust and up to date.
Retailers need to be using an eCommerce platform that can not only handle sharp increases in traffic and transactions, but also delivers first-class customer experiences across channels. Whether a customer is shopping via mobile, desktop, click-and-collect, or in-store, everything from page load times to rapid checkout functionality needs to be optimized.
To accomplish this, consider leveraging modular composable commerce tools, which are flexible and customizable to the needs of any business.
Focus on customer experience and customer service.
No matter your industry, when it comes to succeeding as a business, it's critical to ensure that your high-level strategy is laser-focused on the customer experience. For retailers in particular, the customer service experience needs to go above and beyond expectations to keep customers happy.
Take a data-first approach.
To create personalization strategies that work, organizations need customer data. More than that: they need to be internally aligned on the importance of making that data available to file engagement tactics, based on customers' preferences. Without data to inform decision-making, keeping customers engaged devolves into little more than a guessing game.
Explore new technology — cautiously
Emerging AI technology has demonstrated proven value in areas including chat automation and data analysis. However, no tech is perfect, and research shows that today's customers continue to crave real human connection.
With this in mind, retailers should focus on creating experiences that delight customers across all channels. They should leverage data to inform decision-making, use new technology where it delivers proven benefits, and be open to adjusting their engagement strategies and tactics while following the golden rule: the customer is always right.
Looking to adopt a data-first mindset for your organization, but unsure where to start? Contact Apply Digital today and one of our experts will be in touch.
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