For smart home brands, the holiday season—starting with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, leading through to Boxing Day—is one of the busiest times of the year. During this time, connected home companies often see soaring sales, but on the flip side, they can also see record-level returns.
Though product returns are inevitable, every company wants to minimize that number as much as possible. But smart home brands face a different kind of return reason than your average manufacturer: WiFi connectivity issues. These issues usually have nothing to do with the device functionality itself and end up being some of the most time-consuming—and costly—support calls for smart home support teams.
To help you reduce smart home device returns this holiday season, we’ve compiled a list of top tips to combat issues related to WiFi connectivity.
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Tip #1: Make a list of your top reported device issues
Going into the holiday season, it’s good to be prepared. By understanding your most common problems, you can better understand what’s to come. To get started, compile a list of the most commonly reported issues from previous months—or even last year—and make sure it’s accessible to your support agents. This will help them quickly identify issues without looking around for the cause.
Tip #2: Train support agents to respond productively
To add to the above point, before the calls start clogging up the phone lines, look for techniques or solutions to help your team focus on making support calls more productive. By resolving issues quickly, you can impact the outcome of nearly every twist and turn this season brings, including reducing product returns with excellent customer support.
Tip #3: Invest in quality self-help options
By implementing effective self-service support options ahead of the holiday season, you’ll be able to eliminate calls that would otherwise come in. To start, you could build out a more robust online FAQ or knowledge base and use them as a resource to send follow-up emails to customers after purchase or registration with links to smart home self-help articles on common WiFi connectivity issues.
Tip #4: Include additional support in the box itself
One of the easiest ways to deflect customer calls and reduce the likelihood of product returns is to give customers everything they need to resolve issues right out of the box. Try including a pamphlet with a QR code link to your knowledge base or FAQ, or turn questions from them into a brochure that you can include in the packaging.
Tip #5: Look for opportunities to improve your customer experience
Customers have high expectations for the service they receive. Think of this season as a stress test for your support process. The higher-than-normal volume of calls will allow you to identify gaps where you can improve customer experience to avoid unnecessary calls, negative reviews, and avoidable product returns.
Say goodbye to unnecessary smart home device returns
For smart home brands, the holiday season doesn’t have to mean a high volume of product returns soon after. If you’ve noticed a spike in calls or returns related to WiFi connectivity in previous years during this season, you simply need to shift tactics to keep returns at bay. By focusing your support efforts on educating customers on top connectivity problems with your devices, you can get ahead of the problem and reduce returns with quality customer support.
