Many of us like to take some time off over Christmas. Staffing levels are often reduced and people are looking forward to a break. But work doesn’t necessarily stop just because it’s Christmas. So, today, we’re asking “is your business is Christmas-ready?” Do you have plans in place for maintaining essential client contact, dealing with issues and keeping social media and other tasks ticking over? If not, you could end the year on a sour note – disappointing clients or disrupting staff leave.
How can a plan for the Christmas period help your business?
By taking a few simple actions to prepare your business for the Christmas break you can:
- Keep your business ticking over during December, making the return to work in January easier.
- Keep clients happy by notifying them of availability and maintaining essential contact.
- Capitalise on marketing and comms opportunities with clients and social media followers.
- Ensure colleagues can take a well-earned break over the Christmas period.
Getting your business Christmas-ready!
We’ve divided the remainder of this blog into two parts.
Part 1 deals with establishing your cover and contact procedures for the Christmas break. This is an essential consideration for all businesses as it determines how you deal with incoming communications and emergencies.
Part 2 sets out other actions you can take. These will help support the decisions you make in Part 1 and help you to provide a better and more organised response to the Christmas break.
Part 1: How to deal with incoming communications and emergencies over Christmas.
Christmas is a unique period in the working year, when many businesses are faced with the majority (or all of their staff) being absent for several consecutive days. As such, it requires a unique response. Follow these steps to ensure you have appropriate Christmas cover in place to deal with emergencies.
1.1 | Decide on what level of Christmas cover you require
This is the single most important action as it affects a lot of the other steps you’ll take. The most critical incoming issue that’s likely to crop up is receiving communications. You’re primarily concerned with email and phone as traditional post is likely to be less urgent. If you have physical premises that clients visit this will also factor in. With all of these, it’s important to distinguish between routine communications and urgent communications, as the response may be different.
Routine communications – these are non-urgent matters that could wait until you’re running at full capacity for a response. Examples could be receiving a project update email, a keeping in touch communication or a matter with a non-immediate deadline.
Urgent communications – these are communications that will require a prompt response. Examples could be a client chasing an important action, a critical issue concerning payments or time-limited supplies or something affecting your premises – a leak or alarm going off.
You have three options to deal with these in terms of cover:
- You make no arrangements and neither routine nor urgent communications are dealt with until the New Year. Not recommended!
- Routine communications will not receive a response until after the Christmas break but urgent communications are dealt with. This is what most businesses will work to and most clients will accept and expect this. A level of triage will be required – more on this later.
- Routine and urgent communications are dealt with during the Christmas period. The most comprehensive approach, but also the most labour-intensive.
Decide on what level of cover you want to offer (A, B or C) and then make a plan to resource it…
1.2 | Consider planned staffing availability
Not everyone takes leave at Christmas and you may have staff happy to work through the Christmas break and help you to resource your preferred cover model. It’s important to check with any cover staff about what issues they are happy to deal with. For instance, they may not feel comfortable or equipped to deal with a client-facing emergency.
If you can’t resource your cover plan using staff remaining at work, you will likely need to come up with a plan that means interrupting staff whilst on leave. If this is the case, then this should only be for urgent communications.
1.3 | Set up a triage system
A triage system ensures that only urgent matters are escalated to staff during periods of leave. They can then be contacted (usually by phone, or possibly email) in the event of an emergency.
To establish a triage system:
- Ensure that any staff who are at work have the details of the emergency contact so that they can escalate matters they are unable to deal with.
- If no in-work cover is in place, ensure that points of contact (email, voicemail, signs on premises etc) list the details of your emergency contact, specifying that this is only for urgent matters. Some people may use them for matters they consider urgent but aren’t really, but this will hopefully not happen often.
✔️ By following these 3 steps you will have a plan in place for dealing with emergencies during the Christmas period. You and your colleagues can enjoy the festive break, confident that urgent matters will be dealt with.
In Part 2, we consider additional actions you can take to make sure your business runs even more smoothly over Christmas.
Part 2: Top tips to help your business run smoothly over Christmas
2.1 | Ensure all contact points are covered by out-of-office procedures
For email – ensure automatic replies are enabled. The reply should clearly state the date when the staff member will return to work and how emails will be dealt with (e.g. upon return). For client-facing staff, your emergency contact should be listed.
For phone – calls should be diverted to a voicemail setting out the same information as above for email. Some staff may wish to divert calls to a mobile instead.
For social media – most platforms will enable you to set an automatic reply. If you don’t want to list your emergency contact’s details directly, you can always direct social media enquiries to an email as an additional step.
2.2 | Send out a Christmas message to clients listing office hours
Christmas is a great opportunity to send an end-of-year newsletter or email to clients, thanking them for their custom over the year and sharing any news. As well as being a good marketing tool, these communications can also help manage client expectations during the Christmas period. You can tell clients when your staff will be available and when your premises will be closed. This advance notice helps clients to know what to expect and can help to head off issues further down the line.
💡 Top tip: If you use services like Google Business Profile or Bing Places for Business to list your opening hours it’s worth updating these for Christmas also.
2.3 | Schedule social media posts for the Christmas period
Christmas can be a great time of year to post on social media:
- Many people have more free time over Christmas and will continue to use social media regularly or even more than normal.
- Christmas can help you to show off a more informal and fun side of your business and staff.
- If you have a regular posting schedule that people look forward to, you might want to keep this going over Christmas.
To keep your social media active over Christmas without interrupting your marketer’s break, use a scheduler like Hootsuite, Buffer or Later to schedule posts.
2.4 | Arrange a first-week back team catch up
With people working inconsistent hours over the Christmas break, it’s a good idea to bring everyone back together in the New Year. You can use this meeting to:
- Welcome everyone back and check in with them.
- Set out plans and priorities for the New Year.
- Discuss and review any urgent matters that came up over Christmas and how they were dealt with.
- Ensure that a plan is in place for responding to any non-urgent, routine communications that came in over Christmas.
2.5 | Consider arranging VA support cover for Christmas
Christmas is one of those times when you may not be able to resource the cover you require from within your own workforce. This is where a Virtual Assistant can help. A VA can provide support; answering telephones and managing email inboxes during the absence of your core staff. A VA is used to representing different businesses and will deal with clients, colleagues and suppliers professionally and promptly. By leaving your business in the hands of a VA you can truly relax into the festive period, knowing that your business is being looked after. To find out how we could help you with essential cover over the Christmas period, simply contact us.
🎄 Interested in VA support this Christmas?
We help clients to manage their busy workloads all year round, but Christmas can be a particularly challenging time for many businesses and we can help. Our staff are experienced VAs with in-depth knowledge of the legal world. We understand your business and can help maintain cover over the Christmas period. To find out more, read this blog post on what it’s like to work with us or contact Kellie to chat through how we could support you this Christmas.
Need help to get your home life Christmas ready? Check out Top 5 Organisation Tips to Kick Start your Christmas Shopping!
