Every ecommerce brand is armed with the same Black Friday weapons: steep discounts, flashy promotions, and aggressive marketing campaigns. But while competitors are racing to slash prices the deepest, the smartest brands have discovered a different path to victory—one that builds lasting loyalty instead of eroding margins.
The secret weapon? Exceptional customer experience.
Peak Support interviewed CX leaders to uncover how customer support has become the ultimate Black Friday differentiator. Whether you’re a brand-new brand or an established firm seeking to outperform previous years, the lesson is clear: The brands that win BFCM aren’t just those with the lowest prices—they’re the ones that turn the inevitable holiday chaos into moments of customer delight.
While the holiday season is always critical for ecommerce brands, 2025 is marked by significant uncertainty. Companies could face new, unexpected tariffs. And shoppers are “timid” according to McKinsey, largely because of inflation concerns. They’re planning to spend the same amount of money as last year, but may spend more on necessities, rather than discretionary purchases. They’re also buying gift cards to save on shipping costs.
Ecommerce CX leaders need to prepare for BFCM … but they need to assume that things won’t go as planned. Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren’t just the biggest sales days of the year—they’re the ultimate stress test for customer experience teams. Every brand expects a tidal wave of orders, but the real challenge isn’t just handling the expected volume; it’s surviving the chaos that comes when preparation falls short.
The opportunity is too good to pass up. In 2024, U.S. consumers spent $13.3 billion on Cyber Monday, a 7.3% increase year-over-year, while the full Cyber Week brought in $41.1 billion, up 8.2%, according to Adobe.
If you’re looking to grab your piece of the pie, read on. Below, we’ve included the top 8 lessons that CX leaders and recent studies suggest are the secrets to Black Friday success.
1. Start Planning Early
“A great forecast is useless if you don’t start early enough,” says Chris de Jong, former head of marketing at Gorgias, the popular ecommerce CRM. The best teams build their schedules months in advance, working backward from the peak.
It’s not out of line to start planning in June. If your planning indicates a need to bring on a new customer support outsourcer, you’ll need time to find the right partner. And if you haven’t implemented AI, or aren’t satisfied with your existing tools, you’ll need time to get your tech up to snuff.
If you haven’t started your planning by mid-September, then start forecasting NOW! If you work with a business process outsourcing parter like Peak Support, they should be able to help you with this (though they also should have started planning weeks ago!).
2. Forecast With Granularity
A forecast built only on last year’s totals won’t cut it. Breaking projections down “by week, day, and hour” helps teams spot where surges will actually hit, according to Ben Segal, head of CX at Cosm. Segal is founder and CEO of The CX Audit, and has also led CX efforts at Pair Eyewear and other brands.
Obviously, the biggest surge is expected on the Thanksgiving weekend, between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. On Black Friday 2024, ShipBob’s ecommerce merchants saw order volume jump 145% compared to a typical Friday in October.
But Saturday and Sunday may show even larger surges: ShipBob’s data showed that the sales on the Saturday after Black Friday surged a whopping 234% compared to a typical October Saturday.
Most people shop in the morning. On Black Friday, Ometria found that 40% of people clicked on ecommerce promotional emails between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. On Saturday, 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. was the busiest time slot. Late afternoon and early evening were also popular shopping times.
Look at your own historical data to determine when you should expect the largest surges – and make sure your team is all-hands-on-deck during those times.
“And don’t forget to forecast tech costs,” adds de Jong. “Volume-based pricing can create surprise bills. Brands need to forecast not just people and inventory, but also platform usage.”
3. Get Your AI House in Order
If you haven’t implemented AI or some kind of automated chatbot, now is the time to start. Many brands are understandably hesitant about turning their customer relationships over to a bot. But it’s better to have a solution in place, so you can deflect any unexpected surges in volume. The easiest place to start is typically the AI tool that comes with your CRM, like Intercom’s Fin, Zendesk AI, or Gorgias’s AI Agent.
If you have a business process outsourcing (BPO) partner, they may be able to implement this for you. Peak Support has a team of CX Tech Experts who are certified in all the major platforms and able to implement and train any type of AI bot.
If you have an automation tool but you’re unhappy with it, the most likely culprit is your knowledge base. Automation can’t fix bad information. “Good inputs make good outputs,” says Siegel.
Information may be incomplete, disorganized, or hard for your bot to interpret. By contrast, a well-organized knowledge base is a boon for customers and brands alike. When Peak Support optimized a chatbot for Embark, one of our ecommerce clients, we achieved a 96% deflection rate while maintaining a 97% CSAT. This case study provides specific insights into how to organize your knowledge base for AI.
4. Train Seasonal Agents in Phases
Even with solid AI deflection, you may still need to increase the size of your CX team to prepare for holiday ticket volume. Human agents provide the empathy that AI agents can’t match, says Zach Goldstein, CEO of ecommerce juggernaut Public Rec. Most data back this up: Customers want quick answers for simple issues but human help when it matters most.
The challenge: ensuring seasonal agents get the training they need to provide great service to your customers, according to Both Segal and Goldstein advocate gradual onboarding: smaller cohorts, phased schedules, and mentorship rather than mass starts.
“A lot of leaders think hiring means committing to full shifts early,” says Segal. But you can start new agents at two hours a day, scale to four, then full days. That training ramp is invaluable. By the time peak hits, they’re fully integrated and productive.”
Remember, you’ll want to keep at least some of your seasonal staff through January. Returns are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the holiday season. While sales were up 8% last year, returns grew even faster—up 15% year-over-year, according to AfterShip.
5. Smooth Out Volume with Early Promotions
You’re not at the mercy of the Gods of Ecommerce – brands do have some ability to impact demand, and thereby smooth out ticket volume. Customers have been doing their holiday shopping earlier and earlier, so offering earlier promotions can smooth out demand and reduce last-minute pressure. Starting early creates breathing room for CX teams to train, stress-test systems, and fix weak spots before the rush.
6. Align Support, Fulfillment, and Marketing
At Public Rec, Zach Goldstein ensures open communication across support, fulfillment and marketing teams. Siloes create mismatched promises that customer support inevitably has to clean up. That means you should:
- Ensuring marketing promotions match what fulfillment can actually deliver (shipping times, inventory levels)
- Sharing marketing plans and discount windows with the CX team, so they know what to expect for support volume
- Making sure marketing messages don’t create unrealistic customer expectations
- Communicating any fulfillment issues to the CX team as soon as possible
And don’t forget your tech stack. “We had ERP issues last year during BFCM,” says Goldstein. “We’re making sure our backend systems can handle volume this year.”
7. Hire Quickly If Volume Surges
What happens if volume is significantly higher than you expect? You may have to hire more people, even if it feels like it’s already late in the game. A good business process outsourcing (BPO) partner should be able to hire quickly. At Peak Support, we’ve hired as many as 400 agents in a month in response to seasonal demand. We’ve even hired ecommerce help as late as December for a client who had more demand than expected. Check with your BPO to ensure they have similar capabilities.
If you’re hiring agents for short-term assignments, however, you have to be prepared. You won’t have much time to train them, so you’ll want to ensure you can route Tier 1 tickets to your newest hires. “We also assign them by channel,” says George Tillotson, SVP of Client Solutions at Peak Support. “New agents on async channels, tenured on phone. And always plan expectations around realistic productivity for new hires.”
8. Communicate Proactively
When delays or disruptions happen, silence erodes trust. Goldstein recalled choosing to email customers about shipping delays during peak season. It drove more support tickets in the short term, but it dampened customer ire and preserved credibility. Customers may not love bad news, but proactive updates build loyalty and prevent reputational damage.
“In the end, we chose transparency, even though it risked alarming more people,” Goldstein says. “It was the right call.”
9. Rethink Discounts and Protect Margins
The temptation to slash prices during BFCM is real, but Siegel warned: “Discounting feels like a race to the bottom.” Alternatives—like VIP perks, bundles, and flexible payments—are winning strategies.
Adobe reported Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) usage surged 42.5% year-over-year on Cyber Monday 2023, reaching $940 million in spending, according to Adobe. Klaviyo reports that Shinola leaned on VIP perks and bundling to drive a 27% increase in email-attributed revenue.
“Customer education is powerful,” de Jong says. “If customers know exactly how your product works and that it fits their needs, you don’t need deep discounts to convert.”
The Bottom Line
BFCM isn’t a weekend sprint. It’s the payoff of months of preparation. But that preparation will pay off.
Customer support has emerged as the ultimate competitive advantage. “It’s the ultimate differentiator,” says Chris de Young from Gorgias. “Support is 100% in your control. Brands that invest in world-class support win, every time.”
While brands can’t control market conditions, supply chain disruptions, or economic uncertainty, they can control how they treat customers when things go wrong. In a landscape where products and prices are increasingly commoditized, exceptional customer experience becomes the clearest path to building lasting brand loyalty and resilience.
The brands that survive and thrive during BFCM—and beyond—are those that view customer support not as a cost center, but as their secret weapon for standing out in a crowded marketplace.
