Customer Support Peak Season Checklist: Black Friday, Holidays and Big Sales

Every business has a few weeks when the message count doubles: Black Friday and the holiday sales, a seasonal rush, a launch, a campaign that works better than expected. The teams that cope aren't the ones who work harder that week. They're the ones who prepared the month before.

This checklist walks you through four weeks of preparation, what to watch while the rush is on, and what to do afterwards. Each step shows where to do it in Hodhod.

Four weeks before: plan

• Estimate the volume. Use Reports → Conversations to see your busiest hours and days, and compare them with your last campaign. Plan for double what you expect.
• Decide who answers what. List the questions that will dominate (delivery times, discount codes, returns, payment problems) and agree on the answer to each, including the exceptions.
• Plan the staffing. Work out how many conversations one agent can handle well at once, multiply by the number of agents per shift and compare the result with your volume estimate.
• Set your dates. Mark the first and last day of the rush and any days you'll be closed.

Three weeks before: prepare the team

• Add temporary agents early. Add them under Settings → Agents, put them in the right inboxes and teams, and give them a limited role under Settings → Custom Roles if they shouldn't see everything. Our onboarding checklist covers their first two weeks.
• Start new agents with a lower capacity. Under Settings → Agent Assignment, set a lower conversation limit for them so they aren't overwhelmed.
• Create dedicated teams under Settings → Teams for topics such as payments or delivery, so those requests reach the right people directly.

Two weeks before: prepare the answers

• Write canned responses for the top questions (shipping times, returns, discount rules, payment problems) and let agents insert them by typing "/". 30 ready-to-copy examples can save you hours.
• Build or update your chatbot flow to answer the same questions without an agent, with a clear "talk to an agent" option at the end. Here's how to build a chatbot without coding.
• Set priorities and SLAs for urgent topics. For example, label every conversation about a failed payment, and use an automation rule to make it urgent and apply a tight SLA. See what an SLA is and how to set one up.
• Write your rush-hour messages: the "high message volume" and holiday notices from our after-hours message examples.

One week before: set expectations

• Turn on the queue. In your website inbox, on the "Settings" tab under "Widget features", turn on "Show live queue position" and "Show estimated wait time". Showing visitors their place in line tells them the team has seen them and gives them a reason to wait.
• Update your hours and holidays. Add your extended hours on the inbox's "Business Hours" tab and your closed days under Settings → Holidays.
• Update the widget's welcome text to mention the rush and link to your FAQ page.
• Test everything yourself. Start a chat as a customer, go through the bot, join the queue and check what an agent sees.

During the rush: watch and adjust

• Check the live KPIs. Reports → KPIs shows "Waiting in queue" and "Longest wait right now" as they happen. If the longest wait keeps growing, it's time to move people over from other tasks.
• Keep an eye on unanswered conversations. The "Unanswered conversations" report lists conversations that nobody has replied to yet. Aim to empty it at the end of every shift.
• Watch the workload. The "Agent workload" report shows who is carrying the most open conversations, so you can rebalance.
• Update the bot and the canned replies every day. New questions appear fast during a campaign; add the answer once and everyone benefits.
• Hold a five-minute stand-up at the start of each shift: what changed, what's breaking, who's on what.
• Plan breaks. Tired agents write worse replies, and worse replies create more messages.

After the rush: learn

• Compare with your baseline. Look at first response time, resolution time and CSAT for the rush against a normal week.
• List the top contact reasons from Reports → Labels. Every reason you can remove (a clearer delivery notice, a better checkout message) lowers next year's volume.
• Save what worked. Keep the canned replies, the bot flow and this checklist ready for the next peak.
• Thank the team. A short note, a day off, whatever fits. Peak seasons are only sustainable if people feel they were worth it.

Examples of peak seasons

Peaks are local. Black Friday and the weeks before Christmas matter in many markets; others are regional, such as Ramadan and Eid, Nowruz, back-to-school, Singles' Day or the January sales. Write down your own calendar once a year and prepare for each peak with this same list. If you run an online shop, the ecommerce page shows how Hodhod fits into that rush.

Frequently asked questions